THE NEW MUTANTS (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

NEW MUTANTS was the last film in the X-Men franchise to be released under the 21st-Century Fox banner before the big Disney takeover. It's not much of a climax for Fox's twenty-year old management of the franchise, but at least it's better than the train wreck that was X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE.

I would guess that from the first, director/co-writer Josh Boone knew that this film, an adaptation of a Marvel Comics X-Men spin-off, wasn't getting anything like the budget allotted to the X-films. That may be why the film diverges from the NEW MUTANTS comic book so radically. In the comic, the titular teenaged mutants are trained as superheroes at Professor X's special institute, with the expectation of their serving the same role as the earlier X-Men: fighting for justice and mutant rights. Here, Boone brings the teens together in a gloomy hospital inhabited only by the five teens, a medical doctor named Reyes (Alice Braga) overseeing their care, and a few assistants. Reyes claims that the five of them are to be trained in the handling of their mutant superpowers, and the teens acquiesce to some extent, since all five have had dire experiences in which they hurt ordinary humans with those abilities. However, the youths are not happy to be confined to the grounds by a force field, and this leads to an eventual breakdown between the young heroes and their captors. In addition, viewpoint character Dani lives in fear of encountering a demonic creature linked to her Cheyenne heritage, and eventually the mutants must deal with the reality of this supernatural threat.

Though the five teens-- Dani, Illyana, Rahne, Sam, and Bobby-- have no shortage of fantastic powers, the film lacks the budget to show them being exercised to any great extent, and so what we get is akin to a long TV-episode with a better than average budget. The idea of emphasizing horror rather than adventure in the New Mutants' cinematic debut is not without precedent, since the whole demon-plotline is derived from a celebrated comics-narrative called the "Demon Bear" storyline. (Personally I found the original tale over-hyped). Boone does provide some decent scare-scenes that put the teenagers in situations where their super-powers are of no avail. But Boone's script fails to give any of the characters much of a story-arc beyond running around, complaining and being terrorized. The one character who comes alive to some extent is, ironically, that of Illyana, whose complicated relationship to X-Man Colossus must of necessity be elided. That said, the script makes Illyana into a snarky "mean girl" who's forever taking shots at her fellow inmates, most of all "new fish" Dani, and actress Anya Taylor-Joy makes the most of her diva status. There's a mild, non-canonical lesbian encounter between Dani and Rahne, but thankfully, it's not trumpeted with the offensiveness of the Woke Filmmakers. Yet it's also not that dramatically interesting for all the subdued handling.

Even if the franchise hadn't been absorbed by Disney, and even if the film hadn't come out in the wake of the China Virus, I tend to doubt that this spin-off would have earned another outing.