The New Mutants (2020) Review
December 26, 2020
The New Mutants feels like a rough draft of four different tv pilots thrown into this one storyline. If instead this was a two hour long pilot or even 120 minutes instead of the 90 minute runtime, I would be intrigued to see where this goes next. This is a difficult movie to recommend. In only 90 minutes, we’re supposed to be following five main characters whom most of the audience have never been introduced to before and the film barely achieves at fleshing out our lead role, Dani Moonstar.
Portrayed by Blu Hunt, we’re introduced to Dani in a very generic yet compelling mystery that makes you want to understand her character and her powers more. When I say generic, I mean it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but it still leaves you curious. Sadly, that mystery gets clogged with four other characters that barely hold any reason of being in the film other than ensuring more storylines for future films.
Everything about this film feels lazy. Lazy casting, lazy editing, and what feels like a rushed conclusion. There’s a lot of fault with this movie behind and in front of the screen but at the end of the day, the movie is just whatever. It’s a movie. It’s competent. It has a start, a middle and an ending. The movie feels hollow and meaningless, unless there’s a sequel with these specific characters.
My Rating – 6.8/10
Spoilers below;
The movie’s biggest flaw is the time. At only 90 minutes, it feels impossible for us to connect to five separate characters who all feel they can carry their own movie. There’s a lot of rumors that reshoots were scheduled, but never came to fruition. One main reasons because of the transition from Fox to Disney. So this is a good example, I think to show people what happens when you don’t have reshoots. There’s some good ideas, but we need a lot more background on each character if the movie is expecting us to root for them by the end of the movie, and it fails at that.
While Dani Moonstar is the most fully developed character in the movie, everybody else is barely two dimensional. Sam has some of the most basic background that can be used through scenery as a substitution for exposition so he doesn’t get that much screen time. Magik has the most issues because her main power is teleporting and besides these mutant shields that are placed around the premises like a big dome, there’s no reason Magik can’t leave when she wants. We even see her teleport Dani to Limbo, so why doesn’t she just teleport everyone out? My biggest issue with Sunspot is more of a casting choice by changing the character’s ethnicity. Wolfsbane is mostly used for plot development and a guide for the audience and Dani.
So…yea. There’s a lot of good ideas but you’d think with so much time between the Disney buyout there’d be time to allow this film to have some reshoots and provide some fat for the middle.