The New Mutants - An Honest Review 5/10

A group of young mutants are being detained in an unknown facility, to come to terms with and be able to manage the powers that they can manifest.

We don’t get much of an origin story for them, and it takes a little while to find out some of the powers amongst the group. I also found it unusual that at no stage any of the characters are referred to by their hero name, and I feel that since the excitement surrounding this was based on the characters involved, it’s somewhat of an injustice to allow this to slip through the net! I actually loved the special effects in the movie, particularly the scenes with Illyana Rasputina aka Magik. Can someone tell me how they could forget to mention that her older brother is Colossus?! I think her power is one of the more interesting ones, besides Danielle AKA Mirage. Having someone who can transform into a wolf is nothing when we’ve seen Beast and Wolverine on our screens, and although Sam and Roberto had cool powers I feel again they were under-utilised. This leads nicely into my next point.

I felt as though the movie was a little confused with the direction and what the viewers were supposed to be watching. It felt a little bit like X-Men, but not a lot. There were some glimpses of teenage angst and team work with an element of fear and terror, almost on par with Stranger Things. There needed to be more super power screen time, more character development (and I’m not talking romance because I like my superheroes to just save the world I’m not bothered by who is dating who) and also a little bit more depth. It was easy enough to focus on the characters since there were only 6 of them so more exploration in that department would not have gone a miss.

Pushback after pushback ensured that X-Men fans have literally had to wait for years to actually see The New Mutants released. The New Mutants is completely different to the previously released movies in the franchise, with the introduction of a horror element. This was actually an aspect of the film that I enjoyed. It’s not the worst X-Men movie released - I will leave that title to X-Men: Dark Phoenix. I thought it was better than Apocalypse too! But not as enjoyable as the original trilogy, Deadpool movies or Logan. I like to forget about the Wolverine movies if I can.

A review by CB