Dark Phoenix (film)
2019
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Josh Boone and Knate Lee deliver a reasonably entertaining screenplay out of the generic zone of the superhero genre, packed with detailed character development and decent horror sequences,...
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By Jim Vejvoda
Updated: Oct 23, 2020 3:27 am
Posted: Aug 29, 2020 12:30 am
IGN serves a global audience, so with The New Mutants released in select US and international theaters, we are publishing our review from Jim Vejvoda who watched the movie at a drive-in in L.A. Read more on IGN's policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here. IGN strongly encourages anyone considering going to a movie theater during the COVID-19 pandemic to check their local public health and safety guidelines before buying a ticket.
Until its opening weekend, The New Mutants has not been dissimilar to its teen protagonists, an oddball locked away from the world by some big, powerful entity. And as it turns out, like them, it didn’t deserve such ill-treatment.
The apparent reason New Mutants sat on a shelf for two years isn’t that it’s unwatchable — surprise, the movie’s fine! — but possibly because two studios didn’t know how to open a strange, small-scale film that didn’t check enough marketing boxes. In other words, it appears neither Fox nor Disney knew how to sell what feels like a Netflix show. That’s essentially what The New Mutants is; it’d be right at home on the streaming service alongside Stranger Things, Umbrella Academy, and Locke & Key. To think turds like The Call of the Wild and Artemis Fowl were actually screened for critics ahead of time -- New Mutants wasn’t, which is never a good sign -- and given proper promotional attention while this admittedly flawed but entertaining flick gets flushed is absurd. And as an X-Men movie, New Mutants is definitely superior to the widely released (and widely panned) X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix.
Is New Mutants scary enough to be deemed a full-on horror movie? No. Is it melodramatic enough to be a straight-up YA movie? No. Is it bad? No. It’s perfectly watchable, competently made, and actually gets better as it goes along. What starts as just an OK movie ends as a good one. Even the visual effects aren’t that bad, with some by the end involving characters like Anya Taylor-Joy’s Illyana Rasputin (aka Magik) actually being pretty great. (Wolfsbane’s canine form is far better than the CG dog in every scene of The Call of the Wild.)
Director/co-writer Josh Boone made a film that’s akin to the first X-Men movie -- which, if you revisit it now, is about as ambitious and expensive-looking as a cable TV series pilot -- but Boone made his film in an era where the scale and stakes of superhero movies are required to be more epic in order to appeal to a mainstream audience. If the first X-Men movie was made now -- with its simplistic train station fight sequence and final showdown where a handful of people scuffle at the Statue of Liberty -- it would likely have suffered the same fate as New Mutants.
New Mutants is anchored by its solid cast, led by Blu Hunt as Dani Moonstar (that this is the first comic book movie featuring a Native American lead character and actor shouldn’t be overlooked) and Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair (or, as Marvel Comics fans know them, Mirage and Wolfsbane, respectively). The movie develops a romantic relationship between them, and it’s all handled in a very sweet way befitting puppy love (that’s not a Wolfsbane pun!). Both Dani and Rahne -- all five members of the team, actually -- are frightened and have been emotionally scarred by what their powers have wrought and that affects how they view themselves and relate to others. For Dani and Rahne, they have each just found someone who understands and accepts them.
None of the New Mutants like having their powers but they begrudgingly accept them because they see no alternative. Each character is only at this facility because their powers got someone killed, leaving most of them riddled with survivors’ guilt. Of the five, Taylor-Joy’s rebellious and rude Illyana is the most adept with her powers, something the movie puts to great use in the homestretch. Charlie Heaton’s everyman Sam Guthrie probably has the most dangerous abilities but the movie never quite unleashes them, letting Illyana have all the big crowd-pleasing superpower scenes. Ditto Henry Zaga’s cocky Roberto Da Costa who gets a memorable powers-revealing scene but never really gets to show them off in the last act. (Zaga's casting, it should be noted, has been blasted by many, including New Mutants co-creator Bob McLeod, as whitewashing a character who was dark-skinned in the original comics.)
There’s one fun section in the second act that’s a riff on a sequence from The Breakfast Club, which Boone has cited as an influence on his film. These John Hughes homages lend the film some coming-of-age movie warmth and splashes of levity. As for the horror aspects, Boone didn’t lie when he said there are shades of Stephen King in the movie, particularly Firestarter. Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer clearly plays a heavy influence as well, specifically the iconic “Hush” episode, with scenes from the show appearing multiple times. But The New Mutants starts with a long period of quiet, familiar set-up, building to a more rewarding and lively second half.
The first act is at times sluggish and rote, with exposition aplenty. And while all the cast is solid, the respective accents of Taylor-Joy’s Illyana (Russian) and Heaton’s Sam (a Southern drawl) may prove vexing to some ears. I also could have done without one glaringly on-the-nose music cue, which is when Sam -- who was a coal miner like his daddy -- briefly recounts his past as the country classic “Coal Miner’s Daughter” plays on the radio. We get it! He’s Southern and he mined coal! There are also plenty of moments where you’re left wondering why a particular character doesn’t just use their specific powers to get out of the jam they’re in at that moment. These nagging questions are enough to pull you out of things for a second.
The New Mutants didn’t deserve to be locked away for years. It’s not some unwatchable mess but rather a perfectly fine, entertaining, if at times formulaic small-scale genre movie. The solid young cast makes their troubled protagonists appealing and identifiable, more distinctly drawn than some of the supporting characters in past X-Men movies have...
Review scoring
good
This X-Men spin-off New Mutants didn’t deserve to be shelved for so long.
Jim Vejvoda
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May 4, 2021 · The New Mutants is not available on Netflix. But fans should not be upset because there plenty of other options on Netflix that are very similar to The New Mutants.
Parents' Guide to. The New Mutants. By Tara McNamara, Common Sense Media Reviewer. age 14+. Groundbreaking elements, but violent X-Men tale falls short. Movie PG-13 2020 99 minutes. Rate movie. Parents Say: age 16+ 18 reviews. Any Iffy Content? Read more. Watch Our Video Review Watch now. A Lot or a Little?
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Aug 28, 2020 · As “The Avengers” and “Star Wars” bloat with galactic mythology, “The New Mutants” tests the question: Can a slight genre film with one location and no name-brand characters pass ...
Sep 4, 2020 · The New Mutants review – troubled kids add hit of horror to X-Men saga | Movies | The Guardian. Fazed and confused …. Maisie Williams, Henry Zaga, Blu Hunt, Charlie Heaton and Anya...
