After about 700 delays and release date changes, The New Mutants, a superhero/horror genre mashup that closes the book on Fox's X-Men universe, was finally released earlier this year on August 28. Unfortunately, many theaters across the United States were still closed at that point, and many people, including me, weren't able to see it when it came out. Thankfully, theaters by me opened up recently, so I finally got a chance to see it last weekend. It's about a bunch of teenagers whose mutant powers have just emerged, and they're trapped in a hospital where they're ostensibly being taught how to control their powers (but you know there's something nefarious going on).
I'm a huge fan of both superheroes and horror, so I was really looking forward to this one. The superhero genre needs to do new things and go in unexplored directions if it's going to avoid audience fatigue, and what better way to do that than to blend it with the best genre out there? That sounds like a recipe for success, but unfortunately, this film did not live up to its promise. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to a baseball team that can't get its pitching and hitting to work together. When the team pitches well, it hits poorly, and when it hits well, it pitches poorly. That's pretty much what this movie felt like.
For most of its runtime, the story was pretty generic. The hospital ends up not being as benevolent as it seems, and it's run by an evil corporation that does evil corporation things. The film hits the plot beats you expect it to hit, and it's decent enough that it would've been passable if the other elements of the movie had been good. The problem is that those other elements didn't keep up their end of the bargain. The characters were bland and one-dimensional, and the scares were generic and halfhearted, so the decent-enough storyline ended up being just another thing not to like about this film.
Then, when the characters and the scary stuff finally became good, the story got bad. It's tough to talk about what exactly is wrong with it without spoiling it, so let me just say this. In some ways, it reminded me of the end of Justice League. One of my biggest problems with that movie is the way the Justice League defeats the villain, Steppenwolf. They're fighting him with everything they have, and all of a sudden Superman shows up and wipes the floor with Steppenwolf, making all the other heroes pretty much irrelevant.
The final battle in The New Mutants is similar to that in a certain sense, but it's even worse. It's not simply a matter of who actually defeats the bad guy (although that's definitely part of the problem); even more so, I have an issue with the way they do it. It's just really anticlimactic, and it's not the way a superhero fight should end. I know that's vague, but it's tough to explain it without getting into spoilers. If you see the movie, you'll know what I mean.
So at the end of the day, unless you absolutely need to see The New Mutants, I would suggest giving it a pass. It's not terrible, but it's not particularly good either. It has some elements that work and a few cool moments, but those elements never come together at the same time to make an enjoyable movie. It's sad to see one of the pioneering franchises of the modern superhero genre go out like this, but such is life. You win some and you lose some, and this is definitely a loss.
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