The year 2018 is going to be a major one for the future of the X-Men franchise, with three different releases set to hit theaters. The most notable are David Leitch's Deadpool 2 and Simon Kinberg's X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but months before either of those will see the arrival of Josh Boone's New Mutants. And if this new trailer is anything to go by, we should be in for a real treat in the early months of next year.
It's always a nice combination when Friday the 13th lands in October -- the day of superstitious arriving during the spookiest month of the year -- and 20th Century Fox has celebrated with a nice new genre experiment within the X-Men brand. While most of the titles in the franchise are either large scale or small scale action movies, New Mutants is a straight-up horror feature, and it looks like it will be introducing a welcome new flavor to the comic book-based proceedings. The key to keeping these kinds of movies going is always going to be variety, and this film definitely looks different than any other Marvel adaptation that we've previously seen.
Based on the comic series of the same name created by Chris Claremont and Bill McLeod, and adapted by Josh Boone and Knate Gwaltney, The New Mutants is set in a hospital where young mutants who can't control their powers are taken in. The main cast of characters includes Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), a young man who can turn himself into a human rocket; Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), who can teleport using portals; Sunspot (Henry Zaga), who has the ability to absorb and manipulate solar energy; Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams), who can turn into a wolf as well as a wolf/human hybrid; and lastly young Mirage (Blu Hunt), who can conjure images of a person's worst fears. Under the tutelage of Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga) they each learn how to start reigning in their special abilities, but as you can see from the trailer, it involves some serious spooks.
To be perfectly frank, watching this trailer for The New Mutants is a nice reminder of how far the "comic book movie genre" has come - which is to say so far that the term "comic book movie genre" has basically become meaningless. These kinds of films used to all be cookie cutter action movies with superpowered heroes taking on superpowered villains in giant action sequences, but there is absolutely none of that present in this work. What Josh Boone has created here looks like it is straight-up horror, a fascinating interpretation of the source material, and it looks fantastic.
If this special trailer for Friday the 13th is just a taste of what we can expect to get from the finished feature, than the next six months are going to be a serious challenge. Set to come out on a Friday the 13th of its own, The New Mutants has been scheduled for release on April 13, 2018. We couldn't possibly be more excited now, so stay tuned for more updates and coverage over the next couple days, weeks, and months!
