Wait, what? The New Mutants is actually coming out? Color us shocked. The oft-delayed origin story for the X-Men spinoff seemed destined for Disney+, or to be buried on a shelf somewhere, sacrificed to the industry gods that made the Disney/Fox merger happen. But this latest trailer suggest that New Mutants lives again… and actually looks pretty damn good!
For those unaware, The New Mutants are a younger and far less experienced team of mutants who, in the comics, also train under Professor Charles Xavier. The movie, directed by Josh Boone, appears to distance itself from the traditional narrative of the comics, though it will focus on several recognizable members of what will eventually become a team.
We even get a traditional team shot in the trailer! Look at this sweetness.
OK, so, what are we looking at here? Instead of being students at a school for gifted children, the mutants appear to be in a mental-help facility, with a doctor (Alice Braga) trying to “cure:” them of the mutations that make them special. A lot of the focus lies on Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt), whose power actually is to make people see their worst nightmares come to life. So some of the threats that are being faced by the other characters on screen make us think that Dani’s power is out of control, and needs to be harnessed.
It’s here we get to meet the on-screen versions of some classic New Mutants characters, and even get a hint of their powers, though ever so briefly. I fear this means they won’t USE their powers all that much in the movie (for budget reasons), which sucks because they’re actually very cool. Take Rahne Sinclair, for example. Played by Game of Thrones standout Maisie Williams, she shape shifts into a wolf. That HAS to happen in this movie, but we don’t see it in the trailer.
We do, however, get blink-and-you-missed-them looks at Roberto da Costa, aka Sunspot (Henry Zaga)…
… and the beginning of the power up of my favorite New Mutants character, Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), who can propel himself like a human cannonball, and be invulnerable while doing it.
Finally, we get the fifth and most mysterious member of the team. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Magik, a character who was added to the New Mutants roster later in the game (in the comics) and who might be the most powerful. A Russian sorceress, she can transport to another realm and is the sister of proven X-Men Colossus. No clue if the shiny thug will show up in The New Mutants, but it’d be a pretty cool cameo.
The story behind The New Mutants is always going to be the delay. This movie was filmed in 2017, and then got lost in the shuffle of the calendars because of the Disney and Fox merger. Then, with Marvel Studios still trying to figure out how to process mutants in the MCU, no one knew where Josh Boone’s movie would fit in.
Well, it’s coming. And it will be in theaters on April 3, 2020. What do you think, now that you have seen the trailer?
