If you can believe it, tickets for The New Mutants have been sold and the X-Men film will finally play on big screens this weekend. This comes three years after the movie wrapped production, dating the delays to the Josh Boone movie far before the pandemic and even prior to Fox and Disney’s merger last year. As this Friday’s release marks the film’s fifth official release date, sources reportedly close to the production have disclosed details about the film’s reshuffling, including Storm being cut from the storyline.
When The New Mutants was first devised, Fox’s X-Men universe was in a completely different place. There’s a stark difference between what it felt like for movie fans to walk out of 2014’s Days of Future Past and 2016’s Apocalypse. We already know The New Mutants was supposed to be set in the ‘80s continuity of that universe and feature more connections to the larger franchise. When Apocalypse disappointed, the movie was changed to present day in an effort to distance itself, leaving out the Ororo Munroe appearance. As one unnamed source told Vulture about why Storm didn’t work for the movie:
She was their sadistic jailer. It felt like the kids were being tortured. If the X-Men are holding [the young mutants] there, it can’t feel different from the mental furniture that audiences bring into the theater knowing that the X-Men are good guys. Storm like that made no sense.
Yeah… that might have placed a damper on Storm’s reputation in the X-Men franchise. Josh Boone’s take on the film was a ‘80s horror slasher meets The Breakfast Club, taking inspiration from the 1983 Demon Bear Saga storyline. Storm’s role was replaced with Alice Braga’s Dr. Cecilia Reyes, long before Fox had any indication that The New Mutants would premiere at a time when its X-Men films were no longer ongoing or connected.
The recent report also claims that when Josh Boone delivered his first version of the movie, Fox was displeased leading the studio to bring in the writers he worked on for The Fault In Our Stars, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. As The New Mutants continued to be developed, Boone and X-Men producer Simon Kinberg (director of 2019’s Dark Phoenix) were in a “creative impasse.”
Reshoots were originally supposed to occur, but by the time it was possible, the young actors at the center of the film, including Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams, Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton and Glass’ Anya Taylor-Joy, had significantly grown. Josh Boone recently cleared the air with CinemaBlend’s Eric Eisenberg, stating that the film “hasn’t changed much at all.”
Although we’ll never see Storm go rogue in The New Mutants, there will be some slight connections to the old X-Men series here and there. You can check out the movie in theaters (depending on what’s being offered near to you) starting August 28.
