“This isn’t a hospital, it’s a haunted house” about sums up The New Mutants: It’s about a bunch of kids being experimented on held hostage treated at an ominous asylum by a doctor who’s a little too calm about what’s happening. Except that in addition to these kids’ powers, which according to their caretaker are too dangerous to be trusted, there are also faces in the walls. And someone wearing a creepy smiley-face mask. Just as haunted houses contain many rooms full of different scares, so too does this new X-Men movie appear to have horror tropes and archetypes in spades.
That’s especially interesting considering that the director, Josh Boone, is best known for the weepy YA adaptation The Fault in Our Stars. The film stars Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as Wolfsbane, Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Split) as Magik, Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) as Cannonball, and Alice Braga (Elysium) as Dr. Cecilia Reyes. It’s based on characters created in Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod’s 1983 series New Mutants.
Watch the trailer, and be ready for some jump scares:
New Mutants comes to theaters April 13, 2018.
via Polygon
The trailer looks so rubber stamp cliche horror movie it turned me off entirely.
Not what I would have wanted for these characters’ first movie, but we’ll see. The cast is perfect, though, Maisie Williams was born to be Rahne.
Is it just me or does the title font have a very Bill Sienkiewicz style to it?
(He was the artist on New Mutants when I started reading it back in the day; I always liked his stuff.)
It’s definitely inspired in his work. Bill posted a picture to Facebook with the cast, he’s very happy about it.
Hah, not what I would have guessed for an X-Men movie, but it’s been awhile since I went out and watched a horror movie so I’m kind of looking forward to it in a weird way.
Is this intended to be in any kind of continuity with the other X-Men movies/Logan?
Newp.
Seriously, what? I’m so confused right now.
First, I would not have known this was an X-men movie had you not told me. I mean, “mutants” isn’t an X-men trademark (not entirely) and this doesn’t even seem to be in the same vein as anything else. Even after watching I still feel like it’s just another horror film about kids with supposed powers locked in some kind of asylum. I’m still not convinced — is this really X-men?
If so, as Lisamarie asks — is this a different continuity?
Simply as a “horror” film — it definitely looks cliche and trite. It’s probably something I’d watch at home but not necessarily pay for in theaters. But trying to think of this as an “X-men” movie is making my head hurt.
Well, these are characters from the comics, and characters who have undergone horror stories. So it’s not something the writer/director pulled out of a hat.
Even though I’d rather have the characters engaging in some other kind of story, it’s good to see that the studios are allowing them to be used in other types of stories besides regular superhero action fest, and trying to aim just for moviegoers that know the characters from the other films.
By the looks of it they are going to screw it up just like every other movie in the Marvel Universe, AntMan, Avengers, X-Men, the new ALT Spiderman. I won’t be watching it. They left out Nightcrawler and Magick (Colossus’ sister) This one just feels wrong to me. Yes, it is a Marvel Franchise and is an offshoot of X-Men just like X-Factor, XCalibre and X-Force.
Nightcrawler was never a member of the New Mutants, and Magick is right there in this trailer.
No Dani Moonstar, Xian Coy Manh, or Bobby DaCosta? 2 of the 3 would shred whatever mind games were being played, so I guess it makes sense that they left them out.
Dani and Berto are right there. They’re even played by Native American and Brazillian actors, respectively.
Dani and Roberto are both in the movie; not sure why the casting summary left them out. Dani is the girl in the chair the trailer begins with, and Roberto is at 1:04. Why yes, they did get a light-skinned actor to play him, isn’t that nice?
Yeah, I would have preferred an actor with darker skin, but at least they got a Brazillian, and not a random Latino, or even an actual white guy.
Based on the trailer, I have high hopes for this. I’m not a huge fan of horror, usually, but it was part of the original comics, particularly many of Dani and Illyana’s arcs. I remember a ‘Demon Bear’ issue in which most of the story took place in Dani’s nightmares; the trailer reminds of that story. And Illyana’s arc is almost all horror.
More importantly, the portrayal of the characters seems very faithful to the source material. And I agree, Maisie Williams is perfect for Rahne (other than the fact she’s English, not Irish, or course).
I’m cautiously intrigued — I do recognize all of the characters, although if it’s based on Demon Bear I think that was before I had actually started collecting it.
The lengthy delays between filming & release mean that it’ll be tricky if they try to do a sequel, just because all of the actors have aged up considerably in the interim.
There’s been rampant speculation for months now the release of the film will be permanently shelved or just shown on Disney+ as a way to encourage more people to sign up for that streaming platform. But still crossing my fingers that this release date in theaters holds!
@16: If a sequel actually happens – and I think that will mostly be based on box office – they could always jump ahead several years in the film chronology which would explain why the characters appear older.
I didn’t realize a new trailer was just released so I think the release date should be good to go!