Man, The New Mutants is taking an outright ass beating from critics and fans alike. Maybe it was the absolute basement-low expectations I went into the movie with. Maybe it was simply the fact that it felt good to be in the theater again (hell, I might’ve thought K:19: The Widowmaker was a decent movie on Sunday). I don’t know – but I went in expecting a terrible hot mess express of a movie, and I left thinking, “you know…..I don’t really get the hate…”
Was it the best X-Men movie ever made? No…but….y’know…that’s not really saying much anyway. Was it the worst? No – looking at you, Apocalypse, and that terrible Wolverine origins movie. It wasn’t the horror movie it advertised itself to be, but I did like the generally creepy and dark tone of it more than I thought I would.
The cast was hit or miss – they had some studs, but if you’re main character feels like more of a plot device than an actual character, you’re gonna lose a little bit of that pull you coulda had on people. I was entertained, but I wasn’t entrenched by any stretch of the imagination. Things were flat, and it made it feel like a movie that was only 99 minutes was actually closer to 200 minutes.
But, all of those criticisms aside, I wouldn’t call it atrocious by any stretch of the imagination. I’m more of the mindset that ‘this is a movie that exists’ than anything else. And, there was some real potential in it, which Brandon and I talked about in our review embedded below.
If you’re like me, though, part of the fun of going to see these superhero movies is looking for all of the easter eggs. I’m a big time comic book guy, and while I wasn’t all too familiar with the New Mutants story, there was still one GIGANTIC easter egg in The New Mutants. Apparently, we were setting up for the arrival of Mr. Sinister.
Reyes is working for the Essex Corporation. This is a group run by Nathaniel Essex, aka Mr. Sinister, aka the biggest villain we never got in X-Men movies.
Mr. Sinister has been teased in previous films, like X-Men: Apocalypse. In Apocalypse’s post-credits scene, we saw that blood samples had been taken from the Weapon X version of Wolverine to try to manufacture more creatures like him.
So much of The New Mutants tied into those other X-Men movies. That facility that Moonstar sees when she’s hooked up to that machine looks like the facility that X-23 came out of in Logan. The focus on the pin that Reyes wears – that’s a direct shout out to Mr. Sinister. There’s a lot of meat on that bone and it’s wild to think of what could’ve been.
Apparently, this was thought of as a trilogy and Mr. Sinister was going to be the big bad throughout all of it. As bad as some of these X-Men movies have been, it still would’ve been cool as hell to see Mr. Sinister on the big screen.
…that’s assuming they did it better than they did Apocalypse, though…
Now, that’s not going to be happening because Fox isn’t doing X-Men anymore and all of these characters are bound to show up in the MCU at some point in the future. I certainly trust Marvel to get it right a lot more. We’ll see.
Anyway, here’s The Vick’s Flicks Podcast’s live review of The New Mutants if you want some more discussion on it.
Live review of The New Mutants with tha bois #TheNewMutants https://t.co/PpqGQAhM1x
— The Vick's Flicks Podcast (@VicksFlicksPod) August 30, 2020
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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