The next big X-Men film from Fox Studios, The New Mutants, comes out next April. The story from the comics follows a team of teenagers learning what their powers are, learning how to use them in safe, constructive ways and learning how to fight as a team. Much like the X-Men, they all fought their fair share of villains, some weird, some tricky, some metaphysical, and some scary.
It’s that last point that we’re focusing on for this article because according to director Josh Boone, the film will be a straight up horror flick. As he told Entertainment Weekly, “We are making a full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe. There are no costumes. There are no supervillains. We’re trying to do something very, very different.”
Josh Boone added to his quote saying that, for him, after artist Bill Sienkiewicz came onto the title, the New Mutants comic became, “a darker and more surreal and impressionistic X-Men series than we’d ever seen before. It felt like Stephen King meets John Hughes.”
Later in that same article, a source they claim is close to the production gave us our first real plot synopsis, saying, “Held in a secret facility against their will, five new mutants have to battle the dangers of their powers, as well as the sins of their past. They aren’t out to save the world — they’re just trying to save themselves.”
So, Saw meets X-Men: First Class?
For us, this totally works. The New Mutants title is not traditionally associated with the horror genre as it’s typically just superheroics but with younger mutants. However, when you break down the team, which includes a devout Catholic werewolf named Wolfsbane, a living techno-organic virus named Warlock, and a teleporting mutant who is partially a witch, making this film a horror film makes sense. There’s also a character, Dani Moonstar, who’s power is to psychically know your greatest fears and then to bring them to life. Physical actual life. Scared of giant spiders? BAM! Now they exist. Fight them!
Also, it makes even more sense when you consider that one of their storylines sees Magik kidnapped by a demon named Belasco to live in demon limbo where she learns to summon a Soul Sword while another storyline sees the Demon Bear, a psychic nightmare brought to life by a demon mutating the corrupted souls of Dani Moonstar’s parents, terrorizing the team in the halls of a hospital.
All in all, when you really sit back and think about it, this team really has been through hell together on a number of occasions. So does this make sense? Yes. Absolutely.
He has two cats and knows all things about Doctor Strange but little else.
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