Fox (and now Disney’s) groundbreaking (if inconsistent) X-Men franchise deserved a better send-off than this nothing-burger of a movie.
Putting aside the circumstances of its release, both in terms of being delayed for over two years (mostly due to shenanigans related to Disney buying Fox in mid-2019) and being the first "major" studio release dropped into nationwide theatrical release after months pandemic-related theater closures, The New Mutants is a miserable motion picture. It’s a monotonous, redundant and irrelevant fantasy flick that fails to commit to being a teen melodrama, a YA fantasy or a horror movie, instead offering half-assed components of all three.
Despite a strong cast, the all-too-rare presence of an LGBTQIA romance between two lead characters and a few moments of visual inventiveness, Josh Boone and Knate Lee's The New Mutants boils down to being, yes, a terrible feature-length prequel for a sequel that absolutely no one will ever want to see.
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