The New Mutants is the movie equivalent of handing your homework in two weeks late and hoping no one will notice. I’ll tell you now young readers, that never works. Acting as a final movie in the X-Men franchise, The New Mutants finished filming way back in 2017 and was delayed with reshoots planned to make the movie more frightening. Well, here we are 3 years later, the movie is finally out and the planned reshoots never took place.
Preview night for the movie was yesterday, and The New Mutants managed to claw back $750,000 of a supposed $80 million budget. To put that into context, another movie based on the Marvel Comic franchise, X-Men: Dark Phoenix managed to make $5 million on preview night. It’s been a bad start for The New Mutants with critics destroying the movie score over on Rotten Tomatoes. They aren’t the only ones who are unhappy though, with New Mutants co-creator Bob McLeod giving a less than positive take on things.
He had a few thoughts that he shared in a Facebook post, including the fact his name wasn’t even spelled correctly in the credits. Here’s a paraphrased version of what he said:
I was very excited when I heard they were making a New Mutants movie. I thought making it into a horror movie was perhaps an interesting idea, but not at all how the characters should be introduced to the public.
But then, I was disappointed when they didn’t give Dani braids, although I like Blu Hunt. I was disappointed Rahne wasn’t a redhead with spiky hair, although I adore Maisie Williams. I was disappointed that Sam isn’t tall and gawky, although I do like Charlie Heaton. But mainly I was disappointed that Roberto isn’t short and dark skinned. Yet another example of Hollywood white-washing.
And now, the movie has come out and they’ve credited someone named Bob Macleod. They couldn’t even be bothered to check the spelling after three years. I think I’m done with this movie.”
In their defense, they were busy with the reshoots. Let us know your thoughts on The New Mutants in the comments. It sounds like a pretty poor showing all-around at the moment, but we’re always keen to know your take on it.