BEFORE: Trying to set aside October each year for horror films does keep getting tougher - or rather, it would be easy to do if I wasn't also trying to keep my chain unbroken all year long. So I've taken a look at what my horror movie list will look like AFTER 2021, to see if it's even possible for me to do a similar month in 2022 AND also keep a linked chain going then. And I'm glad I did this now, because there's a movie that I was going to watch at the end of October, but also links to some of the other horror movies on my list that I'm NOT watching this year.
What I thought I had was one large grouping of linked movies left, and a bunch of smaller ones. The big one was 12 films long, the next largest one was 6 films, then one that was 5 films long, a four-movie group, then a bunch of doubles and triples. BUT, I then saw that with one small non-horror addition, I could make a chain that was 15 movies long. AND, if I just take the last movie of this year's chain and move it to next year's chain, I can make a chain that's 20 movies long, maybe even 21. That's pretty respectable, as this year's chain was 23 movies, but now it's going to be 22.
Look, a lot can happen between now and next October - maybe I'll find a bunch of new (to me) horror movies that all link together. Maybe I'll end up breaking the chain next spring, accidentally, or get tired of linking movies altogether. We'll see - but it would seem to make sense for me to delay this one movie, called "Don't Let Go", until 2022. That seems to be the thing that makes next year's chain possible, and anyway, my 2021 chain was one film too long, and now it's just the right size. And the end of the year is just over 50 movies away, so I'm glad I got this straightened out now, what a relief.
Speaking of delaying movies, here's a film that's been delayed many times, both by me AND by 20th Century Fox. Originally this film was supposed to be in theaters in April 2018, but then got delayed because of reshoots, also Fox didn't want this film to compete with "Deadpool 2" and also "X-Men: Dark Phoenix". Then Disney bought Fox, and that caused further delays in the release. So there were four release dates that came and went, and THEN the pandemic hit, so it got delayed a FIFTH time. Finally, it hit theaters in August 2020, and I wasn't yet ready to go back into theaters myself, so I kept re-scheduling it, too, and finally it hit cable this past spring, and I recorded it in May 2021. I sure hope this film is worth all the trouble...
Anya Taylor-Joy carries over from "The Witch".
THE PLOT: Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves.
AFTER: Wow, what an incredible disappointment - maybe no film could possibly live up to tow and a half years of re-scheduling, then another full year of people avoiding theaters because of the pandemic, and then FINALLY a cable release. All for this? What a waste of everybody's time. Look, I'm a comic-book fan, I read the X-Men comics and I've been reading the New Mutants, too, for almost all of the time they've been around. Sure, they started out as the "junior" X-Men, but they had very original powers and they managed to find their own audience, but the characters deserve a much better movie than THIS.
This is not quite 90 minutes of nothing, but it's darn close. There's no villain, first of all, so it's basically the same mistake that the first "Suicide Squad" movie made - it's just the team meeting each other, coming together, and then dealing with the strange powers of one of the teammates. This is only the first act of a standard superhero movie, just the meet-and-greet-and-possibly-fight part, but then the team should come together, put aside their differences in order to work to defeat the evil power. What would "The Avengers" be if the team came together and then didn't fight Loki and the Chitauri? That would be a very boring movie, right? My point, exactly.
They could have easily compressed all the inaction here in this 90-minute film, and then added the reveal, that they're not being held in a facility run by Charles Xavier, but instead it's an evil facility run by Mr. Sinister. Then having the team come together to escape the institution would MEAN something. The rumor is that this was the original plan, and they may have actually filmed scenes with Jon Hamm as Mr. Sinister, but for some reason the plan changed and that story was scrapped. (This could mean that those scenes were terrible, even worse than what ended up being in the final cut, who can say?)
But without those scenes, without a villain, without a point in getting the team together, it sort of feels like somebody forgot to finish this movie. Also like they forgot to give these characters something to DO - Illyana Rasputin, aka Magik, is a very interesting character. She can open portals to the Limbo realm, and summon demons to fight on her behalf. She can teleport, and she's got a cool-looking SoulSword that also has powers. But what does she do in this movie but act like a stuck-up bully? What a waste.
Other characters have powers that would also seem to be right at home in a horror movie - Rahne Sinclair, aka Wolfsbane, can turn into a wolf. That's cool, but again, the story really fails to make good use of that. Does she bite villains, tear them apart with her claws? Nah, she just sees better in the dark and has enhanced smell. Ho hum, what's the point of even becoming a wolf if that's the best part of it? And Dani Moonstar, aka Mirage, is supposed to eventually be team leader, but here she hardly seems forceful enough to do that. Her power is to show people their greatest fears, which is what messes up the whole team at night, in their dreams, because she doesn't fully understand her power yet, or how to control it. So here she's like the Enchantress in "Suicide Squad", the whole team has to be put through the wringer because one member can't control her power.
The male members of the team both have energy-based powers, Cannonball can fly really fast and blast things, and he's SUPPOSED to be invulnerable when he does that - only here he can't really control his power either, and he keeps getting hurt. Roberto DaCosta, aka Sunspot, can absorb solar radiation and channel it back, and then, I don't know, burn stuff? It's a bit unclear, even in the comics, but here he just sometimes turns into a man made of fire, and also then seems to lose control. Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?
(Two members of the original team are missing here, one is of course Professor X, who put the team together as a possible replacement for the X-Men, who I think were off in space for a while. The other missing member is Karma, a Vietnamese girl who could use mind control to take over other people's bodies. Was that too creepy, even for this film? Or did somebody feel that the team was already ethnically diverse enough, with a Russian, a Native American and a Brazilian on board?)
Umm, yeah, about that - Sunspot's supposed to be Brazilian, like BROWN-skinned Brazilian, and here he just looks Caucasian, and doesn't even have an accent. Kudos to Anya Taylor-Joy for at least faking a believable Russian accent without going all ridiculous like Florence Pugh in "Black Widow", but then Mirage is supposed to be Native American, and she doesn't really look like that, either. Two steps forward and one step back for diversity, I guess.
This Marvel comic was ground-breaking in the 1980's because except for Spider-Man and the X-Men in the 1960's, most of Marvel's super-heroes were adults when they got powers or built their super-suits or whatever. But supposedly these mutant powers tend to kick in when puberty does, so it's a great opportunity to have characters who are the same age as most of the readers, who could see themselves and their problems reflected in those of the X-Men, then in the New Mutants when the X-Men had to grow up over time. Great, moody, sullen and disinterested superheroes, that's what we all need - at a point in time where big changes are happening to their bodies, they're growing hair in weird places, turning into wolves, summoning demon portals and burning things with absorbed solar radiation.
This movie takes the relationship between Mirage and Wolfsbane even further than the comic book did - in the comics they have a "special bond", which is obviously code for "gay", not some telepathic link between Native Americans and wolves, except that it's that, too. It's bad enough that Rahne Sinclair was raised Irish Catholic, and her local pastor was already beating her because she was a werewolf (work of the devil to him), if he knew she was a lesbian he'd probably have killed her outright. But it's 2020 now, we can show two girls kissing on-screen, after the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" show and "Ally McBeal" and "Ellen" all paved the way. Unfortunately, this only results in the world's most boring mutant lesbian relationship ever, all they want to do is stare into each other's eyes and share a kiss every other Thursday. I think in the comic book Wolfsbane has a son with some Asgardian prince who could also turn himself into a wolf, so go figure THAT one out.
Another problem with nearly all of these characters is that they killed a friend or family member when their powers first manifested - in Marvel, this is a long tradition that goes back to Spider-Man's uncle, who was killed by a gunman that Spidey SHOULD have stopped, therefore he has to spend the rest of his life fighting criminals, but that WON'T bring his uncle back. Other characters have suffered similar tragedies, like Jean Grey lost (killed?) her parents and Cyclops thought his parents died in a plane crash, only to find out later his father became a space pirate. And Wolverine has probably had to kill everyone he ever loved at different points in his life, thank God he doesn't remember most of it for some reason. But here, with a whole team of mutants feeling guilty for having powers, and accidentally killing people, they're just positively paralyzed with fear and neurosis all the time, they probably don't even feel they deserve these powers, or the ability to control them. So, you know, fun times.
Sure, there are references to the Native American "Demon Bear", which was a big part of the first story arc in the original comic. (Supposedly we all have two bears inside us, a good one and an evil one, and whichever one we feed, that's the one that grows?). Dani Moonstar's bear is a big one, and he's hungry, and the whole team has to come together - maybe the doctor had the right idea when she said that Dani was dangerous and needed to be put down. This doctor apparently never learned the Hippocratic Oath... but that's the sign that something's really not right at this institution, and that the team needs to escape. Oh, if only they had somebody on the team who could summon portals to the Limbo realm and teleport them out of there, but I guess there's no point in wishing for things they can't have. Giant NITPICK POINT there.
When the team does come together to defeat the Demon Bear, then they all just leave the facility, without even packing a change of clothes, and head off, looking for a second act. I hope these crazy kids find that someday, only it won't be in the form of a sequel to this snooze-fest. Damn, this HURTS me to rate this film as just average, when with a little more work, a decent villain and better-defined powers, this might have turned into something. Instead, this is how the X-Men movie franchise dies, very quietly in its sleep while the cameras are watching.
BUT, the timing is just great for me, I've landed on a comic-book movie just before New York Comic-Con, which starts on Thursday this week. Today was my prep day for the event, getting animation art, other merchandise, and supplies ready to go to the Javits Center, which is just a few blocks from my office. Last year's event was cancelled, obviously, so we haven't sold anything at a convention in TWO years. Normally I'd work every day and wear myself out, but I'm getting too old for that - so this year I'm splitting the booth time with two co-workers, and I'm only working set-up on Wednesday, the second half of Friday, and all day on Saturday. Sunday I plan to sleep, all day. But that's why I'm loading up this early part of October with movies, because I'm going to need to take a break from horror movies REAL soon.
Also starring Blu Hunt, Maisie Williams (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, Alice Braga (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Adam Beach (last seen in "Hostiles"), Thomas Kee (last seen in "The Company Men"), Happy Anderson (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Dustin Ceithamer, Colbi Gannett, Jacinto Vega Spiritwolf with a vocal cameo from Marilyn Manson (last seen in "Lost Highway").
RATING: 5 out of 10 therapy sessions
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