Has anyone actually seen this?

Yes.  It was one of the worst movies I have ever seen, which is why I did a rewrite of the entire thing.

Even most bad movies at least have some sort of flow in that there is a chain of events that follow from each other.  New Mutants doesn't have that.  Scenes don't lead into or follow from each other.  A doesn't lead to B.  A happens, is forgotten about, and then B happens with no connection to anything.

The dialogue is terrible.

Dani is the only main character with everyone else basically defined by how they relate to her, which was a huge mistake since she is nowhere near compelling enough to carry the film.

What Boone did to Magik is criminal.  She has as much in common with the real Magik as a version of Batman who was never an orphan and has mutant bat-wings and also spouted racist dialogue every few seconds would have with the real Batman.  Even worse, the changes only make her more confusing, as now there's no explanation for what she can do or if there's anything actually magical about her.  Going by the film I think the only explanation for her powers is that her mutant power is reality-warping like Legion or Franklin Richards.  If Boone had an ounce of competence he would have realized that the way to handle her origin in film format was to show as little as possible and play up the mystery surrounding her.  Like I said before, she's Wanda Maximoff with a sword, not Illyana Rasputin.  Plus the fact that she should be able to teleport out any time she wants is never even addressed except in a throwaway line in a deleted scene, turning her into a giant plot hole.  Anya Taylor Joy could have been perfect in the role, but this material was just trash.

Terrible and obvious mystery.  Weak scares. Terrible resolution to the final battle.  There really is nothing redeeming about the film.

I'm guessing that by 'the flirting with Sunspot' you're referring to the relationship Magma had with Roberto in the 2009 Zeb Wells series.  In the original 80s series Magma's pairing was with Sam and Illyana's pairing was with Roberto.  Illyana did flirt with Roberto in the original run and he was torn between being attracted to her and being afraid of her.  I can't remember a time when Amara was a bully though.

Going by the original comics, Rahne should be the bully if anyone should be, and specifically to Illyana.  But there really was no need for anyone to be a bully.

I don't think the movie would have been better with more characters.  They didn't know what to do with the characters they had and everyone was defined by how they related to Dani.

I wouldn't have done a rewrite of the entire movie if I didn't hate it.  classiccomics.org/thread/7025/new-mutants-film-rewrite

Rahne actually had quite the temper and took it out on Amara,  Illyana, and Nightcrawler.  She made Illyana quite aware of how much she hated her, to the point where Illyana had to tell her she wasn't the enemy.

The first mention of Illyana in the New Mutants comic is Dani thinking 'I met Illyana Rasputin once, she was a nice kid, but weird.' The movie depicts her as making bad racist joke after bad racist joke which she never, ever made in any comic which has ever been published. The first time she ever starts acting like a bully in the comics is 2 years after she joins the team, when the New Mutants are in Asgard and she's taken the Enchantress' place. Then her personality starts to change to be more like the Enchantress, and the other characters notice and realize she's acting out of character. Heck, the month after the movie came out, the comics had the real Illyana state 'I hate bullies.' So no, her being a racist bitch is not in character whatsoever.



The character depicted in the movie is Illyana Rasputin in name only. Her personality is completely different. The real Illyana isn't a racist bully - it would be impossible for her to even know enough about Native Americans to make such jokes. She's an 'outcast among outcast' who struggles to even ask 'can I play too.' Her origin is completely different. Instead of being taken to hell for her entire childhood, having her soul ripped up and tainted, taught magic and sword-fighting, turning what remained of her soul into a weapon to fight back, and finally deciding to spare her captor and tormentor to prove she was different and better than him, she's a victim of child sex traffickers who got up and gleefully murdered all of her captors the moment her vaguely defined mutant powers appeared. Her powers are completely different. Instead of a being a mutant teleporter and demon sorceress, she's a mutant reality warper who can create hell dimensions and bring dolls to life with her mind and only uses a sword because it looks cool. Her teleporting is just another way in which she manipulates the reality around her. She has no magical powers whatsoever since she never learned sorcery and her line implying she is actually magic is merely a result of her being slightly insane. So little thought was put into her character that the only time the film even addresses the fact that a teleporter is somehow trapped in the facility in the first place is in a single throwaway line in a deleted scene and no one ever stopped to ask 'why would a little child create a literal hell as her happy place instead of someplace with ponies or fairies?'



The depiction of Illyana is a disaster on the level of Bane from Batman and Robin or Deadpool inn X-Men Origins Wolverine. Everything that makes Illyana who she is was taken away and replaced with nothing of value. Outside of her looks, movie Illyana and the real Illyana have nothing in common.


When was the last time you read the comics?  There was so much that wasn't accurate.  Sam killing anyone - in the comics he saved a fellow miner from a cave-in instead of causing one.  Roberto being white, becoming the human torch when he gets horny or scared, and burning his girlfriend to death.  He's supposed to be black, his power is he gets super-strength from the sun, and his girlfriend jumped in front of a bullet to save him.  Rahne killed her pastor.  In the comics he was very much alive and all Rahne did was run away.  Rahne and Dani being gay.  Never happened in the comics.  Dani's always been boy crazy and Rahne has been in love with Sam, Doug, and an Asgardian wolf-god.  The Demon Bear being a creation of Dani's powers.  No. It was a real monster that when killed was revealed to be Dani's parents under the control of another magical enemy.


Most of these changes aren't necessarily bad, though the change to Roberto's race and changing the Demon Bear to be just another result of Dani's powers were very bad.  I even kept most of them in my rewrite of the film.  But they are all very big changes from the original comics.  There is very little at all that is comics accurate.  The only character who I'd say in broad strokes isn't almost completely different from his comics counterpart is Sam.


Being comics accurate isn't everything.  The film is horrible on its own merits without the racewashing or the butchering of Illyana's character.  The dialogue is horrible, with Illyana's being the worst.  If they wanted Illyana to be the mean one there were a thousand better ways than having her tell such bad jokes, and my god were her pop culture references in place of battle dialogue atrocious.  Most of her dialogue reads and sounds like placeholder lines which they never got around to filling in with what a real person would say.  The characters have basically no agency or arcs outside of Dani.   Illyana gets an extremely weak and badly done arc in learning to be nicer because Dani is nice to her once.  Rahne is only there to be the love interest.  And Sam and Roberto might as well not be in the movie they are so pointless.  Dani is the focus and she's not a good character either.  She's both the main POV character and the center of the mystery, and that alone would have killed the movie even if the rest of the film was better.  The reveal that her power is the source of everything is the most obvious thing because the film never even tries to present any other possible causes or explanations.  And Dani is a weak main character who cannot carry a film, especially this defanged everygirl version who lacks the characteristics that make her comics counterpart compelling.  For a horror-focused film there's no scare or tension, and the bear not being real and being defeated by Dani yelling at it rob it of even having a cool action action climax.  And the film fails at storytelling 101 - having a cause and effect between events and scenes.  Much of the film is a bunch of disconnected scenes that have nothing leading up to them and having effect on the rest of the story.  Not since The Room have I seen a movie that does this so much.  The way Illyana's sword is handled is also ridiculous.  There's a big reveal scene of her summoning the sword before she goes to fight the bear, except the sword has been used multiple times throughout the movie already.  Any first-time amateur filmmaker would know not to do that.


I am genuinely baffled that anyone can defend this movie.  There is no level at which it works, its writing at the micro and macro levels are terrible, it fails at even telling a cohesive story with any sense of flow.  It has no scares, no tension, and no mystery.  None of its jokes are funny.  It lacks any compelling characters.  The only fleeting moments of anything of merit are 2 action sequences where Illyana uses her sword.  It's at the level of below-average middle school fanfiction.


And speaking of fanfiction, I again have that rewrite of the whole movie I wrote to fix many of the problems.  I wouldn't call it perfect, but it fixes many of the problems with the movie and is a far better story.  classiccomics.org/thread/7025/new-mutants-film-rewrite