The New Mutants: Review

Episode 252: The New Mutants - Review

13 X-Men Universe films and it all comes down to this, The New Mutants, the poor film trapped in acquisition hell, scheduling hell, and a pandemic all at the same time! We talk 20th Century Fox's Disney's The New Mutants. Let's do this.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to Screen Heroes. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Screen
Heroes Podcast, Episode two hundred andfifty two. I am your host,
Derek, and I have with memy two other longtime co hosts, Ryan

(00:23):
Vote and Ray What's up? Indeed, this week we have decided to finally
take a look at the long delayed, in some cases long awaited, twentieth
Century Fox film The New Mutants.This movie was originally announced in twenty fifteen,

(00:46):
was supposed to release in twenty eighteen, and got delayed multiple times due
to lots of factors, mainly theDisney acquisition of twentieth Century Fox and then
the pandemic. So it came outin August twenty twenty, and we're just
now checking it out because it isavailable for some reason on HBO Max,
So if you want to watch that, it's available there for you. Before

(01:11):
we kick things off with the reviewand discussion, is there anything else you
guys want to talk about today?I could have sworn you had something like,
Okay, explain the discovery at andT Murder for me, because I'm
not sure I give a crap,and you have a way of explaining things
that makes me give a crap.Okay, so long story short. AT

(01:34):
and T purchased Time Warner back intwenty eighteen. Is when the merger completed,
it was a very big deal.A lot of people were concerned that
it didn't make sense and ATTA toomany other things going on. Well,
it turns out that we were rightto be concerned, and so Discovery,
which owns like the Discovery Channel andsome other nature animal type related programming,

(01:59):
will be merging with a spun offpart of AT and T, which is
essentially the Time Warner Warner media stuff, not everything, but most of everything,
to create a brand new massive mediaorganization. It does mean that certain
things are going to be split apart. So WB Games, which is the

(02:19):
video game division, will not bemoved over in one chunk. Some of
it will stay with AT and Tto make things more complicated. But this
does mean that Warner Brothers as weknow it, which includes DC Entertainment,
HBO, Max, all that goodstuff that's been just so steady and consistent
over the last four years, isgoing to be shaken up yet again.

(02:39):
Do you think it could be agood thing for them in the short term.
No, In the long term,yes, right, AT and T.
It was a bad purchase decision.They at and T didn't really have
a good reason to do this otherthan money, and it was in over
their heads. So yes, inthe long term, I think there's there's
good possibilities here. But in theshort term, I mean, it's going

(03:01):
to be just a massive shuffling aroundof people. People will lose their jobs,
projects will be canceled, delayed indefinitely, or butchered because of the process.
You know, we'll get to conversationslike that when we talk about new
mutants later. It's just it's avery complicated deal to merge any company,
let alone things that are this large. So in the short term, I'm

(03:23):
definitely concerned about HBO Max and allof like the shows we like, like
doing Patrol and Titans and you knowthe upcoming Green Lantern series that we've We've
mentioned a few times. All ofthese things are now you know, who
knows. They may not be necessarilyinflux from a viewer ship standpoint, but
they definitely are behind the scenes.Right, Okay, thank you. This

(03:50):
has been lessons with Derek on businessmedia. I just just throw this cherry
on top. Amazon is apparently intop to purchase MGM for nine billion dollars.
So that's another thing that might happen. You know what Amazon could do.
They could pay their fucking employees eitherboth of those things. I think

(04:14):
they should do both of those thingsbefore they buy a movie studio. But
that's just me. Or go tospace. I mean they're doing that too,
that's on the table. So yeah, it's it's a weird time.
I definitely have concerns. It's similarconcerns that we had when we talked about
the Disney acquisition of twentieth Century Foxand what that might do to the X
Men. So that leads into ourconversation this week. I think that,

(04:39):
you know, it's a complicated situationand let's let's talk about it. Let's
talk about the New Mutants. Well, for the last I want to say,
and since Days of Future Past,really the X Men films have been
absolutely butchered by studio involvement, Likethere's no way around it, they totally

(05:03):
have. Yeah, well, NewMutants is like a perfect storm of problems.
So Josh Boone, this is yourspoiler warning for The New Mutants.
Josh Boone, who wrote, cowrote, and directed the film, he
originally wanted to do like a realhorror take, a legitimate, like adult

(05:24):
R rated horror take, and thestudio was like, no, no,
no, has to be PG thirteen, dial it back. We want this
to appeal to young audiences. Sothat was like red flag number one,
right, But then you brought inthe Disney acquisition, and Disney more or
less put a hold on like everythingthat was going on at the time,
So reshoots that were supposed to takeplace, reshoots that a lot of people

(05:44):
thought took place, were scheduled formonths and months and months and never actually
happened. By the time they couldget around of performing the reshoots, the
whole production agreed that the actors,who are not as young as the movie
portrays them to be but are stillon the younger side, had aged too
much for reshoots. So the crazything is this movie is actually the original

(06:06):
version of the movie, which absolutelybananas. I did some reading into this
because I was also I was underthe impression that this was a similar situation
of Fantastic Four, Josh Trenk's Fantasticfour, where the studio just went in
and butchered it and there was abunch of reshoots and everything, and while
the studio wanted to do a lotof those things. Ay, they did

(06:30):
not blame Josh Boone. There wasno blame on the director. It was
more creative creative differences rather than blaming. But they just never had the opportunity
to do it because of the Disneyacquisition. So this movie got delayed for
basically two and a half years,and we got the original version of the
movie anyway, which is just justkind of bonkers to think about. Yeah,

(06:51):
so going into this, did eitherof you know anything about the New
Mutants or New Mute in the comicsthat takes Rachel did Ryano? No,
okay, just just checking me.Neither me either. So Ray, were
you, like, were you excitedthat they were doing a New Mutants project?

(07:14):
Was this a group of characters youwanted to see? Yes? Yes,
absolutely so these as you got intothe eighties and nineties comic books,
the X Men got really weird andthey started thinking about the larger picture.
So we got characters with these dangerouspower sets that could not be necessarily toned

(07:45):
down when it came to their powers. They had to be you know,
locked up, and which is theinitial inspiration for the movie as well as
some of the characters in this.Frankly, the X Men basically has a

(08:09):
cast of if you combine the Avengersand Guardians and the Marvel Cosmos and the
Fantastic Four, the X Men justby itself, the Mutmans have enough people
to go one to one with them. It's an insane amount of characters,

(08:31):
And frankly, I was just excitedto have something other than you know,
Wolverine and Cyclops because there's so muchcool, unique stuff out there that we've
just barely scratched the surface. AndI'm a little bit bummed about the Mutants
joining the MCU because we're gonna getthe big characters that everybody knows, everybody

(08:56):
has known forever, and it'll takea very long time to get back to
this spot. So I am Iwas really looking forward to this just because
of all the doors it could haveopened. So it's incredibly disappointing on multiple

(09:16):
levels to me. That's fair.Without really knowing much about the new Mutants
going into it, I still hada lot of the hopes that you did
in that these were new, freshcharacters and the tone of the film seemed
different. Yeah, I like theidea of it being darker like the idea
of it being a little disconnected fromthe weird timey wymy continuity that we have

(09:39):
with the other X Men films,So I was looking forward to all of
those things. This movie, Ithink meant well as the best way to
put it. I think that theyhad a good idea that was just executed
poorly for a multitude of reasons.Yeah, yeah, I think I liked

(10:03):
the idea of this movie more thanI actually liked the movie. I think,
to touch back on your point,Derek about that your director wanting to
do a horror based movie, Ithink they were probably right to not let
him do a horror based movie atthis point. I mean, I would
have loved to see a horror basedmovie, But when you're talking about the

(10:24):
name of the director, the onlyreal movie that he's known for other than
New Mutants is The Fault in OurStars, which is a YA movie.
So, you know, trying tolet a director who's never done horror do
horror with a large property like XMen is I don't know. It's questionable.

(10:46):
So I don't Maybe maybe he wouldhave done great because he also has
worked on the stand since then,but you know, and I've heard that's
very good. But yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't think
it was necessary wrong on the studioto not let him do a full horror
movie. I totally agree with that. I think the majority of people who

(11:11):
especially aren't like big horror junkies,will look at a horror film and probably
assume that it's bad anyway, becausehorror is a very easy jumping off genre
to get into as a new director, a new writer. You just throw

(11:33):
some blood in there, and asmall andy company may pick you up and
distribute it, and you know,that gets your foot in the door,
whether or not it's bad. Youknow, so many directors and actors get
their start in the horror genre,and we as viewers just like there are

(11:54):
thousands of horror films every year,and we just kind of pass them all
off, and we talk about theamazing ones, the ones that transcend the
genre and define the genre, butwe forget about the others, whereas bad
comic book movies we still talk about. You know, as a horror film,

(12:16):
this could have slipped right under theradar and we may not even have
paid attention to it, Whereas,you know, a good comic book movie
goes down in his reference just likeany other good movie. But it's so
it's a bad comic book movie becausewe have it's still a newer genre.
It's got the least amount of movieswhen you compare it to all the other

(12:39):
ones, so well, we'll beable to compare and contrast a lot easier
than we would horror. But theweird thing is is that the marketing for
the movie did not make it looklike a hye A movie. It made
it look like a horror movie.So it's a weird contrast there, Yeah,

(13:00):
and that that confuses a lot ofpeople, right, Like we've we've
had issues with marketing in in thingsbefore. One movie I tend to bring
up as White House Down, wherelike the first trailer made it look like
an Olympus has fallen, a veryserious, hardcore like political drama, and
then you get the second trailer,which makes it look like Bad Boys meets

(13:22):
die Hard, and that's what itis, right, And so whoever cuts
the trailer really sets the tone forexpectation going into it. And the poster
art was no different. The NewMutants poster art was all done in an
edgy or not necessarily brutal horror,but definitely horror esque in its design,
right, with the font style beinglike it's scratched into the walls and you

(13:46):
know, the whole using pink renditionof pink Floyd's another brick in the wall
for the trailer, like trying tomake it seem like they're trapped in there.
It was done very much in ahorror vein. So if you went
into the movie expecting it to bea horror movie, I don't blame you.
That's what they told you it wasgonna do. Yeah. Uh,
And PG thirteen horror is just noteasy to do unless it's it's very psychological.

(14:11):
Otherwise you're you're expecting, you know, more serious stuff, and you
know this movie, I guess youknow than you know. Yeah, it
wasn't just like gorb Porner or anything. You can't really do that in a
PG thirteen movie exactly. I wasgonna say, like doctor Yas is really
the only one who gets like physicallymessed up where you see blood and and
cuts and stuff other than you know, maybe one other momentum in the movie

(14:37):
and the rest of it. Yeah, it's all in their heads, right,
which that like this goes back towhat Ryan said, like the idea
is good. I like the ideaof the smoothie. I like the idea
that you know, one mutant asthis ability to make people's dreams or nightmares
in this case realized, and whathow we can twist experiences into what our
nightmares becomes a really cool idea.I just think it was really clunky,

(15:01):
and then you end it with thevery stereotypical cloud with a face. Yeah,
that's defeated by somebody being like,no, no bad doggie, uh
huh yeah, and so like Iwas just waiting for this climactic battle and

(15:22):
I was I didn't realize it wasgoing to be the bear until probably much
later than I should have, becauseI don't think I wanted to believe that
that's what it was. But like, you couldn't even realize the whole bear.
It was like ninety percent cloud andthen it had a bear's face because
it was a spirit. Barrick Derek. Sure, that's the reason exactly.

(15:46):
I will say, to their credit, eighty to ninety percent of the movie
was done practically without green screens,and I do appreciate their attempt to do
that. You know, the bear'sibbe, cgi Iliana's arm and Sword and
you know, and Little Dragon orobviously CGI, but basically the rest of

(16:07):
the movie was done in practical effects, and so I do appreciate their attempt
to stay kind of grounded, youknow, kind of more Wes Craven style.
That's not hard when the majority ofthe film is spent in cages and
you know, rooms like they're ina cafeteria, they're in a game room,

(16:34):
like most of the stuff is justthem sitting around talking. So I
mean, as cool as that is, just saying that, when you break
it down, it's like, allright, buddy, you didn't have much
to do to begin with, SoI mean that's true. It's just when
I start seeing behind the scenes stuffon like major Marvel and DC productions now,

(16:59):
like everything is green screened. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Like even just normal scenes that youthink are taking place in a street somewhere
are green screened now. And soI'm sure there's a reason for that.
I'm sure it's cost effective or timeeffective or something. But to know that
they at least were like it wasfilmed in an actual hospital, in a

(17:21):
single location and all of those things. And I appreciated the scope and the
scale of the movie, right,I mean, like there's really only what
six characters of any real value inthe entire film. Yeah, and they're
fairly young. I mean, MacyWilliams is really the only one with like
a big acting background going into themovie. Obviously the rest have started to

(17:41):
do stuff since they filmed this,but you know, it was a small
cast to really put a lot ofweight on. Yeah, it was for
better or worse in this case,maybe the latter. What do you guys
think of the cast aside from BlueHunt? I thought everybody was really good.

(18:07):
I don't think the actress that portrayedMirage or Danny was very good,
and I'm not even sure if whatmaterial she had was good enough. But
she was mainly the exposition character.She's the audience fill in, where like

(18:32):
everybody explains stuff to her and itdoesn't come out well. But everybody else
was pretty fun. Some of theiraccents, Like everybody was sporting an accent
that they don't normally have, andall of them dropped it at one point
or another. Like, I neverwant to hear shit about Elizabeth Olson's accents

(18:57):
again as Wanda, because it leastit's consistent through each movie. That she's
in. It starts off and endsat the same but here they couldn't even
do that. It's like, Nope, can't say this word in this accent,
so just gonna skip it. Italso was weird that they all had
accents because there's not really a reasonfor them too, other than like to,

(19:19):
I guess give us the feeling thatthey're from all over the world,
but that doesn't change anything in thestory, right, and so there's not
really a good explanation for why youneeded that extra work, that extra layer.
Either way, they're in an undisclosedarea, right, you know,
we don't know where they are,and specifically doctor Cecilia Reyes has it set

(19:42):
up like that. That's totally onpurpose. But they could all have been
talking in you know, ancient Latinand it would have made zero different.
So why why? I mean,I would have been impressed if they were
doing that, frankly. But yeah, it doesn't change the story that they're

(20:03):
from different places, right, Itdoesn't matter. It matters what you know.
It matters that you know Sam workedin a mine, right, it
matters that Rain is from a verydeeply religious Catholic family. Those things matter.
There are countries of origins are irrelevant. I find Rain's thing a little

(20:25):
weird because like she was, herfamily was deeply religious, and then like
she got attacked by a priest.All right, so in priests again being
religious again, that priest is herfather. I mean, that doesn't make
it really any better or worse.It's just well, it does for a

(20:45):
couple reasons. You know, it'sa lot easier to break away from something
when it's a stranger, but whenit's ingrained into like everything since the day
you were born, is a littlemore upsetting. I think that the director

(21:10):
could have pushed the boundaries and hadthat priest be her father. I mean,
honestly, I don't know the wholething. Whether it was a stranger
her father has still turned out alittle weird to me that she'd still be
like deeply religious after being attacked bysomebody who has been set up to be
somebody extremely important in her life,I don't know for me. For me,
it didn't work very well. Iam happy that they didn't touch on

(21:33):
the fact that homosexuality is conflicting withCatholicism. I'm glad that as a character
they kept that separate. Yeah,she seemed very accepting and not like troubled
at all about this, Like thisis something that is just normal to her.
So, yeah, she was moreupset by the fact that she masturbated
a couple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, As

(21:57):
somebody who's not particularly religious myself,it's hard for me to really know how
a person would react in that situation. I do know that some people move
farther into a religion when traumatic thingshappen because it's a way for them to
grapple with the situation and come toterms with the situation because it's something that's

(22:17):
outside of their control. Right.That's one of the big things about religion
is that it can help explain theunexplainable or you know that that type of
thing. And so I could seea kid because she's supposed to be like
sixteen, even though she was liketwenty at the time. You know,
a sixteen year old who has beenyou know, abused by whether it's her
father or just another priest. Youknow, she may have just had no

(22:38):
other coping mechanism. I'm sure there'sa real life psychological reasons. I'm just
saying for me, Yeah, inthis it was not it didn't really make
much sense. His character in thecomics is much bigger because he's also one
of the leaders of the Purifiers,and that is a group of villains wanted

(23:00):
them to do for a long timein the comics, or excuse me,
in the movies, because they're basicallythe Westboro Baptist Church only for mutants,
and they're incredibly violent and scary,and I think this is a you know,

(23:22):
time where that would work. That'sfair, you know, the other
characters. I mean, Sam isobviously a very tragic story, right,
his powers go off in the mindand he kills his father and several other
people. That's pretty straightforward, youknow, explains why he's there, why
he wants to be there, whyhe feels guilty, and things of that

(23:45):
nature. So I felt like hiswas just very kind of more by the
numbers rather than you know, alittle bit more complex. But he sold
it. I actually thought him inamazing did the best job with their characters.
Ilana was that the girl with thearm. Yes, I mean,
she's fine. I guess I reallywanted to like her because like dragon is

(24:08):
cool, right, and like freakingawesome metal arm and awesome looking sword is
really cool. But then she's justlike super racist and you know, mostly
evil because of trauma. But thatdoesn't change the fact that she's evil or
or like definitely leaning towards the darkerside. So that was disappointing. And

(24:29):
maybe she's that way in the comics, but it was really hard to like
her at all. I actually don'tremember if she was kind of racist in
the comics, but everything that shedid up until like the light Attector test,
I was not up until like thethird act of the film. Basically.
Yeah. Well, because the restof the characters, all five of

(24:49):
them, have been through shit.That's the whole point, right, is
that they they've come from something prettytraumatics. They've all killed people, yep.
And she's the only one who's likeactively mean and cruel and just a
bad person on purpose. Everybody else'sthing was self defense or an accident,

(25:12):
you know, because they didn't knowhow to control their powers. She like
wants to hurt people, and thatmay be a defense mechanism, like Ryan
said, but that doesn't make itappen. Okay, she was sexually trafficked,
like yes, she was a childand trafficked like yes, I think
they all dealt with their stuff invery different ways. You know, clearly,

(25:37):
Sam Guthrie Cannonball, he is purposelyhurting himself. He is wanting to
kill himself with his powers. It'sa slow process, but he's doing it.
Like they're all showing different ways ofcoping. And yeah, Aliana's makes

(25:59):
us not like her at first,but the more we get to know her,
the better it is, and themore I'm okay with it, honestly,
Like any person can tell me thatthey were, you know, trafficked
and sexually molested, and if theywere, like and then I killed eighteen
men who were responsible, I'd belike, yeah, that makes sense.

(26:23):
Oh yeah, I don't blame herfor her reaction to those events at all.
I just meant, these five kidsare trapped in this place together,
and you know, for most ofthe movie, she wants to make it
as difficult at a time for therest of them as possible. That's all
I meant, did you guys,maybe you cover this way I had to
take my heads about for a second, But cover the fact that like the

(26:44):
four of the five or however manythey were, like, I've been together
presumably for a little while, andyet they're acting like they don't know each
other at all, Like they're askingreally basic questions to each other that you
would ask me, like first meetsomebody, and if I know why they
did it, because we don't knowthose characters. But it just came across
really weird. She's the new character, but there's even interactions that happened when

(27:07):
she's not even around that act likethey don't really know each other at all.
Yeah, it's a really good point. It is very unclear to me
how long they've been there. Itseems like maybe at least Sam has been
with other people who are now gonebecause he wants to be He's the only
one who thinks he deserves to bethere or wants to be there. You

(27:30):
know, obviously that's survivor's guilt.But still, yeah, I don't Time
is very cold, Like I don'teven know how much time passes in the
movie that we see, let alonehow the rest of it works. It's
very unclear, and that that's nota good thing you want to talk about
unclear. We haven't even hit themost unclear part yet, when she's getting

(27:52):
I can't remember exactly how I happened. I just watched this like yesterday or
two days ago. So, andI can't remember things, that's how forgettable
it was. But there was thescene where they're seeing she's like seeing visions
of Essex and like not where it'snot the X Men that they're going to
join those. That footage was straightout of Logan. Yeah, and Logan
is supposed to be way in thefuture, right, so talk about confusing

(28:15):
timeline, Like what the hell man? Yeah, they basically took that Mexican
facility from Logan and turned it intomister senators, senators, mister sinisters,
right, yeah, the sinister senator, um, yeah, facility. And

(28:40):
frankly, that's I'm okay with itfor one reason only, and that's because
the comics kind of just have misterSenator. Gosh, mister sinister focus on
two different things. One is,you know, he's apocalypse is Lackey and

(29:03):
the other one is he's obsessed withJean Gray and Cyclops for some reason.
Like, but wasn't Essex the villainin the Logan movie too, No,
not really not teased. Essex isteased a couple of times in the X
Men films, but nothing ever comesto fruition, And so this movie was

(29:26):
intended to be mainly disconnected, andthe Essex crossover was like the most that
we were going to get from that. We were supposed there were supposed to
be a post credit scene with morewith mister Sinister and things of that nature,
but when the Disney acquisition happened,it was the production determined that a

(29:48):
sequel was fairly unlikely, so theydecided not to do it. But otherwise,
the whole other than like the cellphone that we get like in one
scene, the rest of it's donein such a way where you have no
idea when or where it takes place, and it could be anywhere. It
could even be in the MCU forthat matter, because nothing connects outside of
that hospital because the one doctor hasa force field over the whole thing.

(30:14):
Yeah right. And even though onecharacter can literally teleport somehow, she can't
teleport outside the force field. Man. That bothered me so much. That
bothered me so much that she cando that, she can hop dimensions,
but she can't hop to the otherside of the fence the field. I
just don't I don't buy that.I don't believe that. That makes no

(30:37):
sense, Yeah right, Like itwould have been better if they if she
like if her power was instead,you know, to maybe manipulate the ground
and the thing was like up onlike a giant, you know, cliff
or something that was surrounded by cliffs, and if you feel you would die,
right, So they they're stuck,that would be at least more or

(31:00):
believable because maybe she can only teleportif she can see the destination or something
like you know, yeah exactly,And so in that case that she's stuck,
fine, at least they've done that. But yeah, that bothered me.
Yeah that was a choice. Buther character has a lot of those
issues though, and it's not theactor's fault at all. This is all
about the writing. Like and Chatbrought up two of these things, and

(31:22):
I'm glad that they did because Iwanted to talk about both of them.
One is the spray paint that sheuses. Where the hell did that come
from? And the second is thewhatever she uses to drug doctor. Yes,
how does she get a hold ofthese things? There's got to be
some supplies coming in and out,Like they have to eat, they have
to get a new supply of toiletpaper at some point. So you're saying

(31:48):
that they just like put it inan order for some roofies. You know
what I mean. I imagine thatthere is some sort of smuggling. I'm
not saying that it's roofie is.I'm not saying that it's spray paint.
I'm saying that there's not an endlesssupply of food there. You're probably right,

(32:08):
but like the fact that isn't justlike you're just accepted like not you,
But we're just supposed to accept thefact that there's just now spray paint
and drugs or something like that insidethis place that's supposed to be blocked off
and there's literally That's the other thing. Why is there only one adult here
and zero security anywhere? Because ifthere was security, then there wouldn't be

(32:32):
shipped for a movie. Well,it's also a very large complex. Way
in the scene where they're up onthe clock tower, you get a pretty
good shot. There's like six differentbuildings and there's six people in the entire
facility. It's very strange. LikeI get that they wanted to keep it
small scale. I get that,but I think they kept it too small

(32:54):
scale for the set, not evenhaving background actors, Like if you this
movie is basically if you guys recallglass. Yeah, it's basically basically glass.
And even they had the smart ideato have orderlies in the background and

(33:17):
somebody watching the cameras, and youknow, wasn't just the one doctor and
the crazy patients because you know,I don't care how powerful you are as
a mutant, five against one isa tricky number, and especially when one
can literally control someone's nightmares, youknow, Yeah, how does she maintain

(33:39):
the force field when she falls asleepor gets you know what I mean,
they're they're like, oh, let'sjust like go dance in the rain instead
of like, hey, let's bookget out of here, because now she's
drugged, you know what I mean. It's it's so weird. Well,
there are definite issues that they didnot We're not like nitpicking clocks here.

(34:02):
It's like big stuff. But goingback to Iliana, like she's killed like,
right, she killed like eighteen people, right, that's what she said.
Why not just killed doctor? Yes, after you drugged her then and
then leave? Yeah or overdoser,right, give her too much so she
dies and maybe she secretly wants tobe there, I mean maybe, but

(34:22):
they leave at the end of themovie. Yeah, that's true. I
mean I don't know. That's justthe only thing I can possibly think of.
Also, like, yeah, shemakes that, she has that line,
well, I killed eighteen men orwhatever, and then that never really
pays off. You get like onescene where she kills like three of those
weird faced things and that's it.And Okay, so we're supposed to believe

(34:45):
that you're some crazy badass. Wellfight the bear for the bear, but
like she gets her ass kicked prettyeasily, even on her dragon. Sure,
but like she's she can teleport toalternate dimensions and sh like that,
and she wasn't on her own becauseother people came out and helped her,
and they got the first time anyof them have fought a bear, a

(35:07):
giant demon bear. Sure, okay, I mean, yeah, you're not
wrong, and probably the only timethey're ever gonna fight a giant demon bear.
But she seems so confident going intoShe's like, I'm going to handle
this, and then she walked insteadof walking out, teleports into an alternate
dimension and then comes out by thebear. But um, I mean she
holds it off for for most ofthat climactic fight, right, because most

(35:30):
of the fight is spent with Dannybeing unconscious and Rain desperately trying to wake
her up. That's the bulk ofthat fight was gonna do. It was
a wolf gonna do against the giantspirit. I'm not disagreeing that it's it's
it's probably not going to go well, right, I'm just saying Elana was
mostly on her own for that fight, especially because Roberto doesn't even really use

(35:53):
his powers until the bear is alreadyin the church. Yeah, so can
I just say how much it reallybought other me? Uh? Seeing Rain's
transformation, I really like, comeon, American Werewolf was made on a

(36:15):
similar budget. I would have hiredthe best guy, would be like,
all right, you see that,we're doing it with amaze Williams. Just
don't give the wolf boobs for noreason? Like that's that in between was
so annoying. It was so weirdand patches of like sideburns. Yes,

(36:38):
now, I did love when theeyes glowed after the kiss, Like that
was adorable. I was adorable.I know so many bys and pans and
lesbians who would love a little wolfet girlfriend, but that, like the
in between was just rough. Imean even the final result though, is

(37:01):
like barely a wolf. You knowwhat I mean, like her world's not
even like a dire wolf dilf thatis comic accurate. She can be a
human, a werewolf, and awolf. Okay, so here's the thing,
that's where they decided to stick tothe comics. Yeah right, they

(37:23):
should have just known the whole thingwould have been spoiled. They would have
known they're not gonna be X Menif they just looked at her power,
because there's no way turning into anormal fucking wolf is gonna be an X
Men level power. Like, let'sget a real X Men have had some
crazy, you know, characters,but nothing that that's weaker than probably the
weakest X Men I can think of. It's it's fair. I was disappointed

(37:46):
in that, and werewolf stage isa lot better. But we didn't see
that, did we. Not really, so as far as when I saw
in the movie, like, there'sno way she's anywhere near powerful. It's
a cool power, don't get mewrong. I think it's a neat power.
It's just not like X Men levelpower. And she was a cool
character. She's probably my favorite inthe movie. She's definitely my favorite character

(38:06):
in the movie. But even ifyou had made her a dire Wolf something
oversized or whatever. I get thatthat's not comic accurate, but most of
the movie's not comic accurate. Solike that's not the place to draw the
line because dire Wolf, so it'sbig, you know what I mean,
That's what I'm saying. Yeah,Like if you know that's that's not where
you draw the line in the sandis well, that's how it is in

(38:27):
the comics when you've ignored it forthe rest of the movie. Also,
like that fire dude, he justgot smashed on the ground by the Spirit
Bear and like stops moving. Yeah, dude, yeah he was. He
was fine. Like five minutes later, once they beat the wolf, he's
like, oh, let's go,let's go leave this place. Also,
why is he do dishes every timeyou see him? Well, because there's

(38:52):
one job to raise point earlier,they didn't hire, like, you know,
any kitchen people for the background.Why is he the only one doing
dishes? He doesn't like you seelike three or four scenes of him doing
dishes. It's like maybe maybe helikes it. I don't know. He's
the only one that you ever seedu chores by the way, you see
him doing his laundry earlier on yousee him doing the dishes multiple times.
Nobody else does squat, that's true. I think you see him cooking too

(39:15):
at one point if I remember right. But yeah, he's his character so
and at the end he's naked too. So I just want to point out
this movie has a lot of impliedunderage nudity. You know what's even funnier
now that you bring that up aboutlike him being the one to do chores.
Didn't they say that he comes fromlike a super rich family. Yes,

(39:36):
so he's the least likely one toknow how to cook, clean and
and do laundry. Yeah, uhhuh, but he's the only one who
does it. Yeah. I reallylike that he just throws away his clothes.
Yeah I did think that. Yeah, that was good character building,
but it didn't really go anywhere.I just felt like he didn't want to
tell anybody his story. So ifhe's busy all all the time, then

(40:01):
he never has to talk to anybody. I did like the scene with him
in the pool. Yeah, thatwas that was probably the closest movie ever
got to like pure horror, andit was a really cool scene. So
like I'd be more inclined to watchsomething from this guy if he did a
full horror movie. Because of thethings that he did in this movie that
we're successful, even though they didn'treally fit the total like theme of the

(40:23):
movie. Yeah, I agree.Yeah, that was a really good scene.
It kind of brought me back tolike some older style stuff and it
was it was well done. Yea. Yeah, I mean so, I
mean we didn't really talk to seewho we talked about everybody. I guess
it's the whole cast. I mean, Danny's the main character. Of course,
it was always six characters for somethingin the whole movie. So other

(40:45):
than her dad did in the verybeginning, Yeah, Adam Beach exists only
to kill often, like the beginningof films that poor man doesn't do anything
but I on screen anymore. Yeah, uh, Danny was ray pointed out.
I mean she she was probably theweakest character in the film. It

(41:06):
wasn't bad enough to bother me,but like, yeah, she compared to
like the breast of the like mutantpeople. She was not great, but
she has to carry most of thestory. But that is a tough style.
Yeah, she's not a great actress. That was her first major production.
She's done stuff since then you know, but this was her first big
thing. So not only is inher first role in a film, it's

(41:29):
for a superhero flick, an XMen flick, and she's like the Lee
Lynchpin character, right, I meanthis is a like the character is a
Native American character. Yes, Sofinding a Native American girl in that age
range that that's acting as probably Idon't know when you when you have to
be that specific, there's probably nota lot of options. I don't I

(41:50):
mean, I don't know. I'mnot a casting director or anything. But
to Josh Boone's credit, him andthe casting group made sure to keep the
characters diverse and in line with theirorigins, and so I do appreciate that
they did that. And that's partlywhy you have a lot of unknowns and
you don't have any recognizable actors forthe most part. Well, I mean

(42:13):
all of them now have done otherstuff, and all of them, to
me, except for Blue, isnow recognizable, you know, And that's
that's totally true. Yeah, Butlike going into it, Macy was really
the only one of the five kidswho had well yeah, when they were
cast, for sure, I mean, like going into when was this movie

(42:34):
was supposed to come out twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. It was filmed in
twenty seventeen. If they had comeout in twenty eighteen, then like this
would have been super relevant. Youhad the hottest star from Game of Thrones,
you had a hot and up andcoming star from Staring Stranger Things.
You know, you have these thesecharacters people at the time were big,
big names, but really Maasally hasn'tdone much since then that I've seen,

(42:57):
at least, and the other dudehasn't done much other than the Stranger Things
that I've seen, So you know, their popularity has waned now, and
I don't think Disney cared at thispoint, but you could definitely tell this
was supposed to come out at adifferent time, and they were great in
the movie, So it's not sayinganything about them, you know, and
their acting ability, it's just theirpopularity at the time. Yeah. I

(43:21):
think like the writing and the budgetwere the two big issues here, because
I think the concept for the storyis good, and I think the actors
did as good as they could withwhat they were given, but it was
just not well executed across the board. I think that's really the issue.
Here because it's still like the conceptis intriguing. If someone pitched this movie

(43:45):
to me, I would want tosee it, you know. That's that's
what I'm saying. Like the wholeidea of the movie was better than the
actual movie was due even throughout themovie, I was like, this could
have been really cool. Man,They really like could have done something with
this. And to Rachel's point talkingabout how these you know, there were
spinoffs that would have been great withthat villain group you were talking about,

(44:05):
you know, Purifiers, Yeah,things like that. There was a lot
of places they could have gone withthis, and that would have led to
something possibly even cooler than the XMen universe, because this is a little
darker, you know, and forsomebody like me likes that kind of you
know, kind of darker, moremagic stuff in comics, that would have
been really appealing. But yeah,it was unfortunate that it ended this way.

(44:27):
Yeah, the Purifiers and h MisterSinister and his laboratory, like,
both of those would have been justan incredibly bad ass and uh frightening,
Like they're scary things. There's noway that they do those with a soft

(44:50):
touch. That's just not it's notdoing the stories justice. Yeah. Well,
and then you know with doctor yesyea, and brought this up too,
like because she's the only adult literallythat that is at this place.
Um, you know, there's alot of questions about like why is she
doing this, why does she care? Who is she why does she have

(45:13):
no help? Um, you know, who is she reporting too? And
why should we care? Like someof us know what ESX means because of
the comics or because of the cartoonor what have you. But if you
take the movie on its own inthe X Men universe, why should you
care? Yeah, she's literally workingat twenty four seven three sixty five job
by herself with five superpowered kids whocan't people, whether on purpose or and

(45:42):
tried to kill people. Ileana triedto kill what's the girl's name, the
new the main girl, Oh Danny, Danny. Yeah, she tried to
straight up murder Danny like Chopper andHalf in the movie. So, but
most of these people have killed peopleby act because they can't control their powers,
and you're not gonna have this haveany backup for this woman, But

(46:04):
then you have this one that killspeople, you know, not on accident.
So it's just crazy to me,like, you don't have no orderlies
to maybe tie a kid down ifthey start going crazy. You don't even
have somebody cutting the grass. Notrank guns, Like, get some tranquilized
the guns in there at least soyou can pop them off with one.
And that's not just a hospital,like, that's a full on little campus.

(46:27):
Like there's plenty of places they couldhave hit themselves or you know,
vandalized. And yeah, Essex clearlyhas resources. Yeah right, Like because
she's on her own, I thinkthey could have done some more interesting things
with it. Because all of thestuff she does to like unlock the doors
and things of that nature, it'sall voice activated. So I don't know,

(46:50):
make up a mutant who's there thenwho can control technology in some way
and maybe they can get into thatsystem and start messing with her or a
mutant they're just does really good impressions. Yeah, there you go. I
just said that a can user voice. I think they just they looked at
this and like, well, there'sone adult and we can't do anything about
it, and then just moved onand that there's so much they could have
played with there. Yeah, butit was here's the movie seems super short

(47:15):
to you guys, it was onthe shorter side, yeah, because I
mean you could have I feel likewith another twenty or thirty minutes of footage
really fleshed stuff out a lot moreand made it much deeper and richer than
what it was. So that makesit even worse that it was so short.
I think, you know, theycould add more. I agree,
And I think they could have donethat even at the beginning, by introducing

(47:36):
us to Danny's life first, beforeeverything goes to hell, because you know,
the movie begins and ends with thatquote, and I'm never really a
fan of that. I'm not sayingit's never worked for me, but it
usually doesn't. And you know,you just begin with Everything's gone to Hell,
And I think it would have beencool to see her with her dad,

(47:57):
with her family, with her life, to paint a picture of who
she is first. And you couldhave done that with all of these people.
You know, you don't have youget to see them in flashbacks of
it or something, Yeah, becausethe only thing we get to see is
the nightmare of why they're there.That's all we get from these people.
And I would have liked more,right, like Okay, so Sam's working

(48:17):
in the minds with his dad,but why what is their town? Like?
What is their home life? Like? Why why was he forced work
in the minds? Is it becausethey were poor? Is it because there
was nothing else available where they lived? Like? What? What was that?
The problem is that, like Iknow so much from the comics,
and yeah, it's because they're poor. It's because the Guthries have like seven
children, they're all mutants and theySam's the oldest, so he needs to

(48:45):
work like right away. But theydon't say that. And it's valid storytelling
that could easily give the movie amuch better experience, a richer experience.
You could have shown Roberto and hismansion, you know, and and you
know, build on to you know, the wealth that he has, and

(49:07):
maybe show who his girlfriend was,and you know, things like that.
You can build up these character backgrounds. It doesn't take long. You give
him each five minutes. But insteadwe got two very long and not so
subtle clips of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I love me some Sarah Michelle

(49:27):
Geller, but it's just kind oftacky to use anything. Yeah, you
also hate you some Joss Whedon,So yeah, I mean, that's certainly
fair, and I just I don'tknow. I also am not usually a
fan of it depends on the tone. But having something where their characters are
watching a thing that's about to happenin their own movie, unless it's done

(49:50):
in more of a comedic way,I don't really care for that. It
was so on the nose and notsubtle at all, and I was just
like, it insulted my intelligence andI was very upset by it. It
took me out of the experience,very heavily. Yep. I mean I

(50:13):
must have just been doctor Ria islike, that's just the only show she
watches. That's her favorite show,and she's a Buffy fan. Fucking say
that, right? Like she hasno background either. We know nothing about
her as a human being other thanI guess her mom was a vet who
had to put down a dog once, and we don't even know if that's
a true story, right, Like, you give me something? Do you
like music? Do you like Buffy? Is that why there's Buffy? Like?

(50:37):
These characters just none of them arerealized, and they could The movie
is short enough and the cast issmall enough where you could have done that.
Yeah, do you know even somethingas simple as like her office having
something personal to it, a mugwith a funny saying on it, or
a picture or anything at all tomake it seem like she did before the

(51:00):
movie started. Yeah, agreed.Hey, we didn't take a break at
all. That's all right. Wejust went straight through it this week.
No big deal. Is there anythingelse? I mean, I feel like
we've kind of hit I think we'vehit everything. But is there anything else?

(51:21):
I think this cast in this moviedeserved better, but it's not going
to get it. It's still likehe had a good idea and he couldn't
execute it. So now you know, screw you? Yeah, pretty much,
pretty much? Yeah, I agree. All right, Well then that's

(51:45):
the note we're gonna end it on. This is it? Like? This
is the end as far as weknow. This is the end of the
twentieth century Fox x Men universe,thirteen films, and this is what they
ended on, which is a littlesad when you think about something that wasn't
Dark Phoenix. At least it wasn'tDark Phoenix. That's true. Maybe all

(52:07):
of them will come back as partof the Boner family. There you go.
I will say this. I mentionedthis terray after we watched it.
But I would definitely still rather watchNew Mutants again than either Apocalypse or Dark
Phoenix. I think, Yeah,I have not seen Origins Wolverine, so
I can't say that's the only onethat I haven't seen. It wasn't a

(52:29):
good movie, but there were somefun moments of like action and quips and
stuff. So I think I wouldrather watch Origins than Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix.
Ya. Neither of those movies werefun. Yeah, they were brutal,
especially like Dark Phoenix was just therewere some very cringey, uncomfortable moments

(52:53):
that I just yeah, I'm done. Nobody cares anymore? Right when your
own characters in the movie no thatthe audience doesn't care anymore, that's a
bad sign. But you're always sorry, there's always a speech and no one
cares anymore. I'm like, ohmy god, that's the entire X Men
franchise wrapped up in one line.Thank you so much for playing yourself.

(53:16):
I mean that's part of why likeLogan and the Deadpool movies, you know,
and even this one like are rankedhigher than some of the others because
you didn't have the repetitive professor XMagneto bullshit, just over and over again.
We get it. They're really inlove with each other, Like Magneto

(53:39):
is just a good guy who's abad guy, who's sometimes a good guy
but is usually a bad guy sometimesafter what they're in like ten of the
Thirteen Movies or something like that,the only excuse is that they're in love
with each other, Like that's there'sno other reason for them to talk and

(54:00):
be around each other for over fourdecades. Like, it's just they're in
love. That's it. It's fair, and that's it. That's it.
That's what we're gonna end on.So we hope you enjoyed our episode.
Next week, we are going tobe covering Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead,
which is releasing on Netflix and alsoin some theaters depending on how you

(54:22):
like to view it. So we'regoing zombies next week. It's gotten really
good reviews. I'm actually kind ofpumped. Awesome. I'm looking forward to
talking about some of the technical stuffbehind it. There's some neat things coming
up, so I hope that it'sgood and that I will be happy talking
about those things and not disappointed.But we of course are the screen Heroes
Podcast. You can find us atscreen dash heroes dot com all of our

(54:44):
social media links. Please join theScreen Heroes Podcast Forum on Facebook. It
is our group. We post memesand polls and news and tournaments and lots
of fun stuff. So come talknerdy TV and movie things with us.
You can find me at the StarTrek Dude on Twitter. Ryan, Where
can people find you at? BusterProps and Ray? What about you?

(55:07):
I am also the Star Trek Dude. Yeah, I'm Siren Ray. Awesome.
Well, thank you everybody. Wewill be back next week. Catch
you next time. Do do DoDo Do Do Do Do Do Do Do

(55:36):
Do Do Do Do Do Do DoDo Do do