Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 3/10

Cast: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, Henry Zaga, Adam Beach, Thomas Kee, Colbi Gannett, Happy Anderson, Dustin Ceithamer, Jacinto Vega SpiritWolf, Chuck, Marilyn Manson, Jeffrey Corazzini, Mickey Gilmore, Max Schochet.

It is a tale of divided generations, the ones that have been fortunate, blessed even, to find themselves in a time when cinematic adaptions of their favourite Marvel characters has by and large been positive, the reception for example of the transfer to television with some of what may be considered minor hitters from the long list of heroes and villains finding themselves to be just as  rightly adored as the perpetual is a symbol of the staying power of the dominance that Marvel has over its rivals in creating the hero for our time.

However, there is always a moment of awkwardness when it comes to looking at the whole sum of its parts and noticing, like a bicycle with a spoke that has become bent from hitting a kerb too often, that there is something amiss in the performance that makes the combination tick out of time slightly.

For every Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Civil War, and Wandavision, there must be a storyline that just finds its place as being found to be dull, unappealing, even dare it be said, less than the high-water mark of achievement that the comic company insists upon; and whilst The New Mutants is not the first to be a damp squid of a film, it is arguably one of the least interesting, the least engaging to the viewer, and in many respects has the same damaging hallmarks attached to it as one would have found in the days before Marvel took back control of its franchise.

There are moments of goodness stirred into the pot, the spotlight on Native American/First Nation concerns of the outsider in their own land is a powerful reminder of how European Americans have ignored or downplayed the right of the original people in the past, and still do to this day, but that aside, The New Mutants is a tale of limited imagination, one cursed by setbacks, and it has to be reiterated not all of the maker’s own doing, and unfortunately one that does not really get the best out of two of its main characters, Rahne Sinclair and Ilyana Rasputin, played  by two of the most encouraging actors of their generation, the excellent Maisie Williams and the terrific Anya Taylor-Joy.

It is a shame that The New Mutants wasn’t given the full backing of the Marvel studio, for they surely would have found the necessary acumen to weave the tale into the structured timeline that has been so carefully adhered to over the last decade. Instead, the film is unconsciously uninspiring, it suffers from what can only be arguably perceived as a lack of care, and in the end must go down as one of the great let downs of any Marvel comic adaption placed on screen. 

Ian D. Hall