Marvel Doesn’t Need To Recast All Of Fox’s X-Men
Regardless of what other X-Men are recast as mutants come to the MCU, Marvel should consider keeping the cast of 2020's The New Mutants intact.
Eventually, Marvel will bring the X-Men and their attached characters into the MCU. When that finally happens, if it’s possible, Marvel would be smart to keep the cast of The New Mutants intact. As unimpressive as the final cut of the movie proved to be, its cast is superb, and one of the many things that kept ticket sales low — the fact that it was the spinoff of a dead franchise — means their inclusion in the Marvel Studios narrative wouldn’t cause much confusion.
Based on the Marvel comic of the same name, The New Mutants became something of the poster child for delayed movies. It finished filming in 2017 and at first was expected the following year — in an exceptionally crowded superhero movie year alongside releases like Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Aquaman, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Black Panther, The Incredibles 2, Venom, and more. A long list of delays got longer with Disney‘s acquisition of Fox, and The New Mutants finally bowed in the worst time imaginable – in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As remembered by Box Office Mojo, after over two years of post-production work and a production budget in the neighborhood of $80 million, The New Mutants took home a grand total of $49 million. The film was slammed by critics, and if you’ve seen it, you understand why.
The last of Fox’s Marvel licensed projects, The New Mutants was billed as something of a fusion of superheroes and horror, but while Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness managed to be scary within the parameters of a PG-13 film, The New Mutants is about as scary as a kitten on a pile of extra-soft napkins.
While the film tries to stay true to its Marvel superhero roots while also being a horror film, The New Mutants is far too short on both elements. That’s the movie’s biggest problem: in every conceivable way, there doesn’t feel like enough. There isn’t enough action, enough genuine scares, enough story, or enough time.
Unlike your average Marvel blockbuster that just seems to be getting longer, The New Mutants is just an hour and a half long. A planned post-credits scene was cut as well, because it would have hinted toward a spinoff that, of course, will never come.
The New Mutants is a bad movie, but not because of its cast. If anything, part of what makes the film so disappointing is the unrealized potential its cast presents. In particular, the three biggest names in the flick — Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Charlie Heaton — are perfectly cast in their roles. Williams is the shapeshifting Rahne, Taylor-Joy is the antisocial Ilyana, and Heaton plays Sam Guthrie, aka Cannonball.
There’s no reason — unless the actors themselves have no interest — to recast the roles of Marvel’s New Mutants. A random and mostly unforeseeable series of events converged to make the 2020 film the forgettable failure that it is and, ironically, that’s what helps keep the cast viable for the MCU. If it’s that forgettable, how can it confuse anyone?
