While Marvel’s main X-Men film have kind of been a mess, their ancillary films like Logan and Deadpool have been commercial and critical hits. Moving forward (Not counting the upcoming Dark Phoenix film that will probably suck), Fox is looking to continue the trend of comic book movies that break away from the traditional style of the genre and focus more on story-telling. That takes us to the upcoming New Mutants film that is said to be closer to the horror genre than a comic book action pop corn flick.
Talking to Variety, Stacey Snider, chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox, had this to say:
If we’re going to make a superhero movie, we have to ask ourselves: “What’s our version? What’s a Fox Marvel film? When you look at films like “Deadpool” or “Logan” or the upcoming “New Mutants,” you’ll see they have their own personality. Great effort has been put into making sure they’re differentiated.
“New Mutants” is about these teenagers who are just coming into their powers. It’s like watching mutants go through adolescence and they have no impulse control, so they’re dangerous. The only solution is to put them in a “Breakfast Club” detention/“Cuckoo’s Nest” institutional setting. It protects the people on the outside, but it’s strange and combustible inside. The genre is like a haunted-house movie with a bunch of hormonal teenagers. We haven’t seen it as a superhero movie whose genre is more like “The Shining” than “we’re teenagers let’s save the world.”
While I’m all for the new approach, I’m a little worried that they are opening themselves up to comparisons with their TV series, Legion, and that is one hell of a high bar.