New Mutants director Josh Boone thinks the Fox and Marvel filmmakers learned the wrong things from X-Men Apocalypse's failure. The 2016 movie was the third outing from the soft reboot/prequel series of the franchise. Many had high hopes for it considering the success of its predecessors - X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Unfortunately, it was a major let-down.
Few years and X-Men: Dark Phoenix later, the Fox Marvel Universe is now officially dead. After Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox's film and TV assets, the mutants, Fantastic Four and all their tie-in characters are expected to be folded into the MCU. However, one movie from that original Fox slate remains unreleased - New Mutants. After a series of delays caused by the historic studio buy-out and reported reshoots (which was recently shot down by cast member Alice Braga), the film is now ready to roll out in theaters.
Apparently, New Mutants was going to be set around the same timeline, Boone told Screen Rant when we visited the film's set in 2017. Things changed, however, X-Men movie producers decided to move everything to the present after Apocalypse's failure "like that was the reason it was bad."
Josh Boone: "You know, it was originally set, when we did the first couple drafts with Simon Kinberg, who's our producer, he's off now making his own X-Men movie, so like, he's still the producer, but Karen's here because Simon's got to make that movie. But originally were in the 80s universe with Professor X in it, with Storm in it, and with a bunch of other stuff and, like, basically when they got to Apocalypse, they didn't want anything set in the past anymore, [lowers voice] like that was the reason it was bad... It's like, the one before that in the 70s was pretty awesome. And the 60s one was pretty great. They just wanted all this stuff moved up to the present day including the X-Men eventually in some way shape or form. I imagine these will all connect, but it didn't really matter because they're in such an isolated location without any Wi-Fi or phones or anything that it might as well be the 80s in terms of the setting. It didn't change our story very much. It limited who we could use character-wise, but in some ways it made it better because it freed us from, uh - it's really able to be its own thing. Which I appreciate more now than I did when had to make that decision. But yeah, we're really excited about it."
As Boone said, the change in time setting didn't affect much of New Mutants' narrative. The film focuses on five mutants who are just discovering their extraordinary abilities. They band together in the hopes of escaping their past sins after they find themselves isolated against their will. In hindsight, the limited interaction with the rest of the X-Men universe allows the movie to stand on its own. The primary mutant saga already ended last year with the disappointing Dark Phoenix, and everyone is just waiting for the team to be rebooted in the MCU. Since it's safe to assume that New Mutants will have very little ties to the bigger franchise it supposedly belonged to, hence, making it easier for Kevin Feige and his team to incorporate it in the MCU (if they want).
Boone's comments explains why 90s references in Dark Phoenix were mellower compared to its predecessors. For the general viewing public who might not be well-versed with these movies., some of them may have not known that the movie was supposed to be a prequel. In any case, the filmmaker is right, the time setting of X-Men: Apocalypse wasn't its biggest issue. The narrative felt disjointed and ultimately, the introduction of supposedly one of the most powerful villain in the Marvel universe was quite anti-climactic - it didn't give Oscar Isaac much to do which was a shame considering his acting prowess. And while New Mutants has yet to hit theaters, it's good to hear its director recognized issues from its predecessors and hopefully, his movie learns the right lessons from them.
