The New Mutants

 Some Times Life Just isn't Fair


The New Mutants, an X-Men spin off comic book, first launched with Marvel Graphic Novel #4: The New Mutants, 8 days before my first birthday. It's a very good book for it's time, and it introduced several deeply fascinating characters.

In 2017, cameras started rolling to bring several of those characters to the big screen. And then... Shit happened. Delays, scheduling quirks, massive corporate mergers or take overs or whatever the correct term is, a global pandemic... Not until August of 2020, nearly two and a half years after it's original release date, and just about the time movie theaters and Hollywood were toying with getting back to business.

New Mutants bombed. 

Which is a shame, because it's not bad. It's not in the upper echelon of Fox's rather scattered X-Men scene, but well above the depths as well.

The movie was hounded, fairly, for issues with one character's skin color, misspelling co-creator Bob Mcleod's name in the credits, and for so clearly being a compromised cut (though don't expect a #releasetheBooneCut campaign) and those are all valid. 

But the movie itself is solid enough. A bit confused, between teen drama or teen horror, with a slapdash bit of superhero dressing. But the characters are mostly well developed and better performed.

Progression on racial and sexual representation has been a big issue, as it should be. The biggest strength of this movie is the latter of those two. There is a same sex relationship here that is simply presented like any other teen relationship in any of a billion movies. It's not screaming "we have a gay moment!!!" it just has characters who are in a same sex couple and that doesn't cause any of their problems.

For racial representation, I have to turn elsewhere.

Saturday night, on Night One of WrestleMania 37, Sasha Banks defended the Smackdown Women's title against Bianca Belair. Two women of color. Two black women.

It's only the second time women have main evented WrestleMania. It is the first time a WrestleMania main event, or a WrestleMania world title match, featured exclusively wrestlers of color.

And it was an emotional moment at the bell, with Belair notably in tears. Then those two women tore the fucking house down and it was awesome. 

We have so far too go as a culture, but we are seeing signs, even when, like The New Mutants (or WrestleMania Night 2 presenting a *sigh* Nigerian Drum Fight) the same works have problematic elements.


I'm heartened but unsatisfied.

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