In Deadpool & Wolverine’s closing-credits tribute to the 20th Century Fox era of Marvel movies, the only film that doesn’t get any screen time is The New Mutants. Released five years ago this week, The New Mutants was seen as an ignominious end for Fox’s X-Men films, and Disney certainly treated it that way after swallowing it up as part of their purchase of the studio.
After being delayed for more than two years, The New Mutants opened in theaters to fulfill Disney’s contractual obligations and was largely received with derision by both critics and the few audience members who bothered to show up. While it may not be a lost masterpiece, it’s hardly the atrocity that its reputation suggests, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t take its rightful place among the highly variable mutant movies made during this landmark period in superhero filmmaking.
