The Long, Chaotic Saga of “The New Mutants” Comes to an End

In the tragicomic saga of “The New Mutants”, simply getting released is a major milestone. An X-Men movie made its debut in United States this weekend and earned a whopping $7 million at the box office. In any other context, this would be an unmitigated disaster, but this is not a normal year nor is the film in question a normal X-Men entry. With United States still in the throes of a devastating pandemic, the notion of returning to the movies should feel iffy, no matter how many safety measures are being put in place by major theater chains.

It is hard to imagine any film making bank right now, but “The New Mutants” is a fitting sacrificial lamb because it carried zero expectations. Originally slated to come out in April 2018, the film has bounced around the release schedule for years. It has even kind of bounced around studios, becoming a Disney movie after the company acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019.

“The New Mutants” is the last vestige of Fox’s pioneering X-Men movie era, as mutants will presumably get tossed into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the future. But the film was such a mess that, at one point, Fox reportedly considered scrapping the entire project. And the reviews that have come out appear to confirm that “The New Mutants” is on par with “Dark Phoenix”.

But at least Maisie Williams is having fun with the whole ordeal.

If you are wondering why “The New Mutants” was not quietly released on a Disney-owned streaming service this week even though it shows a lot of promise and cost $200 million, it is because there is a contractual obligation that the movie must get a theatrical run. In that sense, even though it was a dumpster fire of an on-screen product, “The New Mutants” did bring something of value to its parent company: a chance to test the box office waters to see how comfortable Americans are returning to theaters. “The New Mutants” was projected to earn between $8-10 million, and fell a million bucks short of that expectation.

And while a haul of $7 million would not be considered a victory for any film outside of a micro-indie, the fact that “The New Mutants” made that money with only 62 percent of theaters open, at limited capacity, and without major markets like New York or Los Angeles to rely on, would indicate American moviegoers are not totally turned off to the idea of hitting up the multiplex. Whether that is a good thing is another proposition entirely. Epidemiologists have repeatedly stressed that going to theaters with recycled air and large groups of people sitting in a dark room for a couple of hours munching on popcorn and candy and slurping soda is about one of the riskiest activities anyone can participate in.

And for all the safety measures in place, there is no accounting for human error. Everyone has a different level of risk tolerance in 2020, and for some, the theatrical experience is sorely missed and too good to pass up after months of isolation.

But with all due respect to “The New Mutants”, the real test of the American moviegoing appetite will arrive over Labor Day weekend with the highly anticipated release of “Tenet”.

Granted, other countries are in much better shape from a public health perspective, the risk of going to a theater in France is not nearly as bad as going to a multiplex in Texas or Florida. But if “Tenet” were to make similar box office numbers in its domestic debut, then other blockbusters still aiming to come out this year such as “Black Widow” and “Wonder Woman 1984” might well stick to their release dates. The whole ordeal is hard to swallow when the experts are warning the American public that going to the movies is about the worst thing you can do to avoid getting sick, a major opening weekend for “Tenet” might not be something worth rooting for.

In many ways, the showdown between “Tenet” and “Mulan” could represent the future of the industry. How these two movies fare will be closely watched and have serious implications for Hollywood. It should swallow up any discourse surrounding “The New Mutants”, a movie that should fade into obscurity after its brief moment in the spotlight. And after everything that “The New Mutants” went through on and off screen, such an outcome feels like the only thing it was ever destined for.