OH MAN. I love this move to genre films set in superhero worlds. first with Winter Soldier being a spy thriller, then Logan being more of a quiet western, and now New Mutants is a horror film.
It really underscores just how sad it is that the mainline X-Men movies have gotten so off the rails by trying to be giant action fate-of-the-world movies. Smaller, more contained movies will always be more believable, and have more of an impact for me.
This shift to making the superhero world the setting rather than the genre and making any kind of film you want has been my dream for Star Wars since it was acquired by Disney. I want Star Wars to get to a point where you can make, essentially, Fast Five in the Star Wars universe. I use Fast Five because it was huge at the box office, made for a broad audience, but at it's core is a genre film. For those who haven't seen it, a ragtag crew on the run from the local government wants to rob a drug lord who disrespected them so they break into a secure location. It's a heist movie with family and fast cars. The story is small and very tight.
You can set this movie on Coruscant, Corellia, Nar Shadda... anywhere. Instead of fast cars, our heroes would be on swoop bikes, and wielding antigravity tech, and a couple of droids. Maybe someone is Force sensitive, that would be an interesting dynamic (not a Jedi, but just has a little extra awareness). Not a single story beat, or character, would have any connection to any of the previous Star Wars films and certainly no one with Skywalker lineage.
Star Wars becomes the setting, not the genre. I was hoping for a heist movie with Rogue One, but didn't quite get it. (Don't get me wrong, I did like it.) I was excited for a Han / Chewie / Lando buddy comedy for the Han Solo movie... but with the Phil Lord and Chris Miller fired I don't know what we're going to get.
But just to get back to the superhero thing. Smaller movies don't have to be genre films. The first two X-Men and Spider-Man movies were 'traditional' superhero movies. Sure X-Men ended with a high profile fight at the statue of liberty, but New York City wasn't destroyed. In Spider-Man 2 (arguably the best superhero movie of all time) A battle with Dr Octopus plays out across the city, but the story is personal for Peter. And while he stops a train from derailing and saves hundreds of lives, it's earned because we saw Peter's struggle thought the entire film.
The wide net that recent X-Men movies have cast make it completely devoid of personality. And as they've gone back in time (First Class, Days of Future Past, Apocalypse) the've destroyed any canon they may have been holding on to so there isn't even a sense of wonder for the characters I liked.
I didn't mean for this to end on a down note. I'm excited for New Mutants. I think doing genre films instead of traditional superhero movies is the right way to go, especially for the X-Films because there are just so many characters. I'm into it, and I hope the success of Logan and the (hopefully) success of New Mutants can elevate the story telling across all of the X-Men films.
