Having not seen the movie and having zero prior knowledge of or interest in Illyana/Majik as a character (I\'m vaguely aware that she\'s Colossus\'s sister), my immediate critique of this review is that large portions of it read like a complaint that your favorite character was poorly-served rather than an holistic view of the film entire.
Having not seen the movie and having zero prior knowledge of or interest in Illyana/Majik as a character (I\'m vaguely aware that she\'s Colossus\'s sister), my immediate critique of this review is that large portions of it read like a complaint that your favorite character was poorly-served rather than an holistic view of the film entire.
Unfortunately, there is nowhere near enough room to cover all the problems with the movie, but rest assured it is a terrible movie regardless of how it handles any one character. Like I said. scenes do not flow into each other, making the events disjointed. At the most basic level of storytelling, a causes b, which leads to c, and so on and so forth. In New Mutants a happens, is forgotten about in the next scene, then b happens with no connection to anything and is also forgotten about, and c then happens randomly with no connection to anything. Actions and events have no consequence in later scenes and aren\'t built up to by previous scenes. For a horror movie it\'s not scary at all. The issues with Illyana get to the heart of how little thought or effort was put into the writing, or if there was thought or effort put in, demonstrate that the writer has the talent of a bad teenage fanfic writer. The audience should not have to ask what her powers are at the end of the film or if she\'s actually magic. That should be clear in the film, but none of it is. The audience should not be asking why someone who can teleport is seemingly trapped in a bubble with 0 explanation. But that\'s what the audience does because the film is badly written from start to finish.
Oh, I am not defending the movie. I was done with the franchise well before it came out, and nothing I've heard about it has suggested I'd enjoy it.
But the Ilyana section doesn't read as a dissection of everything wrong with the movie. It reads like you being miffed at the mistreatment of your personal favorite character, right up to and including saying outright that the film entire could be saved if only it was rewritten from the ground up to focus more completely and entirely on her.
Put it this way: I'd delete at least one of the three paragraphs you devote to complaining about how she was so mistreated and replace any one of them with the discussion of the film's overall lack of cohesiveness you just posted. (Also, X-Factor was one of a very small selection of comics I had a few of as a kid, so I'm significantly more plugged in to how they all seem to have been misused.)
I also disagree with any and all discussions of accuracy or fidelity to the source material being relevant. Comic book movies change things. Don't get me wrong, you do a more than adequate job of articulating why the version of her in the movie sucks, but complaining she's not a literal sorceress using literal magic is too much, especially given the film is allegedly in continuity with at least some of the other X-Men films where the supernatural smorgasboard of the comics doesn't seem to exist. (Maybe. I didn't watch Dark Phoenix for the same reason I didn't watch this one.) It's an unnecessary addendum that eats up wordcount.
I guess my overall point is that, if the comic character in question is an obscure D-Lister, I feel the review should be written from the position that most readers will neither know nor care about who Ilyana is coming in. You do a good job of articulating who she is and why the film does her a disservice, and do an adequate job of trying to connect the film's failures to its mishandling of her, but that's something to use for an example as a single paragraph, not something to devote the majority of the review entire to.
I actually did delete the paragraph about how the film should have been rewritten before your latest comment. It's been reworked pretty extensively.
I said that it would have been better because there is a fanfic rewrite that does exactly that and it is so much better. I'm working on a review of that rewrite right now.
Fair enough then! Good fortune to you in that endeavor.
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How not to adapt a comicbook or make a film
I was eagerly anticipating the New Mutants film, being a fan of many of the characters, especially Magik. Even after the many delays the film suffered, it remained one of my most anticipated releases. I could not have been more disappointed.
Even beyond its failures as an adaptation, the film is a failure in practically every way. It is not scary. Its mystery is incredibly weak. It has no flow from scene to scene, as events and actions are simply forgotten about once the scene ends and many things the characters do have no reason behind them. The dialogue is also bad. The focus on Dani as the sole main character and the POV character also hurt the film, as her character is not capable of carrying a movie as written.
As an adaptation of Chris Claremont's seminal New Mutants comic from the 1980s, it's even worse. Not a single change which was made to any of the characters was for the better, and in many cases was for the worse. Having the characters accidentally kill their loved ones when their powers first manifest is an ok change, but there is no need for Cecelia Reyes to be the villain or for Roberto to suddenly be white. The Bear being fake and defeated by talking to it was lame. Dani is an amazing character in the comics and complete bore in the film.
And then there's Magik. Imagine if there was a movie about Superman where he didn't come from a dead planet, inexplicably got his powers from eating spinach instead of from the sun, and constantly told childish racist jokes. You'd say 'that's not Superman,' and you'd be right. That's what they did to Magik. The writer and director decided that her comics origin of being kidnapped to hell was too complicated and so changed it to having her be a victim of child traffickers. All this does is makes her even more confusing, because her real origin explains how she got magic powers and her new origin doesn't provide any explanation of that whatsoever. At the end, there is no way to know if she even has magical powers or is just some reality-warping mutant. This utter lack of thought was also put into the 'special place' she created for herself as a small child, which is... hell? Not Wonderland, not Candyland, not Disneyland, but hell. What the hell? It is also seen in the way her sword is used, having a big reveal shot of the blade despite the fact that she had used it several times throughout the movie beforehand. Such a simple thing any amateur filmmaker would know not to do.
The really sad thing is, Magik is still arguably the best part of the movie, as she gets the only cool moments. Only she and Dani have anything approaching an arc or a purpose in the story. Rahne is only there as a love interest, and Sam and Roberto are complete wastes of space. What a waste of a great cast of characters and a cool premise.