X-Men’s The New Mutants and the upcoming Laura movie point to a change in approach that might take the world by storm.
The trailer for The New Mutants made it clear that the X-Men franchise is beginning to experiment with different genres — in this case, horror. It’s a move that was probably inspired by Logan’s success, and it shows that Fox is beginning to widen its focus when defining the tone of upcoming movies. X-Men is moving towards new horizons and leaving behind the formulaic.
The New Mutants is going to be a horror movie; a complete departure from what we’ve come to expect from past installments in the franchise. This week, we also heard from James Mangold, the director of Logan, who made it clear that there’s intention to pursue a movie revolving around Laura — a movie that, given the grim nature of the film before it, is bound to be truly unique.
While X-Men has always been a well-known fandom, the choice to branch out from the expected will definitely bring it more success.
It opens up the universe to more audiences
There are many reasons for why people don’t like X-Men, and many of them valid. Not everyone is a fan of the genre, with its fast-paced action and lively special effects. And even as a fan, there are always staples of the action/superhero/fantasy film genre that are overdone and can become tiresome.
But that doesn’t invalidate the power of the stories X-Men has always been trying to tell. The themes of diversity, responsibility and prejudice, both within the characters themselves and systemically throughout their environment, are important to explore as a society. They’re a profound social critique of the world around us. But until now, their reach has been limited, as the confinements of the genre only allowed them to stick to a certain audience and a certain kind of movie. New genres bring in new audiences — and perhaps also a new take on a profound story.
It keeps the story from going stale
This is an era of franchises, and movie-goers are used to the strange feeling of weary excitement elicited when yet another sequel comes to theaters. As much as we may love to become obsessed with sagas, it’s more films simply not always sustainable — movies are expensive, time is short, and stories tend to get stale very quickly as more and are rolled out to make more and more money.
We’re already getting tired. And Fox is being fantastically clever by diversifying the kind of movies they release. A new genre brings new life into an old formula, and becomes exciting and beautiful to watch (and in the case of The New Mutants, perhaps terrifying) by not being afraid to try the unexpected.
It might be the start of a new trend
It’s not clear just how far this experiment in new genres will go. While The New Mutants is definitely going the brave way of the horror movie, it remains to be seen if a Laura-centric film will be allowed to continue in the fashion of Logan, or if it’ll shift back to the familiar tone of the first few X-Men movies. With Dark Phoenix also in the works, we can only wonder how much innovation will go into Jean Grey’s story.
Related: ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ has a chance to finally do Jean Grey justice
X-Men may very well set off a trend as the film industry swiftly becomes saturated with stretched-out franchises. Both Marvel and DC are already starting to see the struggles associated with having long sequences of interconnected movies while still trying to keep each installment fresh, especially when it comes to superhero movies. Fox’s wisdom might help them dodge a similar situation.
As studios try to hold their place in the market, Fox might finally have the upper hand — and be at the forefront of a genre-flexible franchise revolution.