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Welcome back! In my previous article, we looked at beginnings of how Fox should continue after Dead Pool. In it, we covered everything from the General Audience X-Men films, moving Singer from the X-films to another Comic property, Tim Miller moving to X-Force, and ideally what Cable and Dead Pool should be along with some fan casting for some characters. Now that we have the Rated R- series squared away with two franchises and Ryan Reynolds as their spokesperson, we begin to look towards the more General Audience film. This editorial will future exclusively on what the New Mutants movie should be and where to go from there. I am not even halfway done with the article and am at 3k ...so I am splitting my section about the New Mutants from the Main X-series from each other so this isn't so much of a chore to read.
NEW MUTANTS
With that out of the way, we get to the movie that I think is coming before the new X-Men series. To refresh on the gossip, Wolverine 3 is definite, Gambit is shooting next month, Deadpool and Cable is definitely happening, there are treatments for New Mutants and X-Force out there, and another X-Men trilogy is all but confirmed (Singer is still attached, but in my perfect world, he will be used elsewhere ...and, given that I don't think Apocalypse is going to be AS good as the studio wants compared to Dead Poll, I think a change is coming no matter what.) So, we will spend a lot of time on what a New Mutants movie will be in this Post-Dead Pool world.
Firstly, with any Marvel property, this is more likely than not going to be just New Mutants in name. Instead, it will be an amalgam of the eighties team, Generation X, Generation Next, X-Men Academy, and, most specifically, Grant Morrison's X-Men run. That is the only way I can see this working, because I like that the original Xavier students became militirised by wacky Cable ...and don't see how X-Force and New Mutants cannot be the same movie series. Therefore, a version of that will have already happened. Why is Nega-Sonic teenage Warhead with X-Force now? Because the whole last class of students dropped out and followed Cable. This will be the story of the class afterwards as the institute looks to fall back from that tragedy with NEW New Mutants. A lot of this first movie will be pulled from the Morrison run with students who could be X-men in the future ...or those that can be villains and the temptations inbetween.
With that said, this is the team that we will focus on in the current day. Are they the main team of X-Men? NO. The X-Men are out doing super hero stuff, and we will not see them assembled as a whole ...so we do not know their fates elsewhere from earlier in the timeline. They will most definitely be rocking the uniform we saw Nega-Sonic Teenage Warhead wear at the end of Dead Pool. Basically, that movie DID kick start a lot of this new direction more than I think we realize. It did a great job of informing of us of how the school works in the present. Going from that, we get the first of two main adult teachers for this new class of students: Colossus. I don't care how you do his human form: dub Cudmore with Russian voice, dub the CGI stunt double, actor who sounds like the Dead Pool Colossus voice, Colossus voice is the human form but the stunt Double is the CGI. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the Colossus in Dead Pool is awesome and his story continues here. Remember, this Colossus IS a hero and a good guy ...and he just saw a whole class turn away from Xavier's teachings. That is an AMAZING catalyst for this character's arc for this new team and wanting to protect them. Not to mention he is going to have a new recruit on the team who he is INCREDIBLY close to and will fight for her not to be corrupted. The plot thickens when you factor in who is co-teacher is: Emma Frost.
I am going to cheat here. The White Queen we saw in the sixties was NOT the REAL White Queen. She could be a decoy or this character's mother ...or something so we can actually have a proper Emma Frost on the big screen for damn once. A lot of incarnations of the X-students have had her as a headmistress or teacher. That IS her role within the X-Men mythos and should be her role here. I think she is the best counter-thesis to Colossus's good nature as she was a villain and has a dark side. In fact, there is correlation to Rasputin's experience as her team didn't leave her, they [frick]ing died. Emma has even more reason to keep this group together. Also in that regard to both of them, we are going to refer to a student who went turbo much earlier in the school's history. Back to Emma though, with her casting, just hiring any Blonde doesn't work. You need someone who can play cold, calculating, but at the same time witty and charming. The popular idea will be someone like Charlize Theron and that wouldn't be terrible, but I don't always like doing the popular choice. I think maybe thinking out of the box a little here is called for. The biggest problem is that there isn't a whole lot of inbetween in Hollywood for females, you are under 30 or you are over 65. Emma falls somewhere inbetween there. That is why I am going to go with an actress who should be reaching middle age right at this moment and, while predominantly being a television actress, has the chops to be Emma ...and still be a leading actress. Say what you want, but Sarah Michelle Gellar is an actresses' actress and her performances in the first five seasons of BTVS is no joke. I think she is the perfect person to step into Emma's bustier as one of the New Mutant's teachers.
There will also be Xorn as a teacher at the school ...but, as with tradition, he wouldn't be who he says he is. We will get to that soon.
As for the actual students. The biggest one to get out of the way first, because he will be the primary villain throughout, is Quentin Quire. There will not be too much change from the original incarnation of Quire from here. He is an amazing student with psychic ability that rivals that of Prof. X ...unfortunately, he has a chip on his shoulder and begins to detest Xavier's teachings. He begins wearing the Iconic “Magneto Was Right” shirt with sends many of the teachers and students up in arms. Eventually, he turns some students against the faculty and causes a riot while the main team of X-Men are away. Obviously, Xorn will be whispering in his ear too. We, as an audience, get to follow him from smart, somewhat awkward kid to genius powerful threat to the whole damn school. With the right directing, we will both hate and feel sorry for this kid. I cannot think of a better actor than Once Upon A Time's evil Peter Pan, Robbie Kay. If you saw his performance in that, you know that he was pretty much BORN to play Quentin Quire. We will make sure Mcavoy shows up to have some scenes with him to establish their teacher student relationship ...and how Quire grows his contempt for him. This is going to be VERY important down the line.
As for the rest of the New Mutants, Illyana is pretty much a given and should be played by a newcomer. She is more or less going to be the team leader when the shit hits the fan with Quire. Despite her brother's over protective nature, she keeps the team together and proves to him that she isn't some little flower that needs to be guarded, but she is definitely X-men material. Blink was popular in DOFP, bring in a prime timeline version of her works here. Do the same with Sunspot ...just so you another New Mutants alumni from the comics. Also, so those DOFP characters do not seem so throwaway after all. I am going to be selfish here and throw in one of my favorite characters of all time, Synch from Generation X. Morrison staple, Beak will be great comic relief ...and the super awkward guy. Then you round out the main characters with fan-favorites Pixie and Rockslide. You can add X-23 in later movies.
The end game of this is that Quire and his band are stopped and Emma finds a way to neutralize him and keep him contained. But, realizing that Quire was not as successful as he hoped he would be, Xorn reveals his true identity: Proteus, Xavier's first real failure as a teacher. In fact, Colossus had to be the one to stop him ..which is why he is such a pacifist in Dead Pool. Doing in Proteus has haunted him ever since, now he has to face that again. The last fifteen minutes is the team's battle with him. He severely injures Colossus forcing Magik to take the reigns of leadership. Learning what Colossus and Emma taught them, they do not kill him but, together, use their powers to stop him. Synch uses his powers to duplicate Proteus's in hopes to work him over while Magik and Blink conjure up a portal. When it seems as if Proteus is going to kill Synch, Sunspot sacrifices himself with an insane solar flare to buy his team mates more time. Synch and Sunspot weakens him just enough for Rockslide and Pixie to work him over as Blink and Magik open a portal that sends him to a hell dimension that he never comes back from. And thus we, hopefully, have a new beginning for young new team of mutants.
NEW MUTANTS END CREDITS
I think from here, the New Mutants should deal with the stuff that there just isn't going to be room for in the X-Men or X-Force movies. Maybe, the quirkier ideas over the years. That is why the end credits begins with a scene from the first X-Men movie. We hear a voice talking over it that sounds an awful like Seth Rogan. He talks about how the movie is okay, but not as good as the sequel. A flicker in the screen as we change X2, X-Men United. The Seth Rogan voice talks about how there is never going to be one better than this. The scene flips over again, but now we are watching the X-Men cartoon series and the voice says “You just can't beat 90's nostalgia.” The next thing on what we begin to realize is a TV is the embarassing scene where Skin dances in the Generation X movie and the Seth Rogan voiced being says “What is this crap?” Finally, he flips the channels to the New Mutants beating Proteus. “Now this ...” he begins as the camera pans around to reveal yellowish disgusting blob of an alien being with chords protruding from his head with a wide smile “...THIS will be a ratings grabber.”
Then in the third film, you can do the Brood.
Continued in Part 3
In the next part, I will go over the main X-Men series, the director, and the end game for all of this. If things go to plan, it should be up by the end of the weekend.