Demon Bears & Nurse Ratched: The New Mutants crew takes a deep dive into latest X-Men film – SYFY WIRE

After a three-year delay, The New Mutants has finally arrived. Aside from all the headline-making postponements, what do we know, exactly,about the first horror-based X-Men film? Well, for one thing, it's been confirmed that the screenplay by director Josh Boone and his childhood friend,Knate Lee, is based on the Demon BearSagaby writer Chris Claremont and artistBill Sienkiewicz.

"We were just so attracted to his art when we were young," Boone tells SYFY WIRE, holding up a trade paperback collectionof the story arc."It was so evocative and so different from all the other comic book art that wed seen. It was dark and moody; it was already fantastical and sort of horrific. There was never like a lightbulb moment where I wanted to make a horror comic book movie I just knew I wanted to adapt the Demon Bear story and it naturally just said, Im a story."

The filmmaker, who is known for others teen dramas like Stuck in Love and The Fault in Our Stars, describesthe original comic as having "a dash of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a dash of Stephen King," whilepromisingthat his cinematic interpretation is "as much as possible a true adaptation of that in our own sort of strange wheelhouse."

For Boone, Claremont's accurate interpretationof teenage behavior is what made the writer's run on X-Men so iconic. "He cared about characters and dialogue and peoples feelings and psychology...so that certainly influenced our storytelling," the directorsays. "I remember a very specific issue of X-Men where the first panel is a full page of Kitty Pryde and shes like, Professor Xavier, youre a jerk! It was sort of the first time that youd seen a kid represented in a real way in an X-Men comic, and I always loved when they leaned in that direction."

In the comics, Danielle Moonstar (a mutant with the ability to make a person's worst fears come to life) loses her parents to the eponymous ursine entity. When it comes back to kill her and finish the job, it's up to Dani to defeat the supernatural beingwith the help of her fellow New Mutants, whom she ends up leading.

"Shes super strong and tough and smart," says Blu Hunt, who plays Dani's cinematic counterpart. "Shes super dead-on to the comic book, I would say. I got a bunch of Dani Moonstar comics when I knew I was auditioning for the role and I still have a ton of them. Her story is pretty much exactly the same as it is in the comics. Except for some of the more complicated things, like her parents and some [other] things are different, but for the most part, shes straight from the comic."

At a virtual press conference that SYFY WIRE attended last week, Boone explainedhow certain backstories and characters needed to be tweaked or simplified for the sake of the moviegoing audience.

"They're very much like the characters in the comics, but I'd say we had to make sense ofvery convolutedMarvel history that a lot of these characters had and their entanglements with other books and everything else," he said, using Lockheed the space dragon as an example. In the comics, he's the pet of Kitty Pryde, but in The New Mutants, he belongs to Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik. "[Kitty's]so cool," Boone added,"but, you know, for us, it was just like, 'I don't know how to do this space backstory.'" That said, a lot of stuff does carry over from the comics, a good example beingMagik's Soulsword.

Naturally, Dani's abilities give The New Mutants its spine-tingling set pieces. "You put one and one together, it equals two," Hunt adds."Weve got a girl who doesnt know that she has powers and her powers are to make nightmares come to life so... you know, it kind of made sense for the movie to be a scary movie."

During Comic-Con@Home last month, fans got to see the opening minutes of the film, which introduceus to Dani's character.

"Filming that scene was completely insane," Hunt recalls."That was my first real night shoot, and I didnt know how insane that was gonna be. All of it was real, none of it was CGI. I think we did it in one take once we ran out of the door, that was one take and the cars were really blowing up all around us...And working with Adam Beach... hes iconic, hes amazing, and hes so nice. Being able to work with him all night long on that was cool. All the sets were real; we really built the trailer that Dani lived in, so I got to see her bedroom and I did some of those stunts, too. Like, I threw myself down a hill and actually rolled down it."

After that explosive opening, Dani finds herself at a mysterious medical facility (Milbury Hospital)from which there seems to beno escape. There, shemeets other young mutants, who are also grappling with their burgeoning powers, which could definitely be seen as a metaphor for puberty. The cast of characters includesthe aforementionedIllyana Rasputin/Magik,who has teleportation abilities;Sam Guthrie/Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), who can use his body like a deadly projectile;Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams), who can transform into a wolf; andRoberto da Costa/Sunspot (Henry Zaga), who can harness the sun's solar energy.

In particular, Zaga simply to had to draw from his own life experiences for his take on da Costa.

"[He]grows up in a wealthy family and finds out about his powers in a very traumatic way and ends up hurting people he doesnt mean to. That scars him a lot," the actor says. "I think the similarities would be I went to private school growing up, so I kind of saw those kids that boast a confidence that they dont have very close up.I knew they were full of sh**, so I could tell there was something very dark in there...Roberto is a tough one to crack because he is dying for some sort of connection with people, but that craving is manifested as pushing people away with his sometimes crass humor and an almost bullying-like personality."

Despite the fact that he didn't know much about the titular team prior to being cast in the movie, Zaga immediately felt a kinship with Roberto, who is Brazilian as well.

"Im such a nut job with these things, that I went and bought the comics and started geeking out over it," he admits."Imarveled atthe way Bill and Chris Claremontmade it so dark and personal. It really hit home for me, especially seeing a Brazilian character so similar in so many ways. It was crazy. I guess I was a little fan of The New Mutants before I even knew it...I understand Sunspots heart very well. I take such ownership of him now and I have such a responsibility with telling his story, so its rewarding."

Similarly, Hunt felt close to Dani, because both of them hail from Native American backgrounds.

"I really reconnected with my heritage. I always grew up knowing I was Native American and my grandma would speak Lakota to me and I knew all about it. She actually lived with me after she lived on the reservation, so she would talk about it all the time and then we kind of grew apart as I got older and I kind of detached myself from it a lot," the actress says. "Getting to play Dani, I got to find myself...I reconnected with the Lakota Nation and Ive been there a bunch of times since, and Ive done ceremonies and things that I didnt explore before getting New Mutants. Just being able to play that role and represent Native Americans in such a big role, its amazing."

Boone stresses the importance of representation in the film:"Just like we cast a real Brazilian to play Sunspot, it was important that we cast a real Native American to play Dani. It couldnt be a model who, like on theirresume its like, Im .0023 percent Native American or whatever. We really wanted somebody connected to a reservation, connected to a tribe."

Being culturally and ethnicallyrespectful is just one of the ways in which this project puts diversity at the forefront. There's also a subtleLGBTQ love story betweenRahne and Dani.Sinclair is one of the first people Dani meets at the hospital and the two almost immediately form a deep, emotional bond. As for the rest of the group, it takes some time for some of themto warm up to Ms. Moonstar.

"Illyana, she has her own baggage, which is really tough and she really takes it out on Dani when Dani shows up. I think theyve probably both been through similar traumatic events and really difficult things from their backgrounds," Hunt says of Magik, who is able to escape her problems by traveling into aparallel dimension called Limbo. "Dani somehow manages to react with compassion and kindness, whereas Illyana only finds herself acting with anger and violence. She isolates herself like that and I think shes jealous of Dani in a lot of ways. So they really clash a lot. Illyana says things that I think could be unforgivable to Dani, but with the lens of what shes been through, Danis able to forgive her. I think thats a really cool nuanced relationship.And then her with the boys, she really gets things out of them and becomes close with them pretty quickly, too."

Zaga reveals that Roberto is "instantly very close" to Heaton's Cannonball. "They just understand each other even though theyre incredibly different," he says."Later on, youre gonna see it in the movie, their facades, their masks, fall and they just are very similar. They all are very similar, they all have very similar backgrounds and theres nothing else to pretend about. Their biggest fears come to life with Dani coming in, so what can you fake after that?"

In terms of picking a favorite member of the team, Boone says that it's like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. Nevertheless, he does concede that he feels a strongconnection to Rahne "not because she's the coolest character," but because,like the director,she too wasraisedin a strictly religious environment.

"Obviously, Anyas the coolest character, but Rahne was raised under oppressive religious circumstances andI was also raised in Virginia by Evangelical Christians," he explains."So I felt a bit of affinity for her as a character because Id grown up under similar circumstances. Im not choosing whos cooler or better, Im just choosing based on my personal feelings."

Casting Rahne was veryimportant because "Maisie looks so much like the way Bill drew Rahne," he says."All these things, we just tried to keep that image in our head of the crew that we love so much when we were writing it and find people that exemplified those characteristics."

The main facility where the mutants are being held is overseen by Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga), a scientist and mutant capable of projecting force fields around her body. It's a power that Braga says would be very helpful during the current pandemic. Similar to thecomics, the cinematic version ofReyes is more interested in science than her mutation, but that preoccupation puts the doctorat odds with her young charges.

"I think its a very strict relationship because she has an agenda, shes very organized, she wants these kids to cooperate with her motives," Braga teases without giving anything away what those motives might be."Its very much of a mentor, I think, as a guide. She wants to guide them through understanding their powers and controlling their powers and guiding them through to her objective that were gonna understand in the film."

Since Boone has previously mentioned One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as a majorinfluence on this project, Braga decided to channel Nurse Ratched for this role. She didn't want to do a carbon copy of the iconic part originated by Louise Fletcher, but hoped to tap into"that energy, that vibe, that sense of guidance and monitoring vibe." At the same time, Reyes isn't a flat-out villain, although she's perceived that way by virtue of the fact that she's an authority figure.

"She kind of has both [qualities] because once you are the adult in charge, right awayyou become the villain.Youre giving orders, so right away you become the villain," Braga says. "But shes also the caretaker, so there is that. I think its interesting that Josh created that [dichotomy] because people dont understand exactly what it is, what her agenda is."

In addition to Cuckoo's Nest, the director was also inspired byThe Breakfast Club(in terms of the group dynamic)andGirl, Interrupted (forMagik,who is modeled after Angelina Jolie'sLisa Rowe in the latter), characterizing them as"institutional dramas that had worked before and worked well." Meanwhile, "rubber-reality horror movies" like Jacobs Ladder and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriorshelped inform the more terrifyingelements of the story. "Things like that, that sort of pushed the bounds of the real and the metaphysical and the surreal," he says.

"I would say its good, scary fun. It reminds me of old '80s, '90s fun, scary movies about teenagers," Hunt continues.

Many of the scares ended up being organic,stemming from the fact that principal photography mostlytook place at an abandoned medical facility in New England.

"It brought a lot to the film because you are working with reality," says Braga, who was hesitant to walk around by herself during night shoots."There are textures in it, there are smells, and I think the camera captures that. I think it is palpable. You can feel the energy, so that definitely helps the crew and the actors."

Zaga says he felt the power of the place,too, andswears that restless spirits would often puncture his good mood."Id betrying to get into Robertos mindset of making a joke out of everything and everything was heightened and fun," he recalls. "Every now and again, Id go into a corner and just get a whiff of a terrible smell that I never [smelled] before. And Im like, Whoa, is this like a spirit hereor did someone die on this spot?Whats going on here?' We werein a place where some really creepy stuff happened, so it was like a reminder, a punch in the gut, like, Hey, youre in our place. Chill out. Dont have too much fun."

Once their fears are faced and bonding is complete, the adolescent mutants plot a daring escape from Milbury. What the future holds is anyone's guess. Well, not all of it is a mystery.Now that Disney owns the screen rights to theX-Men, the famous lineup of mutants can finally start to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe under the watchful eye of Marvel Studios head honchoKevin Feige. While Boone admits that, as a director, he "felt bad" for his own movie when the merger was first announced,he came to realize that he was boththrilled and excited from a fan standpoint.

"I was like, This is how its supposed to be,'" he concludes."As a fan, I really did have that feeling where I was like, Oh, theyre all gonna get to be together finally. I read Secret Wars when I was a kid, where everybody comes together into a giant battle, and I dont know, man, Im really curious. Its like these movies that Fox made over all this time are unique and interesting and different and really push the bounds of what comic book movies could be, but Im certainly interested to see what they do as a fan of Marvel and Marvel movies. I dont know what theyll do, I have no idea, but Id be the first person to get in line and go see it, for sure."

"I grew up watchingthe original three X-Men [movies] with Jean Grey and Wolverine,"Hunt finishes. "I can still remember what the DVD case looked like it was silver with the 'X' on it and my dad had all of them. I would watch them all the time with him and I had the hugest crush on the Wolverine.I even wrote an essay about him in elementary school that he was my hero. But the essay was mostly, Hes my hero because I thought he was cute, which I thought was funny. So its very full circle to be in the last X-Men movie of that universe as far as we know."

The New Mutants is now playing in theaters around the U.S.

Additional reporting by James Grebey

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Demon Bears & Nurse Ratched: The New Mutants crew takes a deep dive into latest X-Men film - SYFY WIRE