Adaptational Anguish in New Mutants

Spoilers follow.

New Mutants, in the immediate collective response to its release, has been plagued by one thing above all. Not the oft associated delays, but instead with the question of adaptation. Adaptation is a difficult topic to discuss. Personally, I find that adaptation is a futile lens through which to analyse a film. More often than not, we should look to the meaning of the film as its own text and take it on its own merits. However, especially in the superhero genre, adaptation is also a site which creates meaning. This is not only a film that has caused controversy with its adaptation of the source material, but also one whose meaning lies in this very adaptation.

Trailer for New Mutants.

First, to address the elephant in the room, the films adaptation of race is galling. Discussions surrounding whitewashing in this film are fair, accurate and necessary: Two characters, Dr. Cecilia Reyes and Roberto DaCosta, who are both traditionally depicted as black characters in the source material were portrayed by two decisively non-black actors: Alice Braga and Henry Zaga, respectively. The director, Josh Boone, attempted to address these questions of whitewashing, and chose to opt for the strange strategy of doubling-down on his colorblind casting approach. Boone has since deleted his Instagram account in response to the backlash.

In my view, what makes this whitewashing so necessary to acknowledge and engage with is not merely the erasure of black identities, but that it informs the wider lens from which the film was produced. When we look to Boone's comments, where he suggests that a non-black actor could better deliver a portrayal of a privileged upbringing, we can see that it is in fact little to no different to what presidential candidate Joe Biden has also said. I do not bring Biden up without reason- that their comments are similar matters because it informs us on the film's ideology. It is the post-racial view of the liberal who believes, with so much time removed from the Civil Rights Movement and the election of President Obama, that racial conflict and injustice is a thing of the past. Importantly, the director's post-racial lens seems to have influenced not only casting decisions, but the depiction of mutancy itself.

In New Mutants, mutancy is alternatively the condition or gift of superhuman powers. An offshoot of the X-Men franchise, where mutants are a deviant minority who are taught to use their powers at superhero school, the New Mutants shifts the locale from that school to a mental institution instead; focusing primarily on Dani Moonstar, a Native American mutant whose powers bring nightmares to life. Horror genre antics ensue. With regard to adaptation, as it is an adaptation of the New Mutants comic book series, it's worth looking at the film's own perspective on this. When we do so, I think we see that this the loosest of adaptations, one that prioritizes re-imagination and re-invention to create its meaning. Re-imagination, that is, of not just of the New Mutants characters and story, but of the X-Men franchise on the whole. If there is a compelling idea in this movie, it draws itself from this.

One such re-imagining is when we see the comic book Sam Guthrie, whose powers famously made him nigh invulnerable when blastin', inverted in the film- becoming a character who instead knows only hurt. An emotional hurt, sustained from childhood, but repeated, self-inflicted physical pain also. That invulnerability is stripped away as part of the character's journey from page to screen.

Left: Sam Guthrie in New Mutants (1983) Right: Sam Guthrie in New Mutants (2020).

It is indicative of the re-imaginings on the whole. Where Sam is re-imagined as self-destructive, Roberto is re-imagined as an insecure boy fronting as a jock and Rahne Sinclair is re-imagined as a lesbian, facing conflict between her sexuality and fundamentalist Christian beliefs. One rumor that set social media and fan communities aflame was the notion of Storm being originally cast in this film as a jailer role. Whilst that never manifested, the design ethos is clear: gone are the trappings and moralism of traditional superhero fictions. These are not X-Men, mutants hated and feared by humans, but rather teenagers who hate and fear themselves. 

The most significant of these imaginings, however, is both the thematic core of the film and something deeply alienating to the fan audience. Rather than take place in the iconic school for mutants most associated with the franchise, this film relocates its cast of characters to a mental institution. A jarring change, for sure, but one vital to the film's meaning. By moving the traditional X-Men coming-of-age story out of a school and into a mental institution, what we actually have is merely the exchange of disciplinary institutions. This change serves to highlight not the differences between the story of the New Mutants and the X-Men characters, but rather the similarities. They are repressed, traumatized individuals, sequestered away from the public, supposedly for their own good. The student is treated to the same institution as the patient or the prisoner; in this film, Dr. Reyes keeps her subjects all under constant, panoptic surveillance. It is a re-imagining of the school setting, a haunted hospital, an asylum and a prison all at once. That the film chooses to reveal that Reyes does not, in fact, work for the X-Men, perhaps helps the film go down easier with hardcore fans, but weakens the text as a whole. 

Nevertheless, the school/hospital exists as a site of the return of the repressed, where deviant sexuality and identities inform the condition of mutancy. So far I have neglected to discuss the film's constant delays and unfortunate production cycle. Too easy would it be to fall into the trap of maligning the 'New' in the ever-delayed New Mutants. A witty critique, to appease the readers who look to a film review for a good pun and a reaffirmation of their own opinion. To do so would miss the mark of meaning: the title 'New Mutants' is a reference to two things. The first, Marvel's original name for the X-Men franchise 'The Merry Mutants', and herein we can make whatever joke we like about them not being so new anymore, but the second is all the more compelling and informative. 'New Mutants' was how literary critic Leslie Fielder, in 1965, referred to the new generation of Americans engaging in counter-cultural practice. He lambasted and feared the turn of the new generation from the values of the old, feared the perversion of conservative social norms and could not abide what he referred to as the 'irrationalists'. 

The title New Mutants carries with it this weight, twisting it on its head, but retaining that particular association with a thematic generational conflict that has its roots in even the earliest of X-Men comics. Realized in this movie, the rebel youth have to break away from the authority of an older generation who can offer them nothing, but abandonment and abuse. Boone's mutancy no longer possesses a racial or genetic element, present in both source material and the film franchise at large. That this mutancy develops at puberty is highlighted, as is the sexual relationships between the youths. It is not to say that there is an inherent danger to sexuality, be it divergent or normative, but rather professes to explore the dangerous effects that surplus repression can have. 

For the men, it is the manifestation of their failure to perform the masculine function. Whilst Roberto embodies a direct, physical emasculation, his powers causing him to become "Too hot" in sexual situations, leaving him unable to adequately perform, Sam's character imperils the social function: not only committing patricide, but collapsing his very source of labor and income also. He has killed his father, but cannot replace him. In both of these cases, the masculine role in the nuclear family model threatens to fall apart. The feminine role in that structure threatens to fall away also, as depicted in Dani and Rahne's relationship with subversive sexuality. It is a lot more pronounced and the relationship that forms between them is depicted quite clearly.

In the background of two scenes, we can see the youths watching episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Apparently the only entertainment afforded to the facilities patients. This inclusion echoes back to the comic book mutants relationship to television (then it was 'Cowboy vs Indian' Westerns distressing Dani, and Magnum P.I. enamoring Roberto). You can also feel the inspiration of Buffy throughout, but this is not only a nod to a preceding, influential text. It serves a narrative purpose, giving Rahne exposure to one of popular cultures most recognized and resonant lesbian relationships. Rahne's sexuality becomes entwined with the abuse she faced from the fundamentalist Reverend Craig, who dealt upon her lasting physical abuse and called the emergence of her mutancy-qua-deviant sexuality that of a witch. Her struggle is then one between the side of her that feels free and the side that feels shame. The re-emergence of Rahne's traumatic upbringing, as Dani's nightmare powers bring the ghost of Rahne's abuser back to brand her as a witch once more, doesn't actually factor into this, however. Rahne is just as happy to explore her newfound relationship with Dani. So whilst Dani's powers, throughout this film, perform a literal return of the repressed, it is only Dani and Illyana who face their returned fears head on, fighting to once more repress their nightmares. The rest of the patients are quite content to allow Dani to vanquish her own fears and perform their repression for them.

Dani and Rahne's relationship as seen in the film.

Where 2019's X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a not-so-subtle depiction of the dangers of surplus repression and the necessity of dealing with your trauma, New Mutants follows this legacy, albeit never in such a clear cut manner. Whilst it is the dominant theme throughout the film, the re-imagining of one character particularly dives into this question of repression and living with trauma. Many criticisms have been levied at a sequence of scenes having Illyana Rasputin, perhaps the closest this film has to a conventional action movie protagonist, espouse prejudice against the Native American lead. To many fans, transforming this character into what appears to be a racist bully is the far greater adaptational sin than the whitewashing of other characters. In my view, these criticisms come across as commentators either not fully engaging with the text or expecting these characters to adhere to some traditional superhero morality: something the film simply is not interested in. The comments that Illyana makes, being dismissive of Dani's Native American identity, bringing up crude, childish stereotypes and especially referring to Dani as 'Pocahontas', a preferred insult of not the most mature man in the world, are not simply to characterize her as a dominant, mean girl, but instead are part of this wider thematic exploration of repressed trauma.

Vital here is that Dani herself recognizes and calls out these insults and attempts at dominance for what they are. She specifically mentions that she heard them as a schoolgirl. It is a turning point in the film for Illyana, the deliverer of these petty, racial insults, who is then subsequently shown to be an eternal child; trapped in her traumatic past and incapable of moving forwards. Her coping methods are an abrasive personality and a puppet dragon named Lockheed, who doubles up as an imaginary friend. It is not to say that the cycle of abuse will inevitably turn us into racists, but illuminates instead the film's view of racism; that prejudice such as this is petty, childish, and a flaw in someone's individualized personality, rather than relating to any kind of structural oppression. 

Recounting her story, Illyana talks about the abuse she suffered as a child, under what she refers to as the Smiling Men. She would later kill these men, 'one by one'. During the abuse, however, the child would recede into an imaginary world called Limbo- a 'special place' where the Smiling Men could not harm her. In concert with her mutant abilities, this place became real. No longer merely receding to Limbo, she would physically go there and can do so at will. Dani's power to return the repressed has a distinctly opposite effect to Illyana's own power. Where Illyana's 'special place' is made real, what Dani makes real are Illyana's nightmares; the abuse she created Limbo to escape from. As Dani receives a story-line about making peace with her repressed fears, Illyana too finds her source of power from repression itself. Both characters have engaged with their nightmares and resolved to once more push them out of view. The fight that ensues is then one against a child's horrific imaginings of her abusers. Disappearing into her Limbo world once more, Illyana will soon triumphantly emerge, empowered with sword in hand and an actual, realized dragon replacing her puppet. She slays these monstrous imaginings, going on to fight alongside Dani against the manifestation of her own repressed fear: the demon bear. 

Their earlier clash, the scene that sparked such controversy, when seen in full and taken in the context of the film is in fact an important connection between the two. A relationship that may not adhere to conventional morality, but nevertheless is mutually beneficial. In true coming-of-age story fashion, their very exposure to new identities better equip them for the trials ahead. For that reason, I can't get behind the outrage at the mere depiction of bigotry. Certainly, it seems strange to watch a film that purports to have horror elements and influences, to only shirk away when the film dares to make you feel uncomfortable.

Importantly, there is a far more egregious instance of Dani's indigenous portrayal, that the proverb oft referred to in the film has more Christian roots than Native American, which demonstrates that Native American identity was poorly researched in the writing of the script. Manifesting on screen in a less than satisfactory way, the identity is nevertheless present and the portrayal of bigotry is not gratuitous, but informative. This is a sticking point, because I would argue that the depiction of Illyana's bigotry is simply not rooted in the same kind of racism that the casting of Reyes and Roberto was. I think it is crass to make such a comparison. If we are to be clear, I don't think this movie is blanket racist so much as it is specifically anti-black in its racism. There is a view, it seems, that the very presence of blackness will impede or supersede the story being told. Because, of course, there are no black stories to be told about trauma, repression or disciplinary institutions. 

The New Mutants look to a future that will never come.

In this film, the New Mutants franchise has been re-imagined through the lens of post-racialism; where casting is colorblind, prejudice is a personal character flaw and indigenous belief systems are fictional sources to be adapted as if they were a comic book. The wider X-Men franchise has also been re-imagined to not only explore repression, but to highlight the roles that speciously beneficial disciplinary institutions, like schools and hospitals, play in said repression. But by never diving fully into its horror influences, it gives us a flaccid ending, wherein which the nightmares pull back, our characters neatly repress their fears once more and promptly walk off into a new day.

Twenty Years On, 'Battle Royale' (2000) Still Screams OK Boomer The Loudest

Kinji Fukasaku's swan song, the cult classic Battle Royale (2000), will be twenty years old this December. Its former controversy has been neatly forgotten, now existing to most as little more than a Hunger Games prequel or Fortnite: The Movie. It seems pithy to even summarise the film, it has so successfully embedded itself in the popular conscious, but, for the uninitiated, it concerns a class of upstart schoolchildren who, after being trapped on an abandoned island, are forced to kill each other off until only one remains. And it's bloody fantastic.

It has an unrelenting pace that promptly sets about delivering exciting action sequences and compelling character vignettes and, of course, the camp, B-Movie gore and gratuitous violence is undoubtedly great fun for genre aficionados. Nevertheless, the film has always held more value than Asia Extreme-style fetishism would have you believe.

Based off of Koushun Takami's similarly controversial novel, the film adaptation skewed loyal, keeping the vast skeleton of the story and making very few deviations from its source material. Yet it is these small changes, the barely noticeable additions and omissions, that I find most interesting when comparing the two texts. These are differences that most commentators seem to have written off as the mere side-effects of adapting a story from one medium to another, yet these minor changes nevertheless set in motion a butterfly effect that significantly shifts the film's meaning, even as it rigorously adheres to all of the original's sweeping narrative beats. To take this further, I see these changes as a very conscious shift from one set of meanings to another; from the anti-authoritarian satire of Takami's novel towards a more specific examination of generational conflict from Fukasaku. Particularly, the film version concerns itself with the bitter lashing out of failed masculinities unto a scapegoated juvenile underclass.

We see as such in the divergence of meaning in the different Programs, as the titular contests are known. As written by Takami, the Program is an abstract evil that persists automatically through the state apparatus. It's true meaning and purpose is unknown, potentially forgotten, and only exists because no one dares to challenge the dominant ideology. So, no one believes in the program, but all feel that they must act as if they do, since everyone else does. As it is later revealed, the Program is in fact a vital part of the authoritarian infrastructure and a truly educational exercise; it serves as a transformation of the community into individuals, teaching the nation's populace that there can be no class solidarity. It is perhaps not the most subtle of political parody.

Drawing on his own experience as a young person in the waning days of World War II, director Fukasaku channelled instead the nihilistic violence which the older generations inflict unto their children. The satirical elements of the novel are pushed into the background in favour of a different meaning to the Program: spite. Adults fear the spectre of juvenile delinquency and see this act of total violence not just as discipline or punishment, but as karmic justice. In their eyes, it may be harsh, but certainly not cruel: it is a reactionary model, incurred by the transgression of rebellious children themselves.

This manifests itself most notably in the focal antagonist played by the enigmatic "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, the ex-teacher and current taskmaster similarly named Kitano (In the original novel, he was Sakamochi). Kitano, who was an old, disgruntled teacher of the class, bursts onto the scene with a military entourage, killing, displacing and denigrating the class's then-current, now previous, teacher, Hayashida, as a failure of an adult.

Kitano is perhaps the character who sees the most changes in the transition from the novel to the film, since his reign of terror is far more personal and far more vindictive than Sakomochi's. Originally, Sakomochi was a mere government agent and no teacher at all, though he effected the mannerisms of a particularly sadistic one. In addition to this, there was no personal connection between the 'teacher' and his class. Kitano, meanwhile, is indivisible from his torrid relationship with his former pupils. Where in the original novel the first killings are done so out of indifference (they score too low on the governments in-office betting pool), the film adaptation baptises the Program with two instances of revenge killing. First, a student undermines Kitano's authority by continuing to whisper, even as he had disciplined the class not to. She receives not detention, but a knife through her forehead. Subsequently, Kitano, who had taken a knife to his rear in his days as a school teacher, pays the offending student back with an identical slash, before detonating the explosive in his collar and killing him. Only after these personal killings are exorcised from his system does the game begin.

The teacher, Kitano, and his class.

The Program then unfolds as a realisation of his obscene, total power as an authority figure: both in a governmental sense and in the educational. One fascinating scene depicting the exercise of his absurdist teacher-patriarchal powers occurs when the female lead, Noriko Nakagawa, is ambushed by Mitsuko Souma, a merciless fellow student playing for keeps. Whilst the novel and other ancillary materials draw her as a far more haunting character, depicting her backstory as the tragic victim of the cyclical natures of violence and abuse, the film shows us a sinister, unsympathetic villain. She exerts her power indiscriminately and with a certain Machiavellian ingenuity; capable of dropping crocodile tears at any cynical moment. When she appears in front of Nakagawa, armed with weapons salvaged from her previous kills, the implication is clear: Nakagawa is the next to die.

However, Mitsuko's dreadful image is shattered on the sudden appearance of Kitano, who, armed only with an umbrella, swiftly sends her fleeing. Now that he is running the Program, even the most hardened killer will succumb to his abstract authority.

Kitano appears with his umbrella.

The ethereal, dreamlike quality of this scene is precipitated by the actual dream sequence- one where both Kitano and Nakagawa resemble children, eating ice cream and jumping by the riverside. In this moment, they are equalised and placed on the same infantile standing. In one sense, it works as a simple flashback which serves to establish the relationship between Kitano and Nakagawa, something set up by Nakagawa being the sole student not to disrespect him and that is paid off when Kitano reveals his perverse fondness for his student. But there is a definite notion that this is not just a shared memory, but a connected psychic experience endured by both Noriko and Kitano simultaneously. These disparate characters are allowed into each others intimate spheres, seeing each other in a state that social convention prohibits.

It is here where Nakagawa uncovers the central lie of Kitano's character, something that Nakagawa understands, but the other students fail to: Kitano is totally pathetic. His authority is totally abstract, as meaningless in a militarised death game as it was in the classroom and the man is as much a failure of an adult as Hayashida was. He's a bitter, capricious man, but also a pitiable one: a child trapped in a man's body.

Kitano, like the other figures of authority in the film, are emasculated, not so much by the insurgent youth who they place the blame, but by the denigration of their material conditions under their own watch (Significant, then, that the film shows us no female figures of authority). The film's opening exposition tells us as much, tapping into cultural concerns regarding the transition from capitalist boom into a new era of economic uncertainty, Japan's 'Lost Decade':

At the dawn of the millennium, the nation collapsed. At 15% unemployment, 10 million were out of work. 800,000 students boycotted the schools. The adults lost confidence and, fearing the youth, eventually passed the Millennium Educational Reform Act, AKA the BR Act...

It is not the children who have failed the adults, but instead the adults, their generational masculinity and their institutions who have failed their children. The addition of new backstory regarding Nanahara's father is testament to this: his self-loathing and masculine anxiety simmer in the precarious economy, until they bubble over and Nanahara comes upon the site of his father's undignified suicide.

On the other side of their shared dream, Kitano fails to reciprocate Nakagawa's truthful sight: provided with this rare moment of connection, he instead fetishises his student as an angelic emblem of perfect youth, the exception who justifies his hatred for the rest of her generation. She could perhaps play the role of surrogate daughter, considering how frayed his relationship is with his own: she repeatedly calls him up throughout the film to undermine him and remind him what a failure he is, both as adult and man, specifically. Alternatively, given how concerned the film is with its depictions of young love, at times playing out like a send up of school-based dramedy, their relationship could be seen as an addition to that: the unrequited love of one youthful spirit to another.

By the film's climax, Kitano has realised that merely killing the children that he despises will never grant him the satisfaction he seeks. He is consumed by bitterness, by hatred and by his own masculine failings, eventually giving himself up to suicide by cop. He threatens to shoot Nakagawa, getting himself shot down before the gun he was holding was shown to only fire water and, in his dying moments, he tells his daughter: "If you hate someone then you have to live with the consequences." He, of course, has no intention of living at all.

Exhausted from his own implacable rage, incapable of living with his own ineptitude, Kitano's involvement with the Program, his relationship with his students and his death mirrors the suicide of Nanahara's father: both are faced with challenges to their generational authority which each refuse to take responsibility for, instead shunting said responsibility onto the shoulders of the young. Here, Fukusaka's final film provides a critique of the elders, the entrenched and the empowered, who demand that their children either act out an idyllic fantasy of youth, or die. They who perform this masquerade to obscure their own failings. And are these not the same people today who, lording over economic decline and a nigh-terminal housing crisis condemn that excessive luxury, avocado toast? Twenty years on, no film screams 'OK Boomer' like this one.

If the film has staying power, it is in how much it lends itself to rewatchability. Only once you get past that first encounter with its camp violence and black humour can you begin to embrace its rich tapestry of meaning and the deep humanity at its core. On my latest rewatch, combined with the Making of Battle Royale feature accompanying the Arrow Film release, I noticed something threaded throughout the film that I had previously missed: an ongoing critique on the romanticising power of distance. There is a puzzling moment at the end of the film, where Nakagawa looks back on the island she's escaped saying, "It's beautiful... Even though it's where everyone died". It is the encapsulation of a subplot well hidden in the film's fabric, one mostly told through the language of the film. Shots are taken from across the island, with locations that saw scenes of tragedy and death (such as the infamous Lighthouse) rendered as picturesque snapshots of an island in serene peace.

The most telling instance of this occurs when a slow zoom out transforms a death scene into what could easily pass for a romantic one. That the preceding deathbed conversation left one participant disappointed at the platonic nature of their relationship marks ever more clearly a dissonance between action and meaning.

Chigusa dies beside Sugimura.

After his biting critique of the older generation, here, it would seem, is Fukusaka's message to the youth: Be wary of memory, and how easily repression can transform the harrowing and unimaginable into something effable, even desirable. Rather than a patronising commentary to denigrate those who have not lived through war, it is instead a warning against how a glamourising, romanticisation of violence belies the true nature of living through it; a sentiment made all the more pertinent in the age difference between the director and his cast.

Twenty years later, the cult film's legacy has endured: Quentin Tarantino considers it the best movie he's seen since he began making films and the one he most wishes he was responsible for; casting one of the film's actresses, Chiaki Kuriyama, in Kill Bill.  Of its litany of imitators, there's the obvious, and aforementioned, Hunger Games franchise and a wave of multiplayer video game experiences, but also a surprisingly pleasing run of superhero comics in Dennis "Hopeless" Hallum's Avengers Arena.  Arena, admittedly, has a far lower bodycount than Battle Royale, instead honing in on what makes its predecessor an enduring triumph: not the indulgence in violence, but the exploration of character and the failure of generational masculinity.

On a personal note, I have to say that favourite films are always hard to pin down, since we often have preferred films for a variety of different moods and purposes. Whilst I don't know whether Battle Royale is my favourite film, it is also never not my favourite film.