Headscratchers / The New Mutants

The New Mutants can't ask for help?

• So...why the New Mutants don't ask the other X-Men for help? The New Mutants don't have some sort of "adultophobia", the X-Men can be contacted fairly easily, Cerebro means the entire U.S.A. is monitored by them, and the X-Men are always willing to help mutants in need. And even if you say "the wouldn't believe the Demon Bear's existence", the fact that they are held against their will by William Striker-like humans is enough for them to come rescue the New Mutants.
  • Who'd to say that they have ties to the X-Men in this universe? For all we know, they aren't tied to the X-Men here, but their forming is the result of the lab holding them prisoner in the first place. The second trailer definitely gives this impression.
    • The X-Men exist to protect ALL mutants, and Cerebro means no mutant escapes the X-Men's notice. And considering their past with humans like William Stryker and Bolivar Trask, the idea that they would stand there and do nothing while humans torture and experiment on the New Mutants is ridiculous.
    • That doesn't mean they can save everyone or nothing manages to avoid their attention. After all, it took years until they learned about Trask and years for them to learn about everything Stryker's done. And sometimes, adaptations do change things.
    • Also, related to the whole "adaptations doing things differently" thing, in this universe, Deadpool, not Cable, set up X-Force.
    • "the X-Men can be contacted fairly easily, Cerebro means the entire U.S.A. is monitored by them" That is pointedly untrue; its been shown in just about every version that mutants continue to be mistreated under the X-Men's 'watch' simply because there's far too much mistreatment for the X-Men to be able to deal with all of it, and Cerebro is not a flawless system that is being monitored 24/7. If the facility is adequately shielded from telepathic probe, as literally every badguy has succeeded in doing since forever, they'd have no means to track it, and since the kids are trapped, they have no means to contact or draw attention to their plight.
  • Considering Reyes' forcefields prevent Illyana from teleporting away, it's probably able to keep Cerebro out just as easily.
• How come neither Dani or any of the other young mutants asked for a phone call to their families or anyone on the outside? If they asked and Dr. Reyes refuses then surely they would know something was wrong.
  • Do you really think Dr. Reyes would allow them access to the outside world anyways? Also, it doesn't really matter if they knew something was wrong as Reyes would do anything in her power to keep them locked up.

Where is Colossus?

• Related to the above question, one of these Mutants is Illyana; Colossus’ baby sister. How come he isn’t barging in the front door trying to save her?!
  • Considering which characters appeared in which films it's likely they'll never acknowledge the Colossus connection.
  • He has no idea she's there, or even that she's missing? We don't know what's going on with the kids in terms of their family; many of them might be assumed dead or their family believes they're in a facility like Xavier's, or a legit mental health facility, and given Colossus is on the other side of the world from his home, if he's not been contacted by any family about her, he'd be in the dark. Especially since many versions of Colossus tend to be shunned.
    • For what it's worth, the love/hate thing came MUCH later in the comics continuity. During Magik's original tenure with the New Mutants, she and Colossus were as close as you'd expect from siblings.
  • Colossus must be busy dealing with Deadpool.
  • Or they're not siblings in this universe. After all, there's no way in hell Siryn has the same relationship with Banshee in this universe, given Banshee was killed between movies in his youth, whereas in the comics, Siryn is his daughter.
  • We also don't know he's NOT looking for her. Love/hate relationship or not, family is family. If Piotr knows what's really going on with the facility and is able to help, he's probably chomping at the bit to get in there and rescue his sister. However, as several people pointed out, the X-Men might not be able to locate the facility due to Reyes' force field.

Who are the Smiley Men?

• They weren't in the orignal comics.
  • In the comics, the New Mutants faced off with a mutant supremacy group known as the Right, who wore smiley-face masks. But they seem to be more supernatural in the film.
• This, is NOT Reyes's fault. as they are manifestations of Illyanna's Dark and Troubled Past thanks to Dani's powers.

Which Earth does this movie take place in?

• It can't be Earth-199999 since Deadpool started the X-Men, so which Earth is it?
  • Earth-199999 is the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which Deadpool and X-Men have yet to appear. It is likely the Earth that has appeared in the other X-Men films but that one did not involve Deadpool starting the X-Men either.
  • Could it be the same earth that the most recent Deadpool films are set in?

The X-Men

• At one point in the movie, the group thinks that it's possible that Reyes' superior is Charles Xavier and they're being trained to join the X-Men eventually. The only problem is that when Dani sees inside Reyes' mind, footage from Logan is shown of the child mutants that were kept at the Transigen labs. This suggests that the movie takes place after Logan. So this would mean that the X-Men are all dead. So why would they think that Reyes is working for Xavier?
  • The footage doesn't necessarily mean that the film is set after Logan, as the Transigen labs experiments had been going on for years. There's no reason to assume that the movie isn't set in the present day i.e. 2019 or 2020...nearly a decade before the events of Logan, at a time when the X-Men were very much active. Also, the footage doesn't necessarily even mean its the same continuity as Logan; Essex Corp could have been conducting experiments on mutant children/clones in multiple realities/timelines.

Chores

• If Roberto cooks their meals, isn't it only fair for another kid to wash the dishes? If kitchen duty as a whole is his assigned task, how come we never see the others doing chores of equal weight? It looks really bad that the Latino kid is the only one who does any kind of housework in a movie already full of racial blunders.
  • It’s definitely a blunder. But I think that it might be a pointed method to teach him responsibility since he definitely comes from the most privileged background out of the group. Others might have chores that aren’t shown, but chores seem to be reserved as a punishment for the rest of the patients (who just so happen to be mostly white).

How is Illyana able to be imprisoned?

• If Illyana is able to teleport through space and into her personal Limbo dimension, that begs a question. How is a force field able to keep her contained? Shouldn’t she only need to jump a few feet to make it out of the boundaries of the barrier? And in the end of the movie, Dr. Reyes traps her in a bubble. Why doesn’t she just teleport out of it?
  • Dr. Reyes might be an Omega Level mutant, with forcefield powers that surpasses even Illyana's powers.
  • Additionally, ''Apocalypse" established that force fields exist that can prevent mutants like Jean Grey and Nightcrawler, another teleporter, from using their powers.

Where did Illyana learn her racism?

• She's Russian. Where exactly did she learn so many Native American specific slurs that even many Americans wouldn't know? While certainly racism exists in Russia, Native Americans are not a major target, partly because there are basically none of them there. (In fact there are Russian TV talk show hosts claiming that Native Americans are all Russian!) On top of that, considering her troubled upbringing she'd have even less chance to encounter much information about Native Americans. Did she specifically study racism after Dani arrived, just to find a way to harass her?