The New Mutants Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

2. The Groundbreaking Gay Romance

The film deserves credit for not only offering up one of the few gay romances in the history of the superhero genre, but actually doing so free of the usual coy innuendo and unspoken glances.

The New Mutants features an overt and surprisingly sweet romantic relationship between Moonstar and Wolfsbane, resulting in some of the most emotionally authentic and involving scenes in the entire movie, far away from the nonsense of the focal supernatural plot.

Blu Hunt and Maisie Williams play these parts with a nervy, understated plausibility, doing their level-best to fight back against the film's hurried, uneven pacing.

Without getting into spoiler territory, this subplot also avoids several of the more unsavory tropes associated with LGBT representation in blockbuster cinema, and considering how pronounced the on-screen romance is, it shames just about every other superhero movie out there.

Your move, MCU.