The New Mutants Trailer Breakdown: 8 Things You Need To See
6. Charlie Heaton's Cannonball
Fox
The next mutant in line for a key part in the film is Cannonball (aka Sam Guthrie), one of the New Mutants' founding members and a second-in-command of their sister group, X-Force (a group also in line for a cinematic feature).
Played by Charlie Heaton in the film, Cannonball is the first to meet Sunspot (who we'll get to in a second), and later finds himself surrounded by some creepy looking coal miners. He's got a broken arm for most of its duration, and later finds himself in the company of a particularly ghoulish fellow with fellow mutant Majik.
In the comics, Guthrie has the ability to generate thermo-chemical energy from his skin, making it so that he can propel himself through the air pretty much like an actual cannonball would. While he - like Wolfsbane - doesn't show off his powers in the trailer, it's unlikely that he'll be de-powered for long. Expect him to take a leading role come its release.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
