The New Mutants creator has some big issues with the new movie

Bob McLeod, the artist who originally created The New Mutants with writer Chris Claremont, has some major problems with the new movie.

After innumerable delays, The New Mutants opened this weekend and swept up around $7 million at the box office, which isn’t great but also about all you could expect with so many theaters in the US still closed thanks to COVID-19 and people understandably wary of piling into a poorly ventilated room with strangers for two hours at a time.

Critically, the X-Men spinoff has been a disaster, and we can new count artist and original New Mutants creator Bob McLeod among the detractors.

McLeod came up with the New Mutants characters, who have been starring in comics since the ’80s, with writer Chris Claremont, and he had some issues with the way director Josh Boone’s movie depicted his creations. “I was very excited when I heard they were making a New Mutants movie,” McLeod wrote on Facebook. “I thought making it into a horror movie was perhaps an interesting idea, but not at all how the characters should be introduced to the public at large. But, hey, my characters in a movie! I never would have thought that would actually happen.”

"But then, I was disappointed when they didn’t give Dani braids, although I like Blu Hunt. I was disappointed when Rahne wasn’t a redhead with spiky hair, although I adore Maisie Williams. I was disappointed that Sam isn’t tall and gawky, although I do like Charlie Heaton. But mainly I was very disappointed that Roberto isn’t short and dark-skinned. Yet another example of Hollywood white-washing. There’s just no excuse. So basically, #JoshBoone erased everything I contributed to the way the characters look. And now, the movie has come out at last, and apparently they’ve credited someone named Bob Macleod as co-creator. They couldn’t even be bothered to check the spelling of my name sometime in the last three years. And that can’t be fixed. That will be on the movie forever. I think I’m done with this movie."

In the comics, Roberto da Costa, aka Sunspot, is a bi-racial Brazilian whose experience with racism actually manifests his powers. Actor Henry Zaga, who plays him in the movie, is Brazilian, but clearly he didn’t match McLeod’s conception of the character.

And the misspelling of McLeod’s name is pretty dire; I mean, all they had to do was use Google.

The New Mutants is out in theaters now, and Maisie Williams, at least, is taking all the bad reviews in stride:

At least someone’s having fun with it.

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