After a troubled production cycle and post-production stringing out over the course of years, The New Mutants is finally heading to theaters later this year. In addition to showing off the young X-Men of its cast, the new trailer for the final 20th Century Fox-produced X-Men movie also revealed a quick look at the film's main villain, the Demon Bear.
After debuting in Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod's New Mutants #3, the villain played a pivotal role in Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz's The New Mutants #18-20. Under the now-iconic scratchy work of Sienkiewicz, the "Demon Bear Saga" quickly defined New Mutants with a dark tone that set the stage for its most memorable moments and influenced the upcoming horror-tinged movie.
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While the Demon Bear is never shown in full, it appears to attack Maisie Williams' Wolfsbane in a church and confronts Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik later in the trailer.
The original Demon Bear story itself largely centers around the character Dani Moonstar, known as "Mirage" on the team for her ability to materialize the fears or desires of others. Hailing from a Cheyenne background, the death of Dani's parents at the Demon Bear's hands haunted her, but her fellow New Mutants dismissed the fears as superstitious nightmares. When a bloody battle between Dani and the Bear left Dani in the hospital, her teammates were forced to confront the villain's reality and protect their friend on the brink of death.
After that initial encounter, the Demon Bear used its powers to drawn on negative emotions on to menace other X-Men like Warpath and Bishop in more recent years.
If nothing else, the choice of the Demon Bear as an antagonist certainly fits the aesthetic that The New Mutants is trying to convey. In sharp contrast to the light-hearted adventure romps that Marvel Studios is known for, the film bills itself as a psychological horror or thriller. Largely set in a hospital and dark corridors, the trailer even mimics the primary setting of the first Demon Bear arc.
That's not the only similarity, either. After Dani is hospitalized in the original arc and her teammates join together to fight the Demon Bear in her defense, it all comes down to their friend Illyana Rasputin and her Soulsword to defend them. In the new trailer for the film, Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik can be seen summoning her armor and Soulsword for an epic showdown against the otherworldly creature.
While it's not clear if this will be the movie's final fight, there's a twist from the classic comic book that it could still adapt. When the Demon Bear was seemingly defeated, it was discovered that Dani's parents were actually alive, an ancestral curse subsuming them into the Demon Bear's form all along. Given the film's dark tone, it may be optimistic to hope for such a happy ending.
The elements of the horror genre that this film leans into are a big part of what made Sienkiewicz and Claremont's creative decisions in the New Mutants comic so novel in the first place. Up until the Demon Bear storyline, the New Mutants were essentially just the junior X-Men, but this tale established the team as one that would test the boundaries of where a mainstream superhero comic could go. Despite the film's troubled path to theaters, the Demon Bear could help give The New Mutants a similarly unique, even game-changing identity in a crowded superhero movie scene.
The New Mutants stars Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as Wolfsbane, Anya Taylor-Joy (Atlantis) as Magik, Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) as Cannonball, Blu Hunt (The Originals) as Dani Moonstar and Henry Zaga (13 Reasons Why) as Sunspot. The film arrives April 3, 2020.