After three years of waiting, The New Mutants is finally screening in select theaters. No matter how the film performs, its story is unlikely to prove as entertainingly topsy-turvy as the long road director Josh Boone had to traverse to make the film, filled with rewrites, reshoots, delays, and the very real possibility of the project getting shelved before release due to the studio being unhappy with Boone's vision. According to sources at Vulture, one aspect of that vision that particularly raised some eyebrows was an early draft of the script which featured Ororo Munroe aka Storm from the X-Men in place of the character of the caretaker Cecilia Reyes, played by Alice Braga.

"[Storm] was their sadistic jailer. It felt like the kids were being tortured. If the X-Men are holding [the young mutants] there, it can't feel different from the mental furniture that audiences bring into the theater knowing that the X-Men are good guys. Storm like that made no sense."

Writing a sadistic version of Storm feels strange to say the least since the weather goddess is particularly known for her empathetic nature. She is also easily one of the most popular X-Men, who often acts as Professor X's second-in-command. Portraying a Storm who tortures children would have caused a great deal of outrage among fans, especially since Boone had previously stated that the Storm character in his film would have been the same as the one appearing in X-Men: Apocalypse instead of an evil doppelganger.

"Originally, Professor X and Storm were in it, and Storm very much played the Alice Braga role. Over the course of months, a new studio head came in, they said they didn't want any X-Men movies to take place in the past anymore, as if that was the reason that Apocalypse was bad. So we were put in the position where we kind of rewrote it to be set now in a nebulous [point in time], because nobody knew how the movies had turned out. Dark Phoenix wasn't out yet. Yeah, it's there - they talk about Professor X and those things, but it doesn't have cameos from anyone or anything like that."

Ultimately, both Professor X and Storm were removed from The New Mutants, and the larger world of the X-Men was only referenced in passing. The most significant connection the film retained was confirming that the character of Magik is the younger sister of Colossus, and even there, a scene depicting Colossus saving Magik from a wheat thresher on their farm in Russia was removed because the budget did not allow for the extra CGI.

Directed and co-written by Josh Boone, The New Mutants features a lead cast of Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane, Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin/Magik, Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie/Cannonball, Henry Zaga as Roberto da Costa/Sunspot, Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar/Mirage and Alice Braga as Dr. Cecilia Reyes. The film is available to be viewed in select theaters. This story originated at Vulture.