The New Mutants co-creator Bob McLeod has accused director Josh Boone of "white-washing" one of the characters, while also highlighting a major error in the credits.
The perennially delayed X-Men horror spin-off has finally made its way to US cinemas today (August 28), with a UK release set for September 4. But if the scathing first reviews are anything to go by, it really won't have been worth the wait.
McLeod, the artist who co-created The New Mutants with writer Chris Claremont, has plenty of reservations about the film himself, most notably what he described as the "white-washing" of the character Roberto da Costa, who's played by Henry Zaga in the movie.
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In a series of Tweets, McLeod detailed his many issues with the changes they'd made to his characters.
"I was very excited when I heard they were making a New Mutants movie," he began. "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."
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He continued: "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."
If all of that wasn't enough to leave the artist disillusioned, he was then dumbfounded to discover a serious error in the credits: they'd spelt his name wrong.
"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," he added.
"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."
The casting of Henry Zaga as Roberto has come under a lot of criticism, due to the fact that the character is Afro-Brazilian in the comics and originally read as Black.
Boone has acknowledged this criticism, but he still stands by his casting choice, saying he felt Zaga fitted the description of the spoiled daddy's boy he was trying to portray.
"I didn't care so much about the racism I've heard about in Brazil, about light-skinned versus dark-skinned," he told Gizmodo.
"To me, it was I wanted to represent Brazil in a positive way and I wanted to find somebody who seems like he could look like a guy who's had the silver spoon in his mouth, who has like a really rich dad and [Henry] just exemplified all these things."
He added in the interview: "My goal was to find the best actor who, because they've done so little work, was at least the closest to kind of what I saw in my head for the character.
"There was nobody who [could] hold a candle to Henry. It's like maybe if Henry didn't exist, I would have found somebody who was darker-skinned who exemplified what I needed. But it was never about the colour of their skin for me."
The New Mutants is out now in the US and on September 4 in the UK.
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