I remember walking away from the midnight premier of X-Men: The Last Stand with my fanboy heart crushed. The faults spread beyond unnecessary characters and plot holes, things like the immediate night to day transition as Magento’s army crossed the bridge made X3 not just a bad X-men movie, but a bad film in general.
Hating both Brett Ratner and Fox for their abortion of a franchise near and dear to my heart (especially considering how truly great X2 was) I swore to never get excited about any X-men film news in the future.
Then came the trailer for X-men Origins: Wolverine.
I'd seen a few promo pics of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine but forced myself to not get excited. Memories of Angel's useless inclusion and Cyclops' death in the X3 told me to just ignore it altogether. Pictures of Deadpool and Blob floated out next and while interesting, I still couldn't commit. But as fate would have it, the flipping pages of the Marvel Studios logo had me chomping at the bits for the trailer to start.
And the trailer delivered. Snippets of Wolverine and Sabertooth fighting in various wars, huge explosions, and Hugh Jackman lunging from the Weapon X tank in a feral rage. Throw in a secondary cast with fan favorites like Gambit and young Cyclops and I was ready to roll. The trailer had all of the pieces to make one solid Wolverine puzzle.
Next came the actual film. And sadly, all of the pieces to Wolverine’s story were tied together with X3 caliber plot holes and helicopter crashes.
As in the other X-men films, the movie’s introductory scenes sold me. X1 had a young Magneto in a concentration camp, X2 had Nightrcrawler storming the White House, and even X3 had Angel cutting his own wings off. Great introductions worthy of the pristine X-Men title.
Likewise X-Men Origins starts off with a brief explanation of Wolverine and Sabertooth’s relationship and the complete montage of them fighting in conflicts from the Civil War through Vietnam. Both sequences are fantastic and do decent jobs of grounding such fantastic characters in reality. Even seeing Liev Schreiber storm a machine gun nest at Normandy on all fours works thanks to the director and editor's efforts. Unfortunately, the suspension of disbelief stops here.
The rest of the movie suffers from an ebb and flow between a serious tale of revenge and a summer popcorn flick. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but some of the decisions made by characters just left me shrugging my shoulders. And the killing machine that is Wolverine is tricked by lies that a six year old could see through.
Speaking of killing machines, my biggest beef with X-men origins is that Wolverine never just went off. All the promo and hype surrounding the film was based on the audience seeing what made the monster. With the exception of one kill at the finale, there is a severe lack of blood and brutality for someone that's "the best at what they do."
As a fan, I know what Wolverine can do. I'm used to seeing panels of him drenched in blood and watching the skin regenerate over his exposed ribs. I'm not asking specifically for an R-rated Wolverine movie but come on... Dark Knight was PG-13 and it felt way more gritty than X-Men Origins.
Plot holes and family friendly violence aside, Wolverine's latest outing is also marred by technical flaws on the film making front. Throughout the majority of the movie Wolverine's claws look terrible. One scene in particular where Wolverine looks at his recently adamantium fitted claws in a bathroom mirror, feature claws that look like a cartoon. With the exception of a few snikt-s, Logan's weapons of choice scream CGI placeholders.
Another area that looks bad are the film's many green screened sequences. Hats off to Hugh Jackman and the film's stunt team as a whole, but their efforts are greatly depreciated due to poor CGI and green screen techniques. Again the grounded in reality shots from the beginning are quickly forgotten when viewing the film's final fight, which made me think about backgrounds and skies from the first Mortal Kombat movie.
Like many comic to film adaptations, X-Men Origins: Wolverine draws from stellar source material but fails to deliver anything more than a generic action flick. Everyone from Hugh Jackman to Ryan Reynolds have their moments, but the stylized coolness of all the action is lost on a plot so tame that it makes Stan Lee look like a loose cannon.
Is it better than X3? In a sense. X3 was an cheap shot that knocked the fanboy wind out of me. The battle for legitimacy in X-men films started there, so I was a little more prepared for this latest attack. Is it a decent action movie? Sure, buy your ticket and feel distracted for a bit. Is it a service to Wolverine? Not by a long shot bub.
The Verdict:
If your sun rises and sets to thoughts of Wolverine, hopefully you will love this film. If you're expecting the next Iron Man, best wait for Iron Man 2. All in all a forgettable action movie that fails to embody the killer instinct that is and always will be Wolverine.
(5/10)
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