X-Men Origins: Wolverine
(This Contains Spoilers!)
Today marks the first time I’ve ever seen a movie by myself. The reviews hadn’t been good but I felt it was my duty as an X-Men fan to check out the latest Marvel flick, which is probably one of their laziest yet.
Now I like most people love Wolverine and Hugh Jackman has always been great in the role but one thing I’ve never liked about Wolverine is various writer’s interpretations of his origin. I understand if somebody wanted to make a Wolverine spinoff and I could see why you’d want to start with his origin, but with all the liberties that writers have taken with comics over the years, there really wasn’t any good source material to start with. There was that Origins comic years back but frankly I find that anything that wasn’t developed by the characters’ creators (In this case Len Wein and John Romita Sr.) shouldn’t be considered canon. So what they did here was use Origins as a jumping off point and then basically make up whatever shit they wanted to. It’s not all bad, but for a casual comic geek like myself it was a butchery of the X-Men universe.
Instead of going through the film’s storyline, I’m just gonna start with my complaints regarding certain details, characters and whatever comes to mind. So Wolverine starts out as some kid in the 1840s right? Yeah but here’s the first thing I couldn’t stand… His brother is Sabretooth? When has that ever been in any comic? I guess they wanted to come up with an explanation for why their rivalry is so intense but seriously his brother? That seems like an easy way out and talk about being unfaithful to the character. I don’t really get why they even used Sabretooth since they already had him portrayed in a completely different fashion in the first X-Men movie. So what, did Sabretooth forget he was brothers with Wolverine? Or did he just feel like not bringing it up? What a stupid plot device.
I also don’t understand why they felt they needed to cram in so many characters, regardless if they actually added anything. It’s like “Oh man we’ve never used Gambit in a movie, let’s put him in this!” it’s not like the character even had any depth or a strong actor behind him. Or how about the addition of Blob? According to this movie he used to be a member of “Team X” but I never recall that being part of his background. He was just some strong obese jerk who left Xavier’s school to join Magneto’s “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.” So they just took whatever characters they felt like and made them do whatever they wanted. I mean they made Deadpool a villain, what the hell was that? And now he has like swords coming out of his wrists? It’s pointless throwing in characters like Cyclops or whoever the hell Dominic Monahagan was supposed to be in a movie about Wolverine. If you’re gonna throw all those characters in, then you might as well just make another X-Men movie, why complicate things?
Ignoring some of the annoying details, how about some of the more positive points? Okay so the action sequences are impressive and I’ll admit it was definitely entertaining. Hugh Jackman was still as good as he’s ever been playing old Wolvie and I always enjoy his wisecracks. The film definitely falls into familiar action movie cliches but I wasn’t surprised. Though I can’t believe the makers of the film didn’t catch on. You know there is something wrong when you have two separate scenes where a camera pans out and a character screams “Noooo!” It was a bad script but the cast tries their best to work with the material.
So it wasn’t any kind of abomination but it was definitely a wasted opportunity. They really should of done some more comics and worked more vigorously at the script. It’s even the little things, like when Stryker says “Your country needs you.” and Wolverine says “I’m Canadian”, I’m sitting here thinking “The people behind the X-Team were never American, they were also Canadian.” Why did they change that? I’ll tell you why, because they probably didn’t even know they were unfaithful and it shows… For shame.