X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Review by Loc

The Saturday morning X-Men cartoon was ridiculously awful that it was sometimes good. To some of you younger folks, you actually liked those episodes with horrible animation and bad voice acting, so kudos to you. I enjoyed it for the sheer audacity of mind-bogglingly stupidity. Like any episode that featured Cable was awesome! One time, he has a prisoner handcuffed and kneeling, and the X-Men are running to stop him. Cable unpins a grenade with his mouth and proceeds to spit the pin onto the prisoner’s head, and exclaims, “Plasma grenade!” You just start laughing at the ridiculousness. Wait, this is a review for the new Wolverine flick…Quick hit: if only you could laugh in the same way. Sigh.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the latest entry from the mutant universe, courtesy of Hugh Jackman. Ripped beyond belief, Jackman steps up as the lead actor and executive producer of this summer blockbuster, and delivers something to you in the form of celluloid. It’s not a great movie, it’s not even a good movie, it sometimes borders on bad, but starts well enough, yet also devolves with each passing minute after the halfway mark. Hmm, if that last “sentence” was a jumbled mess, then you might get the idea of what this movie has to offer.

Aimed to capitalize on the hugely popular Wolverine, X-Men Origins: Wolverine also acts to unveil the secrets behind our claw-minded friend and bridge the gap between his past and the first X-Men flick. And boy do we get some history, as seen in the opening 2 minute montage that covers every major war since the 1850s and places Wolverine and Sabretooth in Forest Gump-like situations. Before that, we see how Wolverine was a sickly boy with Sabretooth a semi-good companion, and it all starts to make sense. Nevermind that they vaguely stay true to the comic history, this flick wasn’t meant to be a comic-accurate adaptation of any sort.

We quickly skip to the near-present, maybe it was 20 years ago, maybe it was yesterday. Nothing is really dated, but it is only supposed to be 6 years after an Asian-flavored war, so who knows. One thing is for certain, you can find isolated cabins located at the very edge of ravines in the Canadian Rockies. Good thing, too, since Wolverine is all into isolation and stuff.

Whatever the case, the movie takes the pacing of an epileptic seizure where we see Wolverine serene with his chick for a little while. Then bad things happen, he gets mad, a little, agrees to undergo some experimentation, and poof, metal-laced Wolverine is born. It’s funny, it was like an epic eight month storyline in the comics that detailed the intricacies of the torturous process, even in the various cartoons, at least an episode or half an episode was dedicated to it. In this flick, which one would think would focus a lot on this area, spends about five minutes in the lab. That’s like the same amount of time in all the other flashback scenes from X-Men 1, 2, and 3, haha.

Back to the erratic pacing, Wolverine runs away, gets a little comfortable. Then he gets hunted, blows stuff up, rides a motorcycle to Vegas, rides a motorcycle to New Orleans, meets Gambit, flies to New Jersey, and fights everyone. It’s really weird how slowly and quickly the story moves in the span of a half hour.

But wait, this is the summer blockbuster season, it doesn’t have to have a good story or pacing. Hmmm, tell that to The Dark Knight. Hell, tell that to Iron Man even. I’ll say this until I die, you don’t have to make a stupid movie just because it’s an action movie. You don’t have to make a crappy movie just to make a summer movie. Don’t play down to the competition, make them play up to you. Fight fight fight. Go fight win tonight, boogey down, alright alright! Dammit, got stuck in my high school football flashbacks.

Which brings us to the cast. There’s a fat-faced dude playing Gambit, the actor is from Friday Night Lights I believe. He does OK, but really, what the hell is Gambit doing here, being shoe-horned into scenes? Wasted potential. There’s others like that, the Blob, Agent Zero, Cyclops, even Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds is an annoying smartass, which is perfect for Deadpool, who is also an annoying smartass. And he does a nice turn as Wade Wilson, pre-Deadpool. Again though, it’s like throwing a bunch of random characters in there for no apparent reason, wasted wasted.

Ah, but Liev Schrieber checks in as Sabretooth, and he’s pretty good in this role. He’s physical enough to hold his own in the action sequences, and he actually brings a nice bit of charisma that was unexpected. He plays a nice foil to Hugh Jackman.
And Mr. Jackman, who has always done a very good job at bringing Wolverine to life. Sure, he’s too tall, but you’re never gonna cast a 5’2” actor as a lead in a Hollywood blockbuster. Jackman got it right in the first flick, and has done a good job since. In this starring vehicle, it’s a little less stellar, lots of roaring and semi-badassness, but almost too fake. Worst of all, the poses, the damn poses. He and Sabretooth take turns hitting the “five second” poses after every claw-swipe and fingernail thrust. It looks damn silly.

The silliest pieces of this film are actually the “history” nods. In what was as bad as the Star Wars prequels, Wolverine aims to bridge gaps that no one actually cared about. Stuff with Cyclops, stuff with lost memories, there are explanations that need not be there. It’s like when you’re selling your car and you decide to point out the rusty scratches and dented-underside. If you just don’t bring it up, no one will care, but since you did bring it up, boy was that stupid. Or it’s like Obi-Wan picking up a lightsaber after chopping off Anakin’s limbs. Take your pick.

Overall, it’s a mediocre film. It starts off mildly entertaining, but begins down a slippery slope of craptacularness that it never recovers from. The action sequences are big, and while I expected them to be over-the-top-boring, they were simply over-the-top-mundane. Some of the CGI was horrendous, like the bathroom scene where Wolverine found himself as an extra in Space Jam and Bugs Bunny was giving him his wacky cartoon claws, yuck. I believe X-Men Origins: Wolverine represents this generation’s version of Rambo Part II or Commando. These are not good movies, but they are action flicks that we all watched, and they pass for entertainment in lieu of anything substantial at that moment. Out of six claws, Wolverine snikts three. Snikt! And the unintentional Airwolf cameo was high-larious!