Sean’s thoughts about X-Men Origins: Wolverine
It was bad.
And if that’s not enough for you, there are some more specific, spoileriffic thoughts after the cut.
I was initially going to write a proper review, but putting thoughts together coherently has never been my strong suit. So instead I’ve opted to go with a more rambling, non-linear, Twitter-ish approach to expressing myself.
(And I’m also leaving aside all comic-nerd feelings I might have had. So I won’t be going into detail about how they fucked up Deadpool and the Blob, or how much better a movie it would’ve been if they simply adapted Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X”…although they did and it would. These are just my thoughts as a moviegoer.)
Why were Logan and Victor friends all these years? Every scene they were in, it looked like Logan couldn’t STAND him. The “they’re brothers” excuse doesn’t cut it; I saw nothing that suggested even a hint of brotherly affection on Logan’s part. I don’t understand why he didn’t leave the FIRST time Victor tried to rape a woman or kill an innocent.
Sabretooth leaping around looks less like a large, feral cat pouncing than it does a precious dolphin bobbing along on dry land.
That said, Liev does a great job as Sabretooth. Just the right amount of “Yeah, I can be pretty charming in the few seconds before I kill you.”
When Logan left Stryker’s team, was that really the worst thing they’d done up till that point? Really? Exactly what kinda pansy-ass black ops missions had they been doing before that point?
By the by, Wraith is one of the killers too, so why’s Wolvie so palsy walsy with him later on?
Did Wolverine’s jacket from the first movie really need its own origin? I know it’s the name of the movie, but fuck, why do prequels always think they need to delve into such inconsequential detail?
Ooh, I hope in the next one we learn where he bought that piece of shit truck from “X-Men”! I’ll betcha he didn’t just pick it up cheap from a lot, there’s gotta be a story behind it!
What the fuck is Agent Zero’s power, anyway? Is it a combination of magic bullet firing and leaping ability? How does that work? Is there also a mutant out there who can sprint really well and is an ace with the bow and arrow?
Deadpool too, for that matter. What has he got, the bullet-slicing x-gene? When did just being a general badass become its own super power? Talk about lazy.
Speaking of, Ryan Reynolds was surprisingly good as Deadpool for the, like, three minutes he got to play Deadpool. And I say this as someone who doesn’t much like Ryan Reynolds. He didn’t make Blade Trinity any better, he just made it suck in a different way!
The nickname “Wolverine” isn’t so complicated that it needs a backstory where he obtained it from a friggin’ fairy tale. He has claws. Like a wolverine. The events in this movie are happening too fast to waste time with bullshit.
Speaking of events happening fast, how bout that Silver Fox, huh? Y’know what woulda made me care when she was killed? If she’d had a personality. No, being super nice doesn’t count. But I guess it doesn’t matter too much, since her only purpose in this movie is to die and motivate Wolverine into–
WHOA, but wait a minute! She turns up again at the end! Betcha wish she’d developed a personality earlier, huh? Then maybe we’d care when she died the second time.
Boy, that really kinda says it all about Hollywood right there, doesn’t it? They wanna do a revenge story, perfectly fine. But they still need a love interest, for some reason. Because they need one in every movie, regardless of whether or not it fits into the story. So they bring back the woman they killed off to get the whole revenge story started!
Then again, the writers obviously weren’t satisfied with just a revenge story, seeing as they had to give Wolverine the added incentive of saving a bunch of captive mutie kids. It’s like they wanted to do a revenge movie and then changed their minds halfway through, so they kept giving him extra motivation to do the same damn thing he was gonna do in the first place. Why couldn’t they just pick a story and let it be the story?
Speaking of the unnecessary additions to the plot, Stryker was working with Sabretooth the whole time? Oh my god!!! The only surprise there is how stupid Wolverine was not to realize that instantly.
Okay, so while watching that first fight between Logan and Victor, did anything about it suggest that Logan would have done better if he’d been loaded down with 200 pounds of metal? Would he have been faster? Would he have been better able to dodge a hit, to land a hit?
Fast forward to Fight #2, and apparently so! Bonding metal to your skeleton must also give you the power to not fight like a damn little girl!
Okay, so the adamantium bonding. Here’s where the movie really misfired for me. For what is possibly the defining moment of Wolverine’s character, the whole scene felt like just another scene. Hurry up and get it done and move on to the next one. It didn’t even feel all that traumatic! Bad enough Logan volunteers for the damn thing (which, to be fair, was established in “X2”).
He already has claws! Why are bone claws fine and dandy but metal claws are “Holy shit they turned me into a monster!” The process didn’t screw with his memories, it didn’t try to make him an animal or a military puppet, or any of the dozen ways the whole scenario could have been more horrific. All it did was hurt him a little friggin bit. And then he stabs one guy and runs away. Oooh, epic. Really glad they didn’t oversell it in the marketing with all those shots of a feral Wolverine popping out of the tank.
And why did Stryker even give him the adamantium in the first place? To make the perfect soldier? No, that would be too easy, make too much sense. It was just to see if Logan’s healing factor would allow him to survive, so Stryker could then give the healing factor to Deadpool, which is who he really wants to give the adamantium to. Something just burst in my brain and now my eye is filled with blood.
Oh yeah, because Stryker can somehow replicate mutant powers, I forgot to mention that. HOW can he do that? Dunno! They don’t say! He just can, so I assume it must be easy. Take a pint of blood from Cyclops, pour it into Deadpool’s ear with an eyedropper, and boom, you’ve got Deadpool with laser eyes!
And how’d Wolverine block the optic blast with his claws? And not get, like, knocked back 50 feet into the air?
How’d Stryker even find Cyclops, by the way? Was he on the lookout for kids with red sunglasses who were lying low and NOT blowing things up with their eye lasers?
If Gambit wanted to escape Wolverine, then why didn’t he just DO that instead of interrupting his fight with Creed?
Oh, yeah, Gambit was pretty cool too. Credit where credit’s due.
Someone explain to me how an adamantium bullet is any more effective than any other bullet? Does it have special memory-erasing powers? And how does it pierce his skull, no matter what it’s made of? Is adamantium unbreakable only until it’s hit by more adamantium?
Why use Wade for this Weapon XI shit? The ability to have all these different powers in his body apparently comes from Wolverine, so it could’ve been given to anyone. So why Wade? Just ’cause of his super ninjery skills? What good are those if you’re gonna control him with a joystick like a fucking Super Mario Brother anyway?
Okay, so thinking about at all those captive mutants, I gotta wonder: where were Weapon XI’s ice powers? His electricity powers? His Gambit powers? His diamond skin? His persuasion powers? They were collecting mutants for this very purpose for years, and yet the only powers he exhibits are the ones he gained THAT WEEK.
And where does all Creed’s shit about Logan being an animal come from? He’s pretty damn level-headed throughout the movie. He only ever really gets mad when confronting the dude who killed his wife, so what the fuck does THAT prove?
Okay, so in summation. Weapon X Program: disappointing. Wolverine’s relationship with Sabretooth: unbelievable. His relationship with his wife: not compelling. Stryker’s plan to create a super mutant to kill the other mutants? Too mad scientisty for the hard-ass military man we loved to hate in X2. All the cameos? Completely unnecessary because the average moviegoer won’t care and the fans who’ll get them will hate how unfaithful they are to the comics. Logan’s origin and motivations: muddled and overly convoluted. Couple of decent performances. Couple of decent fight scenes.
I refer you back to what I said in the beginning: It was bad.
May 1st, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Not that I was planning on seeing this in the first place, but your review pretty much cemented WHY I won’t bother. Thanks!
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 am
Sean took a bullet on this one. I’ll probably only see this movie like a did with X3, on late night basic cable when nothing else is on.
Speaking of X3, how bad is Wolverine compared?
Does it have scenes like “I’m the Juggernaut, Bitch”? Or a scene starting in day time only to switch to nighttime when the fighting starts? Or have the bad guys, who have been killing people with their powers throughout the film, just throw a guy off the side of a building so his son can conveniently fly in and save him?
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
“Or have the bad guys, who have been killing people with their powers throughout the film, just throw a guy off the side of a building so his son can conveniently fly in and save him?”
THANK YOU. Most people don’t seem to have a problem with that. And to make it even more explicit, they kill the woman who was with him with their powers, just before taking him away to be thrown.
May 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Nah, Wolverine’s not that bad. X3 had the one-two punch of being poorly made, and also squandering an untold amount of potential.
Wolverine, really, is more lazy than poor, and never really had all THAT much potential to live up to in the first place.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:27 am
I would’ve liked some blood in that horrific childhood scene that’s supposed to scar him for like. Y’know, like when the claws pop out of his knuckles and rip the hell out of his hands. The scene is supposed to convey rage, pain, fear and confusion. It kinda got the rage part, I guess.
We had shots in X2 with Wolverine screaming in pain and looking at his bloody claws after escaping from Weapon X. Where did that go?
Was this in Alkali lake? I didn’t hear them mention that.
So Sabretooth kidnaps Toad and brings him to Stryker, but he’s totally cool working with Sabretooth a few years later?
Xavier never bothered to mention to anyone that Wolverine and Cyclops have something in common? I mean, I guess I could forgive it until toward the end of X2 – it’s not like he’s psychic or anything. But after that, why wouldn’t you say, “btw, Scott, this is where I picked you up when you were a kid.”
How you gonna seal up Deadpool’s mouth? C’mon, how you gonna play him like that? Seriously – you know what his tagline is? THE MERC WITH A MOUTH. All of the rest of his body is negotiable, but he has a mouth. It specifically states in his contract, “Has a mouth.”
All that said, I got what I expected. Some good action, mostly “feh.” Would’ve liked to see a dude carrying a shield just hidden somewhere in the background in the WW2 shots.
Oh, the army didn’t realize there was something wrong with Sabretooth when they saw he had flippin’ claws? We still didn’t know about mutants yet, right?
Why wouldn’t Quicksilver just run out of the place as soon as he was out of the cage? Hell, he’s strong enough to carry people, too.
They should have made Gambit’s eyes black and red. That would be easy.
Wolverine is interesting because every inch of his body is made for violence, and he is the result of that, despite wanting just the opposite. What’s crazy is, this director gets that. He’s talked about it in interviews. So why isn’t the movie about that?
May 7th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
“Wolverine is interesting because every inch of his body is made for violence, and he is the result of that, despite wanting just the opposite. What’s crazy is, this director gets that. He’s talked about it in interviews. So why isn’t the movie about that?”
That’s an interesting point. How much kudos did the film win by having the marketing slogan ‘from the director of Tsotsi’.
They fail to mention ‘Rendition’ though.
Gavin Hood. Hired for his name….and the ability to point a camera at generic action shit.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:59 am
I really enjoyed X-men orgins much more than the firt X-men films, fantastic film, really gritty! Also want to give the game a go too!
October 9th, 2009 at 2:19 am
I really enjoyed Xmen orgins, I thought it was much more gritty and enjoyable than the pervious xmen films!
October 29th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Xmen Origins was my favourite film in the series to date. Much more gritty…less made for the teen audience. I was surprised as I had come to expect pretty average films in the series before it.