CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Thursday, May 14, 2009

this entry brought to you by the pomegranates, "thunder meadow"





A while ago a friend of mine told me he read my page every day, and when I asked him if he ever saw a movie based on my recommendation, he said no, but he didn't really watch that many movies based on comic books. I told him that he was being ridiculous, that I review lots of movies that aren't based on comic books. But ever since he said that, I started to notice, maybe he's kind of right. For one, almost all of my full-length reviews happen to be about comic book movies (because I tend to put a priority on seeing those in the theater, which tend to be the ones I write full-length reviews for), and for another, I give positive reviews to nearly every single comic book movie I ever see, even if it is demonstrably bad. I gave Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Punisher and Daredevil all thumbs up, regardless of the fact that they were, for the most part, not very good. But then, I feel as if I ended up enjoying them because I didn't expect anything out of them.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a bit like this. The movie got an awful score at Rottentomatoes.com-- a mere 37%-- and every person I've heard who has seen it thought it sucked. Yet I actually enjoyed myself for the most part, and thought the score was much lower than it deserved. With that said, there was always something about the trailers that told me to lower my expectations, so I didn't go into it expecting anything approaching X-Men 2 levels.

Let's get the major stuff out of the way. As I was initially concerned with, there was mutant overload. Wolverine would have been a better paced movie had they stuck with the major characters, just Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Deadpool, because the peripheray mutants felt like mere fan service, there to give a wink to the fans but ultimately disposible. The Blob was there for comic relief, and while he moved the plot slightly, the script could've easily been rewritten to leave him out entirely, and it would've been a better movie for it. Ditto Gambit, who has been a fan favorite in the comics for over a decade, but is thrown in here clumsily and is given a disservice-- but even if he was executed properly, this is the wrong vehicle for him. Will I Am's presense as John Wraith is completely out of place-- I would expect him to show up in perhaps Fast and Furious, but him having a role in an X-Men spin-off reeks of B-movie-ism. Then there is the ultimate bad-guy during the climax. When he showed up it almost illicited a groan from me, and the ensuing battle is so filled with hackneyed ideas I couldn't help but feel disappointed. For example, the climactic battle is fought with a mutant controlled by William Stryker (a character established in X-2), and the puppetteer actually types in actions via a keyboard in a control room. It honestly wouldn't have been any more ridiculous had him holding an X-Box 360 controller.

There's also the fact that there's nothing in the script that you haven't seen a bunch of times before. There are deaths you see coming. There are twists you know are going to happen. There are big, dumb explosions, there are plot contrivances, there are two seperate moments where the camera pulls above a character via a crane shot as he looks up and shouts "Nooooooooo!" There's nothing here that seems anywhere near as inspired as anything in the first two X-Men films. Another complaint: Wolverine assumes that you've seen the first two movies, and doesn't actually explain that Wolverine has an incredible healing factor until nearly the end, nor does it ever explain why he is so old. I can imagine an audience member being confused, wondering if Wolverine were simply immortal, invulnerable like Superman, or if all superheroes in the movie can take a beating like he can.

But with all that said, I genuinely enjoyed Wolverine, as disappointing in some aspects as it was. Liev Shrieber is, frankly, awesome as Sabretooth, who is a pretty fearsome character. I was disappointed that Brian Cox didn't return as William Stryker, yet character actor Danny Huston filled his shoes nicely, and seems to be having a lot of fun as the character. Ryan Reynolds is pitch-perfect as Deadpool; a funnyman without being obnoxious. Even Lynn Collins who plays Silverfox, a relatively minor role, is pretty good, with her beautiful, expressive eyes, and is such a beauty one wonders how we haven't seen her in more. Then there's Hugh Jackman. There isn't much acting for Jackman to do in the movie, really, but that's not a complaint-- he feels like Wolverine, and pulls it off so naturally when you see him being boyish and charming in interviews it's genuinely disconcerting-- Wolverine doesn't sing and dance. He gives people the stink eye and chomps on cigars. Watching Jackman as Wolverine feels like watching Shwarzenneger or Eastwood in their prime-- he is bad ass, and even after watching him host the Oscars, it's nearly impossible to imagine him not being badass.

This is the reason why I felt like Wolverine worked reasonably well, despite its clumsiness. I enjoyed watching Shrieber and Jackman out bad-ass one another while giant explosions went off everywhere. It's worth noting that the first half of the film, with an intriguing background on Logan, a compelling love interest, and a cool government conspiracy with the Weapon X program, is good. After that point the story itself becomes quite a mess, but it was paced with so much emphasis on action that I didn't really feel like I was missing anything, and the action was compelling enough; director Gavin Hood has a good feel for how to take audiences for a ride, action wise. Frankly, it's awesome to watch a dude with 10 inch knives that come out of his knuckles cut fools up. If this movie had been directed by a more talented director like Bryan Singer, whose instincts would've been to slow down and delve into the character's lives, the movie would've completely fallen apart due to the haphazard script. Then again, if Bryan Singer was attached to direct, he would've insisted on a better script altogether. I found X-Men Origins: Wolverine to be enjoyable, but far from great; I liked it about as much as the equally flawed and uneven X-Men 3.
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with love from CRS @ 12:09 PM 

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