X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Directed by Gavin Hood (Tsoti)

Starring Huge Jackman, Live Schreiber, Danny Huston, Ryan Reynolds, will.i.am

Has any series been as weirdly developed as the X-men series? The first one was good to build up a sentimental and in depth plot, but lacked any cool action and development of some of the most memorable cartoon and comic action heroes of all time. X2 was fantastic and it’s a film I hold high when mentioning “greatest comic book movies of all time.” The Last Stand, without Bryan Singer, was a total display of forced action and ignorance of a strong plot it held in the first two.

Enter Wolverine, the most popular character of the comics and of the movies, and arguably the biggest male actor on staff, Hugh Jackman. Don’t let the title mislead anyone, it’s called Origins, not Origin, which is the graphic novel this is loosely (and I mean loosely) based off of. It takes less than a fraction of parts from the graphic novel, adds in some absurd and confusing X-men plot turns that seemingly don’t add up, and develops a load of silly questions that lead up to the beginning of the first X-men film.

It’s a tough task for director Gavin Hood, who previously received much acclaim for his work on Tsoti, to take such a treasured myth of a comic book character and know what to include and add. Unfortunately, additions like Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), Silverfox (Lynn Collins), and a not-so-Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), prove to be useless, temporary, and campy. The special effects are even a little questionable for such a highly touted blockbuster and the script seems to have been an afterthought with some really cheesy lines that even the original 1960′s comic book series of X-Men would question.

Origins talks about James and his brother Viktor, who run away from home after a huge domestic fight. They become men (Hugh Jackman and Live Schreiber respectively) who fight in wars for their country (which is Canada, but never bashed into our heads like it is when others represent USA). Of course, they both have their healing powers and can’t die, even when they are put to die via Firing Squad. William Stryker (Danny Huston) offers them a spot on Team X, a team of powerful mutants such as themselves and wants them to retreat a meteorite with particular material Stryker wants. When on mission in Nigeria, Stryker commands that the whole village be killed but James doesn’t want to follow through, but his half-brother, Viktor, does.

James (now Logan) many years later, is now living with his girlfriend Kayla, but after Viktor starts hunting down all of Team X’s members and kills Logan’s girlfriend in the process, Logan wants revenge and allows Styker to make him into Wolverine. Then we get some crazy fight scenes with some really silly CGI and some bizarre importance on characters that never really were that important. The film is essentially about Hugh Jackman (who is also a producer of the movie) and Live Schreiber who both put in fairly great performances doing whatever they can do. Also, points to Hood for making this the Sabretooth we’ve all been waiting for.

It really depends how you look at Origins to see whether you enjoy it or not. In correlation to the comic book world, there are a few cool moments in there that will allow the geek to come out (like identifying all the unnamed mutants), but when taken with that lens, plenty will be super critical. If you just decide to go in and watch it with very little expectations and such, it could be quite an entertaining flick. It’s no Dark Knight or Spiderman, or even X2. Sadly, Wolverine has the power internally and physically as any of the aforementioned characters and as a sole character, has the ability to drive a plot home as powerful as the others. But here, it just doesn’t deliver and it ends up falling fairly flat with a few jolts of adamantium jockeyed in there.

67/100