Friday, May 1, 2009

X-Men Origins: Wolverine


Stop! If you have not seen this movie yet you may not want to read what I have to say until you have seen the film. The review you are about to read will contain spoilers, so reader beware. I am not real happy with the movie, so beware of what I may say as well. Continue at your own risk.

"Wolverine" is not a bad movie by any means, it's just not a very good one. Most theaters across the nation had midnight showings so Catchafick went to the ole Springfield 8 to witness the first blockbuster hit of the summer. For months the Internet movie geek community would not shut up about how "Wolverine" was going to suck and that 20th Century Fox is raping many a popular franchises by making awful film adaptations. I will admit that Fox is doing something wrong, so very wrong. All three X-Men movies were for the most part solid, even the much hated X3 which I liked quite a bit. So with a solid franchise like the X-Men, how could Fox mess something like this up? The only thing that I can come up with is that the suits at the studio don't care about making a remarkable film about the most popular mutant of the X-Men. The only thing that they know is that based on the success of three movies, it doesn't really matter how well "Wolverine" does, because they know that we will go ahead and give them are hard earned cash. FOX doesn't make these kind of movies for fans, the fanboy is the minority. The real money comes from the regular movie going public. That's enough FOX hate, on with what I thought about the movie.

My feelings on the movie are this, it's for the most part an okay Wolverine film but a horrible X-Men movie. It has a strong promising start. The characters of Wolverine and Sabertooth are strong and acted very well. I have always liked what Hugh Jackman has done with Wolverine, even in this movie. Liev Schreiber is the dark horse of "Wolverine", every time Victor Creed was on screen I was happy. What makes this origin movie just a so-so movie is that a lot of what happens in the story seems very one dimensional, nothing ever truly seem that bad@$$. Things seemed to happen so matter of fact, and that is a real let down. The tone of the movie is also a mess. Jackman being a Executive Producer said that the character was going to be a lot darker this time around. It seems the finished product got it half right. Stryker's special team do sound like a bunch of mean motor scooters, but the action in this movie is just cartoonish. When Wolverine and or Creed attack people blood is not really anywhere to be seen. Even X2 had some blood when Wolverine was fighting in the mansion?
For the most part I like the beginning and most of the middle and none of the end. My first problem I have is with what Stryker says after Logan who is now the successful unstoppable killing machine Weapon X goes AWOL,(sorry for paraphrasing)"Well, the only thing we can do now is kill him". What? You just got done making the perfect killing machine, how are you going to kill him? It's just that what Stryker said came off really lame sounding. What came next is the worst thing about the movie. The solution someone that works for Stryker came up with is that "...the only thing that can stop him now is if we shoot him in the head with an Adamantium bullet.", lame. What happens next is even worse, they come to the conclusion that the bullet in fact won't kill him, but make him forget how any of this ever happened. Wait a minute, the film just made a big plot hole just now. With how the pieces of his origin are gathered in the first and second X-men movies, it sure seems that it is implied that Logan's memory loss was due to the intense process of grafting Adamantium to his skeleton? Two more things then I am done, I promise. The thing that killed this movie for me the most is Gambit. Let's just say that his mutant power is momentum killer. A fight scene between Wolverine and Gambit occurs in the movie for no real reason except for Logan to hack and slash a fire escape...lame. This whole fight scene just really took me out of the movie. I really didn't care much after that. The climax with Deadpool at the end was just poor. In the end, I realize that I may have had too high of hopes for this movie, but not once do I feel that I have been to hard on it. "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" gets a high D+. Enjoy.

~Caleb

1 comment:

Nomad said...

i almost laughed out loud when the helicopter blew up, then blew up again, then one more time...