X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney & Ryan Reynolds
Genre: Comic Book / Action
Rated: PG-13
Review By:
Michael Dance
School:
NYU Tisch '07
Quote:
"...And hey, I met you. You are not cool." -Almost Famous
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com
For a radically different look at Wolverine, check out J.P. Mangalindan’s review by clicking here, or just keep reading after Michael’s.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Screw the haters: Wolverine rocks.
It’s funny how past installments of a franchise can alter your perception of the new one. Up until Brett Ratner’s hack job on X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men was known as a “good” comic book franchise. Critics and audiences alike praised the first two. X2: X-Men United is still my favorite comic book movie of all time.
But then Fox set a summer 2006 release date for Last Stand, and refused to push it back after the original director on the movie, Matthew Vaughn, dropped out. Instead, they hired Ratner, the guy from the Rush Hour movies, knowing that he would do whatever he was told and bring the movie in on time. The screenplay needed a few more revisions, but why spend money waiting for writers to do their thing when we’re on a deadline? Even in the final movie, it feels like you’re watching an unpolished draft.
The movie, on the strength of X2, opened big. But the X-Men franchise was tainted, downgraded from an Iron Man-style success story to a Fantastic Four-style cash-in.
So ever since Fox announced their decision to make a Wolverine spin-off origin movie, the press has skewed negative. Fox is going to screw it up again. They don’t have respect for the franchise. They’re milking the franchise dry. Rumors of director Gavin Hood (who did the South African crime drama Tsotsi) getting into fights with Fox head Tom Rothman didn’t help, nor did the recent internet leak. (Quick: thousands of web geeks watch a cut of Wolverine on their computer screens with hundreds of special effects shots unfinished. What’s the reaction going to be?)
Conventional wisdom would seem to be that since Wolverine is monumentally better than Last Stand, it should be warmly received. But my theory is that it actually would’ve gotten a better critical response had it been released after X2 — back when X-Men was still a “good” franchise.
Because now that it’s not, critics and audiences are going in expecting not to like it. And here’s a little secret about critics: sometimes without even realizing it, they decide their opinion of a movie before they see it. If Wolverine had followed X2, they’d be going in expecting another installment of a franchise that’s O.K. to like. But it didn’t, and because of Last Stand, they went in with vastly different perceptions of how good a movie Wolverine could be.
Last Stand, in other words, created a subtle domino effect that resulted in the current negative perception of Wolverine.
Okay. So now that I’ve blasted every movie critic in the world and
I thought it was a cool, fun movie that serves as the perfect start to the summer season.
The funny thing is, that’s coming from an X-Men geek, and a Wolverine geek in particular. When I was a kid I watched the 1993-1997 TV series religiously, read a decent share of comics, and even read a kid’s novel about the origins of Wolverine.
I guess that means I’m supposed to be jaded and nitpick everything that the movie “got wrong.” But I can’t.
I did have some worry that the movie would be too mutant-stuffed, but they wisely keep Wolverine front and center at all times and relegate most other characters, Sabertooth excluded, to minor supporting roles. If that means Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), both fan-favorite characters making their first appearance in an X-Men movie, appear less than I’d hoped, that’s okay: it means nobody overwhelms the main character’s story.
We start off with Wolverine — a.k.a. Logan, a.k.a. James Howlett — as a young boy in the mid-1800s Northwest Territories (his mutant healing ability makes him age incredibly slowly). When tragedy strikes, he and his tempestuous older brother Victor (who grows up into Liev Schreiber and the mutant Sabertooth) run away; since they both have healing abilities and a predilection toward violence, they spend their lives killing their way through the first two World Wars and Vietnam (all in a terrific opening credits sequence).
They’re finally plucked from obscurity by William Stryker, who put together a “special team” of mutants to serve on a secret task force. But when things go too far, Wolverine walks, returns to Canada, and finds a quiet life with schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). When the past inevitably comes knocking on the door, he’s forced into a quest that will have him revisiting old members of the team and hunting for Sabertooth. Along the way, he becomes a guinea pig in Stryker’s “Weapon X” project — the fateful surgery that coats every bone in his body with adamantium, an indestructible metal.
Hugh Jackman owns this character. Wolverine made him a star, and he’s returned the favor by giving the role his all — this time even moreso than in the past movies, since he appears in nearly every scene.
The plot basically provides an economical way for Wolverine to cross paths with plenty of other mutants, including Bolt (Lost‘s Dominic Monaghan) Wraith (Will.i.am), The Blob (Kevin Durand), and the aforementioned Gambit and Deadpool — including a couple of familiar faces from previous X-Men movies, which are integrated into the plot in a creative way that paves the way for a rumored X-Men: First Class spin-off.
Along the way, there are a certain amount of indisputably cheesy lines
Movie Grade: B+
Wolverine: A Second Look
