Comic Movie Collection: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

By Jason Haskins

Hugh Jackman's first break was replacing Dougray Scott in the original X-Men film while becoming a household name in recent years with some top notch movies like The Fountain and The Prestige and others like Australia and Van Helsing. He was the proponent who most wanted an X-Men spin-off film around his character, Wolverine, in order to fill in some of the back story that was mostly left vacant from the trilogy. Then again we all wanted this--and with Jackman in the producer's seat I figured this would be a golden opportunity.

For the longest time I looked forward to this movie as Wolverine's a great character and I had a solid trust in Hugh Jackman's ability, but as the credits rolled after my most recent viewing I couldn't help but think that he had forsaken himself as the big cheese. This is a big stubbed toe in the comic book movie world and I can't help but question why the filmmakers chose to go about it this way. This, of course, is 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine directed by Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Rendition).

This is an origins tale by the looks of the title, which begins with a young Logan/Wolverine and his fellow-mutant brother, Victor, setting out into the world 200 years ago after being swept up in a large tragedy. They go from place to place fighting in all of the wars and ending up in a team of individuals for a Colonel William Stryker (Danny Huston). Logan later quits and tries to start a new life--becoming a logger and moving in with a lover, living a life in the middle of nowhere--until one fateful day his past revisits him in the form of Victor (Liev Schreiber) who is killing off all of the members of the team...

Much of Wolverine's back story is filled in--which includes his run-ins with William Stryker and the Weapon X debacle, which turned his skeleton to adamantium. If you're expecting something to tie into the first X-Men feature then you will be disappointed as this is another franchise opportunity by Fox to milk some of the character before tying it all back together.

What they failed to do, however, is make the movie as full of continuity as they should've. Victor is Sabretooth--though he is not mentioned as such to my recollection--yet in the original X-Men film they know nothing of each other's existence. Granted, this rests on a ploy by the script's "amnesiac" point, but I found it cheap and stupid. Then again, it's trying to play into the Wolverine: Origin comic book series from the early 2000s.

Either way, the continuity errors and lack of bridgework pale in comparison to the other problems in this script by David Benioff and Skip Woods. These guys truly did not know the source material as well as they should've and focused more on the popcorn/cheapness of the film instead on the glue that binds everything together. There's mindless action and some of it's pretty entertaining, but they fail on characterizations tremendously and do a horrible job on plot gimmicks. The plot itself is super lame and isn't worthwhile for the running time. Should I even mention that it's without mystery, tension, or depth? It's so unoriginal that you'd have sworn you'd seen a movie like this before only done better.

There are many great characters that grace the screen that surefire X-Men fans will spot for sure. First of all you have a ton of great cameos during a scene where Wolverine helps a ton of mutants escape a prison (which I won't give away) as well as an ending sequence that will, hopefully, p!ss you off with the disgusting use of CGI and brash poor quality of it being added in by Benioff and Woods. Then you have Deadpool, who makes an appearance played by Ryan Reynolds--who's also set to star in the comic adaptation of the REAL character since this is nowhere near the original character of Deadpool. The filmmakers have shat on his image here including him into a ridiculous subplot of villainy at the end, which I didn't agree with at all.

Then you have a young Scott Summers/Cyclops in the mix, which is cool to witness, and my favorite X-Man of all-time: GAMBIT, played by Taylor Kitsch. He's not the brightest actor, but he brings my favorite character to screen and steals the whole moving by doing so. I can't even begin to tell you how cool his few scenes are--if only they had incorporated him more into the script instead of simply putting him there as a brief teaser with nothing to do then the movie would've been just a little bit better.

I'll say what I will about how bad the screenplay is, but the acting is equally as appalling--especially with Hugh Jackman. My friends and I joke about how much he overacts in this movie--yelling up at the sky and what-have-you and it becomes distracting after a while. He's so full of angst that he lacks all of the good qualities that he showed in the first two X-Men pictures. He's not a bad ass, he's just a sore ass who's hard to watch the entire movie. Then again, he looks ridiculously buff--almost disgustingly so, which is really cool to see and, to his credit, he IS Wolverine in my opinion, but he dropped the ball on this one.

All of the other performances are equally terrible led by Schreiber who feels facetious the whole movie and Danny Huston, who I thought was terribly miscast. Don't get me wrong: I love Danny Huston, but he didn't fit and didn't have the cojones to pull off the character of Stryker (which was played chillingly by Brian Cox in X2: X-Men United). Then you have others who show up like the Black Eyed Peas singer will.i.am show up as John Wraith, who's terrible to watch as well as Logan's principle love interest, Kayla portrayed by Lynn Collins, who has no energy to her performance whatsoever and lurches from scene to scene with Wolverine in the most awkward way. Nothing fits here--including the brief performance by Dominic Monaghan as Bolt and Ryan Reynolds, who overdoes it in every way.

The special effects also need to be mentioned as they are of a certain bad quality this deep in the CGI game. All of the claw effects by Wolverine look dramatically fake and the action seems tarnished by the obvious use of green screens. Sure, this is a movie to turn off your brain to and enjoy the action, but when the action is so manufactured it becomes distracting. Then again, there are some cool parts like Wolverine destroying a helicopter and a few fights with Sabretooth that are interesting, but for the most part--all of the good scenes are seen in the trailer for the movie, which is actually more entertaining than the movie itself.

I don't know what went wrong here--if everyone rushed it without working on a script that could've propelled the Wolverine character out of the X-Men trilogy's shadow, but this movie didn't work and the people working on it HAD to have known that. There have been a lot of rumors like the one I heard recently where Hugh Jackman originally wanted to make the movie that will eventually be Wolverine 2, but the studio forced him to make this one instead--which I can totally see and understand. But at the same time I can see this as being a ploy by the studios to keep the Wolverine character in the mainstream consciousness in order to milk the cash cow before there isn't any milk left (and before everything gets rebooted...Jackman IS getting older). I just think that this one wasn't seasoned with enough elements. The script was easily the worst part, but the performances and direction were helpless to save it. It seems like half the people really dig the movie and the other half despise it. Guess which side I'm on?

© Jason Haskins, 2011

1 out of 5 Stars


X-Men: First Class (2011)