After much anticipation from comic book and movie fans alike, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released to theaters earlier this month kicking off the summer movie season. The movie stars Huge Jackman, reprising his role as Wolverine, Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth, and a bevy of other actors making short, cameo-like appearances as various mutants. Although the movie avoids being an absolute disaster like Daredevil, Catwomen, and Ghost Rider, it fails to meet expectations and wallows in mediocrity. Wolverine suffers from too many action movie cliches, a flagrant disregard for the source material, and a weak story with ultimately no point. Like the adamantium bonded to his skeleton, Wolverine and his origin story were thought to be a rock solid formula for success. The film is thus a study in how to break the seemingly unbreakable.There are far too many action movie cliches in this film. Three times Wolverine stretches his arms out, looks up to the heavens, and gives a plaintive scream not unlike Capt. Kirk in The Wrath of Kahn. Then there is the scene in which Wolverine blows up a helicopter and swaggers away in slow motion, waking straight toward the camera with a flinty stare, as the flames billow up behind him. In fact, many of the action scenes seem like a Vogue photo shoot featuring Huge Jackman flexing his neck muscles and striking an action-figure pose.
Wolverine was thought to be a no-brainer of a movie because of the source material. The character of Wolverine has a long history in Marvel Comics. From Uncanny X-Men to the Wolverine solo series to the Weapon X mini-series, Wolverine has accumulated a large body of work that has fleshed out his character and fueled his popularity. But for some reason the film makers chose to disregard this rich history and instead retell the origin story their way. Unfortunately, this retelling renders the story and film a continuity train wreck. Logan (Wolverine) and Victor (Sabretooth) are presented as brothers who grow up together, fight wars together, decide to be enemies, and then decide not to be enemies. It makes no sense and adds nothing to the story.
And then there are those adamantium bullets. Wolverine’s memory loss was always considered a side effect of either his healing ability or the Weapon X procedure of bonding adamantium to his skeleton. However, in the movie they shoot Wolverine in the head with adamantium bullets; his healing ability enables him to survive but leaves him with amnesia. This is just silly. It doesn’t take a continuity snob to yell foul with this movie. All they needed to do was stay true to the source material, like they did in Watchmen, and Wolverine would have been fine story-wise at least. Things get even worse for the other characters such as the Blob and Deadpool, more on that later.
The story felt rushed throughout, hurried along as if the actual plot points were just narrative devices used to segue into the next clichéd action scene. This includes cramming as many secondary mutant characters in as possible. Deadpool, the Blob, Emma Frost, Gambit, and Cyclops all make brief appearances, so brief they add nothing to the story. Their inclusion seems unnatural, surgical implants meant to attract and appease X-Men fans. Some of these characters, such as Gambit and Emma Frost, are mistreated by their lack of screen time, while others, such as Deadpool and the Blob, simply by their poor handling. The Blob is supposed to be an unmovable mass, but the movie presents him as a washed up black-ops soldier who is morbidly obese and so weak that Wolverine knocks him down without a problem. And then there is Deadpool. At the end of the movie, during the insipid climax, Deadpool appears as a human remote-controlled weapon with his mouth sewn shut. Taking away Deadpool’s mouth is like taking away Wolverine’s claws, half of Deadpool’s charm comes from his relentless sarcastic banter.
Finally, taken as a whole the story is pointless and unbelievable even by comic book standards. Stryker goes to pretty extreme lengths to get Wolverine to cooperate with the Weapon X program. He blackmails Silverfox into seducing Wolverine in order to engineer a revenge scenario by having Sabretooth appear to kill her. This compels Wolverine to volunteer for the Weapon X program, but then after Wolverine freaks out and runs off into the woods on his revenge mission, Stryker decides Wolverine must be destroyed. Meanwhile, Sabretooth has conspired against his brother with Stryker for vague reasons which are totally abandoned at the end when the brothers fight side-by-side against Weapon XI. So the revenge plot was an engineered farce, the love affair with Silverfox a sham, the Weapon X project a dry run for Weapon XI and the deadly rivalry between Sabretooth and Wolverine just a petty spat between brothers. Is it any wonder it all seems pointless at the end?
