X-Men Origins: Wolverine

• Directed by Gavin Hood
• April 9, 2009 (Sydney) / May 1, 2009 (US)
• Based on the character Wolverine created by Roy Thomas, Len Wein, and John Romita Sr.

After his skeleton is bonded with a nearly indestructible metal a man must confront his half brother as well as a military officer conducting secret experiments.

When X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out way back in the day I watched it in theaters and I enjoyed it for what it was-a superhero movie featuring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I can still enjoy it for exactly that to this day but that doesn’t mean it’s a great movie. It is a movie that functions more as if it checks off a list of things it must do rather than telling a story while inserting as many mutant cameos as it can. Plus it is a big and over complicated plot about how Wolverine came to have a touch of amnesia as well as get his metal skeleton.

Jackman does a serviceable job in this film, but the best performers are Danny Huston as Stryker and Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed/Sabretooth taking the role over from Tyler Mane. Huston is good in just about anything. He’s just a plain down talented actor that can turn tripe into gold.

Speaking often in a measured tone, Stryker is manipulative and all superficial charm. He controls others by dangling in front of them what they want. Despite what he says you do not trust his motivations. Huston is absolutely fantastic in communicating and portraying that.

Schreiber is simply enjoying himself and makes say his version of Sabretooth dangerous yet charming. He’s a very likable villain who would disembowel you without thinking twice. Enjoyable evil if you will. His is a very different interpretation from that of Tyler Mane who played the character in a way that made him appear to be a simpleton. That runs contrary to what we see in this film which serves as an origin story for both characters. As I recall the origin strongly parallels if not follows beat per beat what was available in them at the time. For the most part from my memory.

There is a great deal of green screen used in this movie. For some of the shots it is quite unnecessary while others it is used to accomplish moments that work in the comics but can look a bit silly using people. Director Gavin Hood tried to do a 100% transfer and you just cannot. You can come very close though.

What works in a comic book doesn’t always work in live action. You can come close, but never exact. A good example is Wolverine taking out a helicopter with his metal claws. It can be done in live action, but it went on long enough that it felt silly as it becomes clear there is no way it could actually happen. You’ve got to cut these things short if you’re going to do them at all before the human brain starts questioning the validity of it. Regardless of how fantastic a scenario you have, some things can go only go on for so long before the mind says, “That’s silly!”

What they did to Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is perhaps the most infamous part of the whole movie. I am still trying to figure out how sowing his mouth shut helped anything beyond a joke concerning shutting him up. He would need to eat. But the greater issue is that it totally changed the point of the film which was the conflict between Logan and Victor.

The plot just moves slowly at points and at others seem to move at a breakneck pace. The whole set up with Team X moves at a run with the intervening scenes taking a little bit too long and then it picks up again. It’s like they had less than an hour and a half and decided to add a little bit of fluff to make it past the 90-minute mark.

They toss a great many characters in here like they were trying to quickly build up the X-Men universe. I know this was meant to be the first of several other origin movies but that never came to be. I could list all the new characters (some I did appreciate) but I am far too lazy for all that writing. With weird pacing and dozens of unnecessary characters the story felt very jumbled. It didn’t feel like it was focused and so it never became exciting. I just ran headfirst into all these different events to get to the origin and get to the overt connections to the main X-Men films.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an entertaining yet forgettable film. You won’t necessarily hate it but when you think about good things from this, you won’t be focusing on the main character. I’ll give this an if you want.