X-Men Origins: Wolverine - A Review

As far as Hollywood entertainment goes, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a pretty good film.

It sticks to the recipe very closely and has everything for everyone. Action, comedy, romance, drama, special effects, some coarse language, very pretty ladies and a shirtless Hugh Jackman throughout and no Big Blue Dong!

How can anyone ask for more?

I read some reviews before going in so I was expecting disappointment. However those reviewers did not represent the film very well, mostly focusing on one or two failures of the work and then destroying it based on those. No one lied here but they did exaggerate a bit.

Wolverine is a good summer film, nothing more.

I wouldn’t even say it’s that great for fans of the character because from what I remember of the comics and cartoons, many liberties were taken in order to make this origin story fit with the beginning of Brian Singer’s version of X-Men. The feel is there but many details were omitted or modified.

For example, in this version Logan has claws from birth, made of bone. He first uses them when he experiences a traumatic event in his young life. In the comics and cartoons, if I‘m not mistaken, the claws are a side-effect of the adamantium application and so is his loss of memory, which is of a different origin in the film and, for me, this aspect of Wolvy’s personality was very poorly implemented.

It felt rushed and tacked on, like the writers didn’t know how to do it and they included this element at the last minute.

The story has many twists and turns and although I usually welcome those in any film, here again it is done in a somewhat amateurish way. They are mostly predictable and most don’t really add to the story, with a few exceptions.

Many characters show up in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Blob, Wraith, Gambit, Silverfox, Emma Frost, Agent Zero, Stryker, Volt, Sabretooth, Deadpool and even one I won’t mention as it is a big spoiler :)

Sabretooth is nothing like the one we know from the first X-Men film and aside from him not dying at the end of Wolverine, there is no attempt at turning him form a very smart and clever assassin to the big dumb bodyguard who doesn’t remember Logan is his brother in X1.

Gambit is SEVERELY underused here. He attacks our anti-hero for no reason whatsoever, unless this is to cram more special effects into the movie.

He flies a plane for Logan and squints a lot. That’s it.

I found that for a movie with so many characters that so many people want to see more of (let’s face it, with their comic histories all these people could get their own movie in the future) X-Men Origins didn’t suffer from the same syndrome as X3 and Batman and Robin. Everyone gets just enough background for us to care, without taking the light away from Wolverine, with perhaps the exception of Deadpool.

I admit, I know next to nothing about Deadpool. He’s a product of the Weapon X program (explored in great detail in Wolverine) that helped him get rid of his cancer with a regenerative healing power at the expense of his face (he was disfigured in the process) and his sanity (he’s crazy). That’s all I know of him.

From this limited knowledge, I can say that the liberties taken with Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine are immense. I can’t go into it because it involves more spoilers but let’s just say that by the end of the film, I really wanted a Deadpool movie.

He’s VERY cool!

There is a lot of good entertainment in Wolverine. The acting is surprisingly good for this type of film, with Hugh Jackman taking the cake. Liev Shreiber is perfect as Sabretooth. I didn’t think he would be though because, as many others have said, we are used to seeing him in more “cerebral” roles. He definitely nails the part to our great enjoyment. He is all creepy, nasty and scary, not to mention a real threat for the main hero of this tale.

I think hardcore fans of X-Men will be disappointed in this movie but for the rest of us, it is a very good summer film, entertainment that should sell a lot of popcorn.

Until Star Trek beams in… next week!

7/10