wo X-men Origins: Wolverine

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Ryan Reynolds

Directed by: Gavin Hood

20th Century Fox

The Official Site of X-men Origins: Wolverine

Discuss X-men Origins: Wolverine on the boards!

Wolverine: Origins, the first attempt in spinning off the wildly popular X-Men franchise into a series of mini franchises that can go off and make their own blockbusting bank accounts, was a production that was plagued by complications. Rumors of on set feuds between director Gavin Hood and the producers followed by an Internet leak of a work print of the full movie over a month before the film’s release, bad buzz about the film’s story and criminal mishandling of fan favorite characters, not to mention a potential franchise killer as its lead-in in the financially successful but fan panned third X-men film X-men: The Last Stand all hinted at an up hill battle for Wolverine. It set-up the expectation that Wolverine wouldn’t and couldn’t deliver a film we might actually enjoy.

It did have one thing going for it though. Hugh Jackman. As perfectly cast in the role as any fanboy could possibly dream, committed enough to try and make sideburns look fashionable for a fourth time and passionate enough about the project to the point where he would never let it be bad. The fans had someone on their side. It just so happened to be their leading man.

Origins gives us a look at the early years of Wolverine’s life that he’d been struggling to remember throughout the first three X-Men films. Among other things we find out that his claws weren’t always so shiny and that Sabertooth, his greatest enemy, is also his brother. Someone he trusted and fought alongside in what seems like every war of the last hundred years (as told by a fantastic title sequence that brilliantly sets the tone and solidifies the bond between them.) Wolverine and Sabertooth (called by their actual names, James and Victor, for the bulk of the movie – wisely down-played because a title like “The Adventures of Vic and Jimmy!� just sounds silly) eventually find themselves in an elite team of mutants banded together for super secret government tasks.

After witnessing one too many innocent deaths Wolverine decides to leave the life of war behind him. He returns to Canada, falls in love and becomes a lumberjack. 6 years later his past comes looking for him and the deaths of former teammates force his hand into a tale of revenge strong enough to break the bonds of brotherhood.

I’m intentionally being a little cryptic here as to not give away too much of the film’s development. I’m certain that most of you know a few of the larger plot points that push things along but this is a remarkably well crafted story that deserves not to be spoiled.

Origins evolves into a kind of rough detective story as Wolverine tracks down the people responsible. It takes him all over the map where he encounters a slew of mutants that will be recognizable (in varying degrees) to fans of the source. Characters like Gambit, The Blob and a teleporting Black Eyed Pea in a cowboy hat all add pieces to the mystery and help Wolverine in his task.

These cameos were probably my biggest concern going in. It’s inevitable with an X-movie that they’re going to try and pack as much story and as many guest appearances into the film as possible. A checklist of cool stuff to appeal to the fans, twisted together into a comprehensive story. With the first two X-men films, director Bryan Singer was able to take specific plot points from the comics, combine them with others and change them to suit his needs, all without being disrespectful to them. Lady Deathstrike for instance. She had a huge presence in the comics during the 90s but is almost unrecognizable in X2, yet her origins, her appearance and her death are all acceptable because they're handled well in the context of the story and the character. Even die-hard fans of hers would admit that.

I think this is the key to a successful X-movie. There will inevitably be cameos galore and story lines jammed together. If they’re collected for a reason, to add something to the film beyond a 3-Dimentional shout out to us comic nerds, then everyone wins.

There are two cases within Wolverine that the film challenges this theory. I’m hesitant to ruin either but chances are you’ve already heard about Deadpool, the mutant mercenary, beloved by fans and abused by the people responsible for this film. I’d rather not get into the specifics of it (I’m inspired enough to save the geek speak for a second spoiler-filled comic and write-up on Monday) so as not to spoil anything for anyone but, while the details may not be the actual ones of Deadpools origin in the comics, stuff like this happens all the time. It’s like Dr. Doom stealing the Silver Surfers board and taking it on a joy ride through the city. On the surface it’s completely insane but if it happen in the comics we wouldn’t bat an eye. More importantly - it works within the context. I can forgive what they do with Deadpool because, as much as I never would have wanted them to do something like this to the character, it makes sense and actually strengthens the story. That’s priceless.

Wolverine succeeds, even in the face of a seemingly overwhelming list of problems. It’s revenge/action movie making 101. A perfect representation of pacing, performance and execution for the modern anti-superhero film. What looked like it might be another cluttered and crazed collection of storylines and characters to add to the pile of overdone superhero films, turned out to be a smart, well crafted adventure to set the new benchmark. If every superhero movie could be told this well then The Dark Knight would be the best of a list actually worth being the best of.

Rating: 9 out of 10 - I kept waiting for the other boot to fall, for the ass to drop out of this thing and to watch it fall to pieces. But it never came. Everything (besides a certain gun that shoots certain kinds of bullets) made sense and seemed like the logical and even correct decision towards making this movie the best it could possibly be. And even that gun ends up making sense eventually. At the time though…

Have fun with this movie. Try to take everything in stride and then watch as they weave it all together. This is a fun movie. Don’t let your expectations of what it should be ruin that. The Deadpool character will be fine – I swear.

ABSOLUTLY. As I walked to the theater I began writing this DVD Worthy section in my head with the assumption that the film would be terrible and that I would have to justify its purchase as the last desperate grasp of a comic book fan hoping it would be better the second time around. If worse came to worse I would just admit to owning Blade: Trinity and say that Wolverine couldn’t be any worse than that. The damn thing is great though. Something I’m eager to revisit and support.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Last week in 20 cities across the country, lucky audiences were given a sneak peek at the trailer for Transformers 2. A Youtube bootleg of it was soon leaked on line, shot at an angle and as blurry as could be, but solid enough to raise the excitement level oh so slightly. It was ridiculously hard to make out the robots though, I mean, they’re hard enough to piece together in beautiful bright HD on a 4-story screen. Youtube wasn’t doing anything for the visuals besides making me wish I’d broken into one of these screenings.

Thank goodness Yahoo posted the HD version of the video for us to just put on repeat and pause-button-crawl our way through trying to make out the best of the best shots. (/film has done a lot of the heavy lifting with 55 high quality stills from the preview.) The robots look clean, the action is definitely bigger and there’s a glimmer of hope that the story will be less crowded. It would be hard to be more crowded than the tapestry of unnecessary characters and loose ends in the first film but it’s nice to see them potentially headed in the other direction.

If they can focus on Shia’s character, show us the movie completely from his perspective, then it’ll work wonderfully. The trailer mercilessly teases us with that prospect like it was Megan Fox opening up the hood of a car and we were the kind of perverts that would slow-button-crawl through a movie to looking for the best pictures of battling robots and Megan Fox.

Before moving on you’ve got to check out the teaser trailer for District 9. I don’t want to say a thing about it because it does this nice bate and switch. Watch it for yourself and get ready for the viral craziness to begin.

I looked around the official site for a while and even spent a few minutes going through the paces of setting up my very own Weapon X character for some Facebook app, (something I dropped the second it asked me to challenge (bother) a friend) but there was nothing on that site nearly as interesting as this link to a coupon for pizza. Maybe I was just looking while hungry. You know what they say – “Never go grocery shopping or Internet browsing on a Fox property franchise when you’re hungry.�

What’s particularly wonderful about this link is that you can read little mini-bios on all your favorite Wolverine characters and I can pretty much assure that no where else do their bios include their “Favorite Specialty Pizza� choice. Sabertooth likes “The Meats�.

Yesterday I decided to watch the three X-men movies while I was working and it was unintentional but I actually watched them in reverse order, starting with X-men: The Last Stand and ending with X-men. I say it was unintentional because I had not intended to watch them all but kept getting inspired to reach further and further back. I find it funny that it worked out the way it did considering Wolverine is a movie that takes place before all these movies. How many people can claim to watching them in the correct order like that. Well… the reverse correct order anyway.

The point - I documented and discussed my thoughts on the board as I went along. It was interesting to confront new issues and really not hate certain things as much as I remembered. It was a fun experiment.

Wolverine Origins marks the first major release of the summer and after looking over the list of movies coming out it looks like it’s going to be a pretty bad ass time at the movies. I put out a challenge to Tom and Gordon after last week’s Triple Feature for a contest that would have us predicting and comparing our choices for the future top ten box office winners of the summer. From Harry Potter to Up, my choices were pretty conservative and I had to leave off a few movies that I would really love to see succeed. Sadly my heart tells me that 500 Days of Summer probably won’t cross the 100 million dollar mark. At least not in its opening weekend…

You can see my full list here (and here all of our lists on the May 4th episode of the show) and I encourage you to add your own or let us know what you’re looking forward to in the coming months. It’s gonna be a good season. Thanks for stopping by. More soon!