Almost 3 months have past since I have done my last revisit, but I’m back to give you fellow CBMers my take on this controversial adaptation that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I’ll be going through the movie thoroughly because I have been back and forth about my feelings for this movie ever since it came out. With that said, let’s get started.
Story: The first 45 minutes sets the movie up for success and since the movie is only 2 hours long, it seems that it can’t disappoint too much. When the movie starts, the audience is immediately thrown into Logan’s beginning of violent history. Now, I will say right away that the film does a good job at this overall. From the depiction of the wars and the nightmares that Logan experiences are just great and are “forced” at the audience in a way that adds interest and entertainment. It’s not just Logan either, but I will get to that aspect later. The film then goes on to one of the mission in Africa where the adimantium is introduced. This is a great foreshadow and back story as to why he gains the metal claws. The other thing I would like to point out is the introduction of the characters in this part. More specifically, Ryan Reynolds character AKA: Wade Wilson. If there is one thing the writers did well on, it was exhibiting “The Merc With A Mouth” for the character. The smart-ass remarks and interactions with the rest of the team really make want to see more, and for the Deadpool fans out there, it gets your hopes up. One of my favorite lines was when Team X was in the elevator and Wade says, “Great, I’m stuck in an elevator with 5 guys and a high protein meal.” Brilliant, just brilliant. The adimantium bonding process was great too because it had a lot of ties such as the explanation for the name “Wolverine”, how he got the adimantium in his body, and the Weapon X project. The death scene of Silver Fox is something that I will be addressing later. Now, here is the part where things start to go downhill. After Wolverine escapes he is then taken in by an elderly couple where he is fed, clothed, given shelter, and we even get to see the signature jacket. Sounds good right? Well, as I said before this is where it starts to go wrong. After the elderly couple is killed, Agent Zero states “He just murdered two civilians and is in the barn.” At first I thought, this is because the US general is there, but this defense is shattered later on. After Agent Zero is “picked up by the helicopter where he makes a “hulk” leap into the chopper. This is not explained how he can do this and basically states, “This just happened. Deal with it.” We then see Wolverine be chased through the woods by a chopper and enemy convoys, which are sent to kill him. After a long chase, and a pretty great action scene, Wolverine confronts the dying Agent Zero in the burning chopper. Now, earlier I stated that the plot hole defense for blaming the murders on Logan collapsed; and this is why. You can hear the voice of Logan on the radio back at the base where Striker and the general would be located. Striker than states that they will take Victor down together while Logan counters that they just tried to kill him. Well, if the general was unaware of this and is jut finding out this aspect of the project, why isn’t he reacting? They never show him say anything about this new knowledge. Some could say that he was already aware, but I will go further into that in the plot hole section of the review. Logan than kills Agent Zero and continues on to find Will I Am’s character, John Wraith AKA: Kestrel and Fred Dukes AKA: Blob. This is preceded by a side plot that introduces Cyclops. After getting the information about Striker and the island, Logan and Kestrel than go to Las Vegas where they find Gambit. After Kestrel is killed by Creed and Logan restrains Gambit, Gambit agrees to fly Wolverine to the island. Here is where “the movie starts going down even faster.” When Logan gets to the island, he finds out it was all a lie and was set up from the start. After he leaves, he comes back to help Silver Fox where he then finds out she only helped because they have her sister, Emma Frost, captive with the rest of the mutants. All seems good until one of the worst moments in CBM history occur: the Origins version of Deadpool.
The caption says it all. After a long, but intense battle, Wolverine than treats the audience by cutting off “Project Deadpool’s” head off. Striker shoots Wolverine in the head with adimantium bullets thereby destroying his memory, Silver Fox is killed, and the movie ends with him escaping the island and the captive mutants meeting up with Professor X.
All right, with the story out of the way lets go into the more specific aspects of the film.
Writing: For the most part, the writing wasn’t bad. In fact, I feel that the writing was one of the strong points of the movie. The writers were able to not only enhance the intense moments of internal and external interactions, but the personalities for most of the characters were brought out, which made the audience more interested in the outcomes for the characters. Now, although the writers were unable to provide interest for characters like Agent Zero and Bradley, the audience were still drawn in enough to pay attention to the film and not doze off when Logan wasn’t on the screen.
Effects: The effects in a superhero movie can play a big part. Unfortunately, the effects in this movie were mediocre at best. I mean, I guess you could take into account the budgeting for the movie, the actor’s salaries, and the sets, but these were still pretty mediocre for such a high expectation movie. The claws in many scenes seemed too animated, the destruction of the plant could have been much better, and the school destruction was also somewhat disappointing. Was it horrible? No, but it could have been better.
Acting: When I first saw the movie, the one thing that really stuck out was the acting and portrayals of the character. It is a prime example of actors taking a script and bringing it to life on the big screen in a way that impresses a variety of audiences. Hugh Jackman was wonderful as Wolverine and I was really impressed with Will I Am and his first time portrayal of a character on the big screen. Liev Schreiber was also great with Victor Creed/Sabretooth, although I would have liked to see him be more menacing than a guy with the fingernails of a bag lady. Speaking of which, Ryan Reynolds was also great at his portrayal of Wade Wilson by pulling off a mix of comedy and seriousness. Many of you may be wondering why I don’t refer to the character as Deadpool. Well, it’s simple. Deadpool was not in the movie. A Baraka like character that fights Wolverine is in the movie, but sadly, Fox did not add Deadpool to the movie.
Plot Holes: This is where I will discuss some of the earlier concerns I had. The general that had no reaction to the new knowledge of “Weapon X’s” past suddenly decides it is too much to handle and that the program needs to be shut down because Striker’s son killed his wife? Why? He had no reaction/problem with Striker keeping a big secret earlier. Was it publicity? Was it his own conscious? If it was, what suddenly made him feel bad about the situation? Once again, he didn’t feel the need to react when he finds out about Wolverine being connected to another weapon/Team X member. It just didn’t make any sense. Another plot hole, which was even bigger than the one about the general, was the “death” of Silver Fox. It was explained that she was given a drug that would slow her heartbeat down to the point where she seemed she was dead. However, it is also shown that Creed splattered blood on her. Well, with Wolverine being an expert soldier, I would think he could tell if someone had an injury on them. Plus, there would be markings somewhere that would explain the massive blood loss. However, that is never explained. It’s as if he saw her with blood and not awake and just assumed she was dead. He didn’t even check her or anything! It just didn’t make sense.
Over all, the movie was entertaining for the most part and was pretty well written and acted out thoroughly. However, plot holes in the story, mediocre CG, and the “portrayal” of Barakapool was enough to leave me feeling disappointed and realizing that, in the end, the movie fell somewhat short of expectations and impressions.
With that said, I give this movie 7/10.
Hopefully Fox can turn it around with the sequel and a correct version of Deadpool. Like this:
If you would like to check out some of my other reviews, check out more of my articles in the side box. Let me know what you thought of the movie. This is Hal Jordan signing off!