Ok, I know its a bit early for a revisit of a movie that was only released a little over a year ago but I watched it again over the weekend with my girlfriend who had never seen it and since we have talk of the sequel beginning to filter I figured it was time to take another look.
Wolverine(as I think most people agree the movie should have been called) will probably go down in history as the most fan bashed CBM second only to Batman And Robin. Even people who like shit like GI Joe hate this film. People who like Punisher: Warzone HATE THIS FILM! Why is that? Well, its because of those damn liberties. Nobody likes a liberty taken with their beloved source material and this film takes plenty. Some are understandable, some are just inexplicably silly and pointless. But does that make it a bad film? Not for me, but unfortunately even disregarding the changes from the comic, Wolverine is not the film it should have been.
The plot follows(loosely) Logan's origin as young James Howlette from the comics. But makes Victor Creed(seemingly replacing Dog Logan) his half brother. It follows the two in a very impressive opening sequence as they fight through the various wars in American history until thanks to Creed's blood lust they end up in front of a firing squad. Enter William Stryker(Danny Huston), who offers them their freedom if they will join his "special team" of mercenary mutants. The team also consists of Bolt(Dominic Monaghan), Blob(Kevin Durand), John Wraith(WIll.i.am) and Wade Wilson(Ryan Reynolds). After various massacres Logan has enough and quits. 5 years later we see him living the quiet life with his girl Kayla(a variation of Silver Fox played by the lovely Lynn Collins). But of course that doesn't last as Creed comes a calling. After that, things really take a turn for the "piss off the fanboys" with watered down versions of Gambit(Taylor Kitch) and remote controlled, sword armed, mute, laser shooting Deadpool!
I'm sure everyone has seen this by now so I'll leave the plot summary there. I think most people know that I have always defended this film, not that I thought it was great, I just never thought it deserved the bashing it got. Well, I still don't. In fact if anything, watching it again with yet another non comic fan that really enjoyed it only reaffirms my belief that as comic book fans we can all too often allow our anger at changes to the source cloud our ability to just sit and watch a movie, taking it for what it is. But that being said, the film is far from great. Performance wise it does have two huge bright spots, Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieiber as Wolvie and Saber..eh, I mean Victor Creed. Jackman once again doing a great job as the movie verse's Wolverine. In other words he's not quite as short, violent or boorish as he is in the comic. Get used to that folks, unless we get an R rated Wolverine movie its never going to change. And Scheiber is a great, menacing Creed. He doesn't look much like his comic counterpart in this, but shows that it doesn't matter a damn because we had the big shaggy dog boy in
X-Men 1 and look how that turned out. Who was the better Sabertooth? The rest of the cast are a bit of a mixed bag. Huston doesn't make much of an impact as Stryker, coming across more smarmy than anything else. Collins is decent as Kayla but is lumbered with the majority of the script howlers(more on that later). The rest of Styker's team all do fine, but don't have enough screen time to expand on the early promise. An excellent Ryan Reynolds being the worst casualty as he only has about 5 minutes before he's gone from the movie, his character only returning at the end as Barkkapool!(fanboy name for the sword armed Deadpool). Then there is Kitch as Gambit. He does well in his opening scene, Cajun accent present too. Then when he returns at the end his accent is gone and he's become incredibly annoying to boot. The pacing is also off but with a few viewings it seems to flow a bit better and would not have mattered too much anyway if the script had been of a slightly higher quality. Unfortunately it isn't. There are cliches galore and a lot of it is just so unimaginative. I think at some point every single character threatens to take another's head off! And the final "magic bullet" plot device to remove Logan's memory is a silly move no matter how you look at it. The action scenes are good though despite what some may say. Creed and Logan have a few vicious throw-downs and there is a great helicopter/motorbike set piece. The special effects leave something to be desired but again, I think fanboy rage has exaggerated the ire they have received. Gavin Hood gets lambasted for his direction, but really I don't think he did a bad job. Working from the script he had its actually pretty well framed and shot(the occasional impulse to pan the camera up as a character shouts "NOOOOOOOO" aside!).
So, a bad adaptation for sure, but a decent film. Its certainly not half as good as Wolverine's first solo outing should have been and I'm sure everyone(me included) expected better. But couldn't the same be said for
Iron Man 2? Anyway, I don't expect to change anyone's mind with this, just my take. I would ask that you take a bit of a survey amongst your friends who have seen the film but not read a comic in their lives. I guarantee you won't see that same venom in their eyes as the ones that did!.
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