X-men Origins: Wolverine review

The most famous X-man finally gets his own movie…and it’s not a good one.

I never said this would be a good movie - Hugh Jackman

I saw X-men Origins: Wolverine last night and yeah, it wasn’t that good. When I go see movies, I want to enjoy it, and I didn’t get that feeling with Wolverine. Unfortunate, since this film had so much potential. After seeing the entire thing, I just thought X-men 3 was better. And in the comic book community, that’s saying a lot.

One of the major problems I noticed with this movie was that it had way TOO many mutants in it. X-men 3 also had way too many mutants, most left underdeveloped, and just there either for fan service or to put as much mutants on-screen as possible. But unlike X-men 3 which at least had a coherent and straightforward story, Wolverine feels so confused in the narrative that it wants the audience to see. First Wolverine kills his father as a child in the 1800s, then the intro credits show him and his half brother Sabretooth (Victor Creed), as soldiers and fighting through countless wars but not really dying and not growing old. Then there’s Team X, Weapon X, Sabertooth kills wolverine’s squeeze AKA Kyla Silverfox, wolverine hates sabertooth, then Kyla Silverfox isn’t really dead and admits she kept tabs on Logan, Weapon XI, Logan and Victor fight together again, and a bunch of mutants that the audience barely get to care about. The whole problem with the story is that it tries to do so much without really succeeding at anything so it doesn’t really climax. I could care less about the story not being too faithful to the source material as long as it works. In this case though, it doesn’t.

I was expecting to see emphasis on the origin of wolverine, how his life started, and how he became the animal with adamantium in his bones. Unfortunately, these 3 story elements were only given a few minutes. It’s an origins movie and they spent little time fleshing out the actual “origins” part. I wanted to see the more human side of Wolverine, as Logan, what he went through as a child, how he coped with not dying, and transcending time. They only spent 5 minutes to show these things during the opening credits. The whole Weapon X project where Logan gets adamantium grafted to his skeleton just felt so rushed. I always had the feeling that the entire weapon X process was the most important part of Wolverine’s origins. A few minutes on-screen weren’t really enough to justify it. How will the audience care about wolverine and the weapon X project if they deal with the entire thing so quickly?

Deadpool was ruined too. I’m not very familiar with him in the comics but putting him in the movie and showing him for just 5 freakin’ minutes (5 minutes that was pretty good), and then the whole Weapon XI disaster, it’s a big F You to comic book fans anywhere. There was also a great attempt to tie this movie to the first X-men film. A walking Professor X even appears near the end. The problem is that it detracted from the main story, from Wolverine and his origins.

I’m finding it hard to say good things about this film. Jackman is still excellent in playing Wolverine and the fight scenes are great. The special effects looked like it needed some more polish though. I was really disappointed with this film.  I never expected it be this bad.There’s no flow to the narrative and there’s no soul to the characters (one dimensional and all). Only the very casual X-men fans and movie-goers who don’t really nitpick will be pleased by this one. One last thing though, stay in the theaters until the entire credits are finished.