Review: ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’
Review: ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’
Bub
2 stars out of 5
As expected, the superhero genre is running out of steam. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the latest spandex adventure from Marvel Studios, the feature has also run out of script, interest, and the ability to manage great characters. Pity, because Wolverine is a tailor-made fit and poster boy for where the genre wants so desperately to be: taken seriously by using gritty and tortured anti-heroes who would rather punch your face off than discuss diplomacy. Unfortunately for 20th Century Fox and its partner in crime Marvel Entertainment, or as true believers affectionately call its parent company, The House of Ideas, this prequel to the X-Men saga, is an overworked feast of mediocre nothingness.
As the title indicates, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, takes place before the formation of the mutant superhero team X-Men, and focuses on the back-story of the team’s most popular character, the razor-clawed Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). By birth, James (his real name) is a young sick lad constantly bed-ridden due to many of the diseases plaguing British Columbia in the mid 1800s, yet as his guardian states early in the film, he manages to always pull through and survive. Tragedy strikes his family and James, along with his brotherly friend Victor, run off into the night. Both mutants have the ability to heal from almost any injury. They fight wars (American Civil War thru Vietnam) together, bleed side-by-side and take down America’s enemies with the precision of a Ginsu knife. James, blessed with protruding bone claws, and Victor (Liev Schreiber) with animal-like claws of his own, are thrown into the “hole” after surviving a firing squad execution for the murder of their commanding officer in Vietnam. The prisoners are visited by General William Stryker (Danny Huston), who offers them a chance to use their extraordinary powers for the good of their country in an “off the book” kind of way. <wink>
Once enlisted into the U.S.-backed covert para-military squad, the two, joined by John Wraith (Will i Am), Fred Dukes/The Blob (Kevin Durand), Bradley/Bolt (Dominic Monaghan), Agent Zero (Daniel Henney) and Wade/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), drop into Nigeria to find a super special mineral. When the operation turns excessively violent, James abandons the group and his increasingly bloodthirsty friend Victor.
Fast-forward six-months and James, or Logan as he now prefers to go by, spends his days working as a lumberjack in Canada and his nights getting cuddly with his girlfriend Kayla (Lynn Collins). When some of Logan’s former associates turn up dead, Gen. Stryker attempts to re-enlist him to help take down the man behind the slayings. Doing so, Logan undergoes a treatment to wrap his skeleton with the hardest substance in the world (the famed adamantium) and uncovers a sinister secret kept by the government.
Viewers will know within the first 15 minutes just what kind of movie they’ll come to live with for the next hour and 45 minutes. Wolverine is filled with over-the-top melodrama, faux and sometimes unintentionally funny moments. Throw in an absurd and rudimentary take on the Bush Doctrine and a fairy tale view on the hospitality of Canadians, and the film wanders aimlessly from event to event without any regard for storytelling or character development. Wolverine is an iconic bad-ass but his change from gruff guy to a dogged cutthroat animal doesn’t fit on screen. The surrounding cast is mismanaged also as Logan’s former cohort, Wade/Deadpool, is made way too interesting for a character that is used so sparingly. Along with random adventures, which takes him from town to town, to town, the menagerie of characters used here is just way too much. It’s as if director Gavin Hood, who directed a similarly disjointed take on war-time torture in 2007’s Rendition, succumbed to the fanboy mob and threw in all the major characters that they demanded to see on screen, no matter if it takes away from the central character’s story. And really, how many times do we need to see somebody sit by a dead body and scream at the sky?
While X-Men Origins: Wolverine is nowhere close to being the nail in the coffin for the hyper-popular superhero genre, it does however indicate that the genre’s shelf-life may be almost up.
