Mr. Nittles (Wolverine)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Directed by Gavin Hood
Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods
I think it’s been pretty well established that Hugh Jackman makes a great Wolverine. I mean, aside from a small geekboy-gripe about the height discrepancy (Hugh Jackman is six foot three inches in height, while Logan is just supposed to be a sawed-off runt—standing a full foot shorter at 5’3”), Jackman’s got the character nailed. He’s duplicated every X-Men comic iconic pose to a tee and we’re all suitably impressed. And who didn’t have to change his Spiderman underwear when he heard that they were casting Ryan Reynolds for the part of the “Merc-with-a-Mouth,” Deadpool? No, casting wasn’t an issue in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but pretty much everything else was.
First of all there was the issue of the special effects. I mean, you could clearly see the trapeze wiring on some of the actors as they flew through the… oh wait, maybe that was only visible in the bootleg copy. At any rate, the fans weren’t there for Wolverine to be surrounded by laser beams and explosions. This isn’t Star Trek; there’s no intergalactic epic that every last audience member was yearning to see. For god’s sake, at Wolverine’s best he’s a feral killing machine with foot long claws coming out of his hands. Just throw him in the woods, howling at the moon and fighting some ninjas for two hours and we would have all sat back and uttered a collective sigh of contentment once the end credits started to roll. Chris Claremont and Frank Miller already established the archetype way back in 1982 with the classic Wolverine limited series. “Snikt” pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?
But the source material for the quintessential Wolverine origins story would inarguably have to be the Marvel Comics Presents’ Weapon X serial story written and penciled by Barry Windsor-Smith in 1991. Everyone who read the story as it came out in its weekly installments KNEW that they were witnessing an instant legend in the making. Maybe I’m revealing myself to be a purist here, but if 20th Century Fox simply released a retelling of that tale, every kid who taped a bunch of steak-knives to their knuckles as a teenager would have been happy. (As a quick aside, maybe the special effects team should have just done the same with Wolverine’s claws in the movie. I can’t be certain, but did his claws BEND when he brought them under Sabretooth’s chin??)
Granted, writing a Wolverine origin in this day and age, after the years of relentless layering to the mythos (His name is James Howlett?? Are you #*@!ing kidding me?? How could you go and change his cockadoodie name from Logan to James Howlett???) is no small feat. In order to keep all the details straight, you’d need to possess a “wikipedic” knowledge of the character, and even then you could barely keep up. Yet Hollywood decides to add another ponderous layer of its own and put Wolverine and Sabretooth in every war the world has ever seen. All right, we get it: they’re old, they’re bloodthirsty and you can’t kill them. It makes for some good action sequences, however improbable, but where exactly are their redeeming qualities?
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, no movie really stands a chance compared with the pubescent (and decidedly post-pubescent) viewing audience’s impossibly high standards. There’s an ineffable quality to reading Wolverine in his innumerable comic book appearances that celluloid (or digital whatever) will never be able to duplicate. It’s snobbery, to be sure—but it’s not because we want these movies to fail; rather, it is because we know in our hearts it could always be better.
Now, the title, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, clearly implies that 20th Century Fox intends is planning on more X-Men Origin movies to come, but honestly, I can’t imagine which mutant will be the next one to get his/her/its chance in the limelight. Seeing as how the movie has made over $150 million, sequels are inevitable until this cash cow utters (udders?) its last gasp. Maybe we’ll finally get to see the untold story of Morph finally revealed! Yeah, that would be epic.
Review by Mr. Nittles