Rent X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: David Benioff and Skip Woods (screenplay)
Directed by: Gavin Hood
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will.i.am, Taylor Kitsch, Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, Kevin Durand
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
The early years of James Logan, featuring his rivalry with his brother Victor Creed, his service in the special forces team Weapon X, and his evolution into the admantium reinforced Wolverine.
Verdict
While this departs from the source material, a promising first half devolves into a generic action revenge movie. The answer to any question in the second half seems to be a more powerful mutant or a bigger gun. This begins to explore the character, and then just bails. It's obvious a standalone X-Men movie would be Wolverine, but that's no easy task with the mutant that has the most ambiguous past.
Skip it.
Review
This was planned as the first in a series of X-Men Origins prequels that were ultimately never developed. Some criticism derived from re imagining Wolverines origins. The comics always kept it vague. If this movie had been better overall that probably wouldn't have mattered as much.
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| Hugh Jackman plays Wolverine |
This posits Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber) as brothers, growing up to fight in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. They're a formidable duo, nearly invincible. I'm not sure how no one noticed their abilities prior to Vietnam, but the point is a cool introduction and the movie delivers. Victor's bloodlust reaches a breaking point in Vietnam. He kills an officer as James Logan tries to defend him. The brothers are found out when a firing squad proves ineffective. That gains the notice of General Stryker (Danny Huston). He wants to capitalize on their abilities. It's a great prologue and revision to the characters, provided you don't want strict adherence to the comics. Stryker places them on a black ops team, and James Logan eventually begins to hate the work and leaves the team.
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| Liev Schreiber, Hugh Jackman play Sabertooth, Wolverine |
James Logan, who's not yet Wolverine, leads a quiet life as a lumberjack. He even has a girlfriend. Sabertooth returns just to wreak havoc and push Logan to the edge. To help in his revenge, Logan agrees to an admantium injection with Stryker to make himself near invincible. The odd thing about that is that Wolverine had bony claws. If the admantium only coated his bones, how does it turn his bony claws into admantium blades? It's a little bit of movie magic and rule of cool. Stryker used Wolverine's desire for revenge to create a weapon, unfortunately Wolverine isn't interested. Stryker hunts him down, causing plenty of collateral damage along the way. Wolverine also discovers that Stryker worked with Sabertooth to push him into this quest, setting him up to ask for the admantium.
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| Ryan Reynolds, Liev Schreiber, Hugh Jackman play Deadpool, Sabertooth, Wolverine |
From this point on it's a revenge action movie. Wolverine wants to get Stryker, but Stryker has a new soldier, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) dubbed Weapon XI. Sabertooth wants to kill Wolverine, but he's not about to let someone else do it. There's a big fight between the three. Despite Deadpool's several new mutant powers now, nothing can stop the brothers. I like Sabertooth defending Wolverine. Giving Deadpool all the mutant powers is a cheat code. If you can make a super mutant, why is he so easy to defeat? The best thing about Deadpool is his humor, and his additional abilities have removed his ability to speak.
Strykers original plan was to inject Wolverine with admantium and erase his memory, making him dependent. That didn't work out, but Stryker's plan is to shoot him with an admantium bullet. One, how would that pierce his skull? It's the same material. At best wouldn't it dent his skull? Two, how does Stryker know that would erase memories and those won't be retained, recalled, or regenerated? Wolverine's entire power is regeneration. While it's been criticized, in the comics Wolverine has fully regenerated from a drop of blood or clump of tissue. In this movie, Stryker literally has a magic bullet.
The final sequence does involve Wolverine losing his memory and sets up his plight to regain it as seen in the X-Men trilogy. I liked the first half right up to Wolverine getting admantium, it's inventive. The second half isn't as strong.
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