RSS
Home
A respectable "X-Men: Origins"
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Hugh Jackman as Wolverine
If I recall correctly, I would have to say that growing up I was a Wolverine and an Iron Man fan, only because I remember having their actions figures. The problem was I really didn’t get into comic books all that much, so I must have thought they were cooler than the other characters. That train of thought apparently wasn’t relegated to me, as the original X-Men was focused on the character Wolverine, and he is also the one to get the first back-story. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, attempts to give us the inside scoop on why Wolverine, gamely played again by a super buff Hugh Jackman, is the haunted soul we spent three movies with already. More importantly we truly get what we were missing before the original X-Men film was released; with the result being mixed, but ultimately enough to satisfy.
As this is a story about mutants, there needs to be some new ones introduced to generate interest, and there are a few in Origins, although other than Sabertooth (Liev Shrieber, the best part of the movie), there isn’t enough time to care. With Wolverine being the most important mutant, both in his family and for the government, we only get a taste of other ones. Part of my early distaste for Origins was the way it sped through some of those early scenes. We get an abbreviated childhood trauma scene, then a great credit roll sequence, coming on the heels of another killer opening in Watchmen. Once we learn enough about Wolverine and Sabertooth’s relationship, a team of mutants, led by William Stryker (here played by Danny Huston, Brian Cox in the later films) assist in trying to find the secret behind a mysterious stone. Ryan Reynolds is the biggest name of the new mutants, playing the sword wielding Deadpool, but I still am not sure why he was in this, or at least he wasn't given more screen time. The way this group does business doesn’t appeal to Wolverine, and he matriculates elsewhere for a life a peace and quiet, for a few years at least, abandoning who everyone thinks he really is.
Being such an important cog to future experiments, Wolverine is drawn back in by revenge and then unleashed on the world after being injected with Adamantium, which was what the search before was about, and helps make Wolverine indestructible and keeps his claws so shiny. After all of this goes down, we are left with a mutant chase movie that has some ingenuities, but truly a lot of it looked like it was filmed in front of a green screen, which it probably was.
While the beginning felt rushed, and the middle feels familiar, it is the last third of the movie that gives it that extra push from simply mediocre summer movie, to slightly above average. Reenlisting former mutants and meeting up with a new one in Remy LeBeau or Gambit, adds a much needed spark that really only exists when Jackman and Schreiber are on screen together.
There are characters that we have met before and they are important here, along with a few twists that may not be revelatory, but at least they keep things interesting. This felt like a mix between the first X-Men and the third in the series, not coming close to the excellence that was X2. To kick off the summer though one could do worse, and at least at the end of the movie I wanted to know more, or at least watch X-Men again. I will gladly take something exceeding my expectations, even if the bar wasn’t exactly very high to begin with.
Grade: B-
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
