X-Men Origins: Wolverine | Little White Lies

X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolverine

28 Apr 2009 / Released: 29 Apr 2009

Words by Limara Salt

Directed by Gavin Hood

Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, and Ryan Reynolds

Man in tan jacket and jeans standing in field, mountains in background.
Man in tan jacket and jeans standing in field, mountains in background.
5

Anticipation.

Step aside Batman/Spiderman/Superman, the real king is in town.

3

Enjoyment.

Awesome had it not been for the primary school CGI.

3

In Retrospect.

Can’t quite put my finger on it, but something was missing.

The eager­ly await­ed Wolver­ine spin off will leave you feel­ing all too under whelmed.

Com­ic book fans are an inter­est­ing bunch; total­ly metic­u­lous to the point of obses­sion with the char­ac­ters they love and hold dear to their hearts as if they actu­al­ly exist. As a fan, it’s easy to sit in a cin­e­ma, arms fold­ed, and bitch about the dif­fer­ences between the com­ic book, car­toon and film adap­ta­tions, but instead it’s impor­tant to try and take what is being screened before me pure­ly on enter­tain­ment val­ue. Indeed we all do, know­ing full well that the his­to­ries of these char­ac­ters are so com­plex and twist­ed it would take a 10-hour film to come close to even half of the story.

Obses­sive we may be, but we know when to stand togeth­er in the face of hor­ren­dous errors. We for­gave them when they com­bined Jubilee with Rogue; we looked the oth­er way when Mys­tique and Night­crawler shared a scene while for­get­ting they’re moth­er and son; we slammed our fist in anger when we realised that Gam­bit was nowhere to be seen; and we all shed a tear and plot­ted mur­der when Brett Rat­ner defiled the epic Phoenix saga. Fine, we’ll live with all that.

But what can­not be over­looked is that Hol­ly­wood hasn’t just ruined the Wolver­ine sto­ry, hasn’t just made omis­sions and mis­takes. No, they’ve done some­thing far worse: they’ve turned Wolver­ine into a run of the mill Hol­ly­wood hero.

When Bryan Singer signed on to direct the X‑Men sto­ry in 1996, even he didn’t know what he was get­ting into. Sev­er­al grum­bles and death threats lat­er it became to clear to him what the rest of us have always known: when it comes to X‑Men, no mat­ter who your favourite may be (Rogue and Gam­bit for those who care), Wolver­ine is the most impor­tant char­ac­ter. If he works, we’re all hap­py. And boy did he work – he was per­fect in every way, shape and form and turned a ris­ing Aussie actor into a bona fide star.

But even being the focal point of the tril­o­gy wasn’t enough to explain his life, and there­in lies the point of the ori­gin tale; to explain where each char­ac­ter comes from for those who didn’t spend their child­hood read­ing the comics or watch­ing the car­toon on Sat­ur­day morn­ings. But for some strange rea­son, this was not quite the ado­les­cent wet dream I had expect­ed. Sit­ting through the 108-minute run­ning time, it felt like the film­mak­ers (direc­tor Gavin Hood and pro­duc­er Hugh Jack­man) sat through Want­ed, The Bourne Series and every bloody Michael Bay film there is and took every trait they could.

The pow­ers of Team X are jaw drop­ping but the insis­tence on using slow motion ham­pers every damn fight scene, ruin­ing its awe­some­ness. Dead­pool (Ryan Reynolds) was already kick­ing ass before he had to cut a bul­let in half and kill two men with its remains. That shit was not need­ed. Agent Zero (Daniel Hen­ney) had every­one yelp­ing with delight with his insane gun tal­ents before they had to show him re-load­ing by throw­ing the clip into the gun, in slow motion of course. Every block­buster is so focused on one-upman­ship that it takes away from every­thing else.

The team of mutants are great though; Dead­pool and Agent Zero stand out and Liev Schreiber jumps head first into Tay­lor Mane’s shoes, even though Sabre­tooth has no real char­ac­ter, liv­ing and breath­ing par­a­sit­i­cal­ly on Wolverine’s exis­tence. One of the huge mis­takes of the X‑Men tril­o­gy was the crim­i­nal exclu­sion of Gam­bit, one of the most impor­tant and char­ac­ter-led mutants in the uni­verse, and thank­ful­ly he’s not the let­down here that many antic­i­pat­ed. The rel­a­tive­ly unknown Tay­lor Kitsch has the right look, atti­tude and accent of the char­ac­ter, and even though his pow­ers have been some­what exag­ger­at­ed for the screen, his small scene sticks in the mind.

Not that any of that is real­ly impor­tant, though: this is about Wolver­ine and as a char­ac­ter a cou­ple of hun­dred years old the film admirably cov­ers his sto­ry and leads up nice­ly to the first X‑Men film. The open­ing cred­its were won­der­ful­ly mapped out, show­ing his his­to­ry in fam­i­ly, army and the ear­ly days with William Stryk­er (Dan­ny Hus­ton). Noth­ing feels forced even when mak­ing obvi­ous nods to the tril­o­gy, as in the scene where he acquires his leather jack­et and dog tags.

No, where the film falls down is sim­ply in ask­ing Hugh Jack­man to mani­a­cal­ly scream at the cam­era, cock his eye­brow and strut his way through the fights with a dis­tract­ing­ly large pair of shoul­ders, not to men­tion a few gra­tu­itous top­less shots for the two peo­ple who don’t already know that Hugh Jack­man is a ripped slab of pure sex. More notice­able still were the changes made to the look of the char­ac­ter: gone are the mechan­i­cal claws that had to be held by two stunt men stand­ing behind Jack­man to be replaced by CGI.

Oh yes, the graph­ics. The graph­ics! Nev­er in my life have my eyes been so offend­ed by bad CGI. It’s actu­al­ly not even bad, it’s just too per­fect to the point that it looks ridicu­lous. The claws are too wide, too light, too shiny and actu­al­ly look like they were made by Mat­tel. There are utter­ly fool­ish moments, as when Wolver­ine sets a heli­copter on fire and walks away as it explodes (in slow motion), hair flut­ter­ing in the wind like some dodgy L’Oreal ad.

Dur­ing the final show­down on top of some build­ing, the back­ground sun­set is so detailed it looks like a water paint­ing, dit­to for when Wolver­ine walks away into the sun­set. That’s all well and good for the John McClane’s of this world, but not Wolver­ine – he has no time for that crap. Hol­ly­wood has got its grub­by lit­tle hands all over the great­est com­ic book char­ac­ter of all time and he stinks of it.

You can’t help but won­der what it would’ve been like if Bryan Singer had been at the helm. He under­stood the crux of the series – the alien­ation, dis­crim­i­na­tion and prej­u­dice that engulfed these char­ac­ters and made them unique in the com­ic book world. These aren’t a group of peo­ple who acci­den­tal­ly got on the wrong end of a lab exper­i­ment, or were bit­ten by an insect, or are orphan bil­lion­aires fight­ing against ran­dom villains.

No, these are peo­ple born that way, ham­pered with pow­ers in a soci­ety that doesn’t accept them or know what to do with them. It is Magneto’s Mal­colm X ver­sus Xavier’s Mar­tin Luther King. The only thing they fight for is accep­tance and a nor­mal life. Alas, this spin off is fun but doesn’t quite fit the mould, and if you’re any­thing like me you might just leave the cin­e­ma feel­ing all too under whelmed.

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