X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolverine

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.