REVIEW: X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not familiar with (or interested in) the X-MEN canon, or specifically, the origins of its mutant characters. And when I first hear about X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, I wasn’t convinced there was any reason to tell the story. But I wanted to like this picture. I am a huge HUGH JACKMAN fan. I wanted to believe 20TH Century Fox had learned from the contemporary success of pictures like TDK and IRON MAN. I wanted to believe WOLVERINE would show some sign of intelligence – provide some reason for my attendance – some unique character portrayal that I hadn’t been privy to in the first three X-MEN films.

But WOLVERINE turned out to be the picture I feared it would be. Barely average as comic book standards go – and maybe the least competent entry into the X-MEN series (which is hard to pull off considering the disastrous X3). Sure, there were parts I enjoyed. There’s nothing like seeing Wolverine flung from an exploding military hummer before slicing so many holes in a B26 helicopter it looks more like sponge than a flying vessel. Then watching him dust himself off and smirk to camera as a pile of scrap metal and bad guys explodes into a fiery blaze of destruction behind him. Sure, that was sweet.



And as we’re on the positive – I’ll admit that LIEV SCHREIBER’s SABRETOOTH played well. The casting of SCHREIBER ran the risk of rendering SABRETOOTH a wimpy and whiney version of an otherwise ruthless killing beast. Whether it was that every punch SABRETOOTH threw sent his victims flying across the room – or - that SCHREIBER managed to deliver his horribly written lines well, SABRETOOH was… dare I say, the only pertinent character onscreen?

Not as enjoyable (or rather, as tolerable) was how often the dialogue was needless. Half the lines felt as though the character was thinking out loud, as opposed to speaking with purpose. Whether it was Wolverine explaining his decision making process – which were always crystal clear – or SABRETOOTH making yet another pithy remark – the characters seemed to want to hear themselves speak – never intending to saying of value. And sadly, there wasn’t much to look at to distract us from the dialogue – the only real impressive set piece being the helicopter fight - and we’d been fed that for months in the promotions.



Everything I saw on screen led to a sinking feeling that couldn’t be ignored. I just couldn’t pay attention to WOLVERINE. My mind wandered. I was bored. I found myself asking the same question over and over again. Why am I watching this? Not in the sense of why I did I come to the theater and make the choice to see WOLVERINE – but why I am being told this story?

I’m going to do something I traditionally avoid in reviews, but it’s unavoidable in this case – and that is to discuss spoilers. Here’s what we learned about Wolverine in X-MEN and X-2 – that he was at one point a mutant, then some government agency bonded an indestructible metal, adamantium, to his skeleton and shortly there after (or simultaneously) he lost his memory. So in telling this origin story there had to be something else, something vital… heck, just something interesting, right? There was not. And at the end of WOLVERINE we have the same fundamental knowledge of his origin as before: he was a mutant, government scientists made him indestructible and then he forgets everything.



And that’s what’s most disappointing and most dysfunctional about WOLVERINE. The telling of this X-MEN ORIGINS story renders the appeal and mystery of Wolverine’s character in X-MEN and X2 moot, or at best, greatly bastardized. Wolverine always had a conflicted morality – he was a keeper of his own code. Part of me wished we learned why he had this code – why he wasn’t just an uncontrollable beast. But that conflicted morality exists throughout X-MEN ORIGINS – so even that remain unchanged.

If I had to sum up X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE in one word, it would be unnecessary. There wasn’t a moment of value to any character throughout the entire picture. The closest we got to feeling anything for a character was maybe in DOMINIC MONAGHAN’S BOLT – but he was used only tangentially. The failures of WOLVERINE as a picture will surely be overshadowed by its box-office success – and I don’t blame 20th Century Fox as much as I blame the audiences. ORIGINS will likely spawn an immediate sequel – and because we all lined up bright eyed and bushy tailed for trash this time, there’s no reason to think 20th Century Fox won’t put garbage in front of us next time. But we can always hope…