Movie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Marvel comics produce two sorts of movies: entertaining/ingenious ones, such as X-Men 2 or Hulk, and crappy ones, like all the rest. With a clunky script, awful special effects and wooden acting, X-Men Origins: Wolverine belongs solidly in the second category.
The film’s failure is, on paper at least, a complete mystery to me. The actors are solid A-listers: Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch — these are GOOD actors! The director, Gavin Hood, brought us Tsotsi and Rendition, both excellent. Let’s see, the writers….. dude who wrote Troy, and the guy who wrote Hitman. And Swordfish. Ah. Maybe it isn’t such a mystery at all.
The film is rife with action cliche. Howling skyward in grief while the camera tracks back into the sky (“nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!”), walking away from explosions with no expression or reaction, even walking into the sunset — each of these occurs multiple times. The fight dialogue is standard fare, taunts and lame jokes mostly, but every time an actor opens his or her mouth outside of an action scene I just hid my face in my hands out of a mixture of sorrow and mirth. Lynn Collins’ turn as Kayla Silverfox was particularly groan-worthy, from completely awful retellings of fake native American fables, to her “I’m so cold” as she dies.
It needn’t be this way. Even comic book neophytes know the tale of how Wolverine got his adamantium-laced skeleton, how he’s really old and has forgotten his past. There are lots and lots of Wolverine comics out there to choose from, and some of them are excellent stories. The screenwriters have chosen none of them. Instead it’s a pastiche of superhero cameos, as they try to show us every possible fanboy shout-out at once (while engaging in awful retconning of some characters, Emma Frost in particular). Wolverine will fight anybody, it seems, if only because some hack writer thought, “wouldn’t it be cool if Wolverine fought Gambit?” Heaven forbid that there be some plot behind it.
It’s not all bad. The turns of some of the cameo characters — Reynolds as Deadpool, will.i.am as Wraith, Kitsch as Gambit and Huston as Stryker — these bits are all good. Will.i.am in particular did great, and Kitsch was also very serviceable. Jackman tries hard with what he’s given, and Schreiber does well — but they are too much actor for a stale piece of toast like this. So, there are nuggets of gold hidden in the pile of manure. But too few, and too infrequent to save the film.
And although it may be a little too easy to criticize special effects, special mention needs to be made here. They are TERRIBLE. Wolverine’s claws — the claws, people, his most distinctive aspect — look like they are not even part of his body, just pasted in with some clone tool from Photoshop Disasters. Explosions look about as good as effects from The Mummy Returns. [UPDATE: I forgot the worst part! CGI Xavier! There's a cameo at the end with Patrick Stewart, but I think they only could pay for him to do V.O. or something, because his face is all CGI! And it looks TERRIBLE, like some lizard creature. Utterly laughable.]
The cheap effects match up well with the lack of dramatic depth and character realism. It’s depressingly bad; like Fantastic Four bad. This one isn’t worth paying for, whether on the big screen or on Netflix.
Sorry!
Crap.
Comment by Geoff J — April 30, 2009 @ 11:15 pm
Indeed.
Comment by Supergenius — April 30, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
Drat!! I had such high hopes…
Comment by Tracy M — April 30, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
Like all the rest? The first X-Men was great except for the climax and I thought the last Hulk was fun too. And the first two Spidermen.
Comment by clark — April 30, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
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Pingback by Movie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine | Movies Review and Trailers — May 1, 2009 @ 12:24 am
Yes, I was going to point at that Spidey 1 & 2, and (of course) Iron Man were all excellent. I’d wager that Marvel is batting greater than .500 over the last few years.
Wolverine sounds like it is bad in many of the same ways that X-Men 3 was bad, but worse.
Comment by BTD Greg — May 1, 2009 @ 6:20 am
D’Oh! We were going to go see this tonight, but now maybe not.
Am I the only one that felt the entire X-Men trilogy was unfulfulling (esp. #1)? And I’m including #2 which I thought was fairly mediocre apart from the school raid.
Comment by Tim J — May 1, 2009 @ 6:37 am
I confess that I was really excited about this… until I saw the first trailer. Liv Schreiber as Sabretooth?! Gimme a friggin break, he’s just not action material. I laughed for about five minutes, and thought “who decided THAT was a good idea?”
Oh well.
Comment by Ben — May 1, 2009 @ 7:05 am
*unfulfilling
Comment by Tim J — May 1, 2009 @ 7:47 am
Ah yes, in my blindness I forgot about the Spideys and Iron Man. The first X-Men was not great.
Comment by Supergenius — May 1, 2009 @ 8:05 am
C’mon, SG, you can’t be surprised by this. First X-men 3 was the biggest let down in the history of let-downs, and on top of it, we’ve seen the commercials for Wolverine, and they all sucked. If the best you can do to advertise your movie is really cheesy flying through the air towards helicopter, you are doing something wrong. Of course, the comics themselves have sucked ever since Claremont left. Wolverine went from Samurai like master to feral killing machine, and frankly become boring.
Comment by Matt W. — May 1, 2009 @ 8:26 am
If it’s any consolation to anybody, the new Wolverine animated series on Nickelodeon is actually pretty great.
Comment by BTD Greg — May 1, 2009 @ 8:35 am
Matt, that’s not really the case about the comics post-Claremont. There have been some very good turns, notably Whedon’s.
Comment by Supergenius — May 1, 2009 @ 8:38 am
While I certainly didn’t like X-Men 3, I thought it was an appropriately disappointing end to a disappointing trilogy. A question for SG, does Cyclops have any balls in this movie? Because I’m pretty sure Singer removed them when making his films.
I also had to question the need for a Wolverine movie when the original X-Men trilogy was pretty well centered on Wolverine alone.
Comment by Tim J — May 1, 2009 @ 8:39 am
I had no plans to watch this, but CGI Patrick Stewart makes me want to.
The first X-Men movie was pretty good. Not as good as 2, but really not bad.
Comment by Allison — May 1, 2009 @ 9:09 am
I don’t think the first one was bad, just not very good. It was very “meh” and not very exciting. The lack of action/conflict was startling. Much like Singer’s Superman when he somehow decided it would be a good idea for Superman and Lex Luthor to only share one very brief scene together.
Comment by Tim J — May 1, 2009 @ 9:13 am
I have to wonder why a group of putative grown-ups cares enough about superhero movies to express disappointment when one is entirely predictably juvenile and stupid.
Comment by gst — May 1, 2009 @ 9:21 am
Entertaining but a let down tooo as in did not live up to the expectation.
Comment by Kabir — May 1, 2009 @ 9:28 am
Tim J, agreed. And no, Cyclops remains emasculated.
Comment by Supergenius — May 1, 2009 @ 9:29 am
So, how soon before the studios blame the leak of the workprint for the bad reviews?
I’ll probably still watch it anyway. Doesn’t have to be perfect to be entertaining. All the girls here at work who saw it at midnight are saying “Ooh, Hugh Jackman is so hot!” so it’s nice to see something substantial here. =)
Comment by FHL — May 1, 2009 @ 10:05 am
FHL, it was not entertaining.
Comment by Supergenius — May 1, 2009 @ 10:09 am
I thought the first XMen was awesome right until they get into the plane in those dumb leather outfits to go to the statue of liberty. X-Men 3 and Spiderman 3 were both tremendous letdowns. The difference was that I expected it with X-Men 3 considering the director.
Comment by Clark — May 1, 2009 @ 10:30 am
I have to wonder why a group of putative grown-ups cares enough about superhero movies to express disappointment when one is entirely predictably juvenile and stupid.
gst, apparently had his inner child murdered some time ago.
Comment by Brian G — May 1, 2009 @ 11:17 am
Oh, and can I just say I have bought my tickets to see “Star Trek” on Imax. Can’t wait.
Comment by Brian G — May 1, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
IMAX is fantastic except for one thing. For regularly movies there are only about 1/4 of the seats that give a good viewing experience. So I generally wait a while to see things on IMAX.
Comment by Clark — May 1, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
well, at least we have Star Trek to look forward to.
Comment by Dan — May 1, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
Gambit was the low point of the lows. There was no character to him, nothing cajun about him.
Comment by Eric Russell — May 1, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Eric, if you like your Gambit to be like Riggins from Friday Night Lights, then it’s about right.
Comment by Supergenius — May 1, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
SG, I didn’t wait the 6 or so years of Lobdell to get to Whedon… So no idea…
Comment by Matt W. — May 1, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
Star Trek had better be at least a decent movie. I hate to get too excited so as to not be disappointed. Sounds like Wolverine is a little bit of a disappointment. Bummer.
Comment by Ian M. Cook — May 1, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
I’m holding out hope that Michael Mann recovers from Miami Vice and redeems himself with Public Enemies.
Comment by Tim J — May 1, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
You are right. They have 30 + years worth of material to pull from. There is no reason these screen writers need to re-write these characters who have already been so well defined.
This is a problem in almost every comic movie. The last Punisher had the perfect actor for Frank Castle and again a lot of great material to draw from, but instead they mess everything up.
I’m just going to stick with the books.
And Claremont is back doing the comics again and his stuff is pretty bad IMO. Also I don’t think his past work holds up that well when I read it today. But Matt Fraction is doing a decentr job currently and Millar is doing some good stuff with Wolverine.
Comment by Matsby — May 1, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
The problem with Public Enemies at least in the trailers is that it looks so HD cameraish. Distractingly so. It doesn’t look bad at all on a small screen. But on the big screen… I had a friend who was complaining about this but I hadn’t seen the preview on the big screen until last night and didn’t realize just how right he is. Let’s hope this is something fixed in postproduction.
Comment by Clark — May 2, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
By most accounts Miami Vice’s problems are mostly Jamie Foxx’s fault. His refusal to travel to many locations caused last minute rewrites. The movie that came out was not the movie intented. Anyhow I saw some of PE as it was shot in and around where my in-laws live and if it translates to screen well then I think it will be very good. Though I’m more excited about Depp in Alice and Wonderland
Comment by Rose Tyler — May 2, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
I don’t think Jamie Foxx was the problem with Miami Vice. Rather it was that (1) it added nothing to the 80′s show being more or less a film version of the pilot and (2) the movie was weaker than the TV show. In particular I thought Colin Farrell’s white trash look was just plain bad.
Comment by Clark — May 2, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
Colin Farrell was the weak link in Miami Vice (see my initial review, here. It was otherwise fairly well executed. I have a good deal of confidence in Michael Mann. He gets guys like few others do, sort of a macho man equivalent to Nick Hornsby.
Comment by Supergenius — May 2, 2009 @ 11:12 pm
I thought Miami Vice was just meant to be an elaborate music video for “One of These Mornings,” which I like.
Comment by BrianJ — May 3, 2009 @ 2:00 am
Nick Honsby? The guy who had that song they played way back in Family Ties with Michael J. Fox?
Comment by Clark — May 3, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
We are in an age where every story we have ever enjoyed is being adapted to the movie screen. The technology can basically now makes anything we’ve imagined realistic on-screen.
But I wonder, in the rush to adapt anything that already has a built-in fan-base, if our culture/civilization is forgetting how to create original new stories.
At least we have Pixar.
In regards to Wolverine and the X-Men movies (or even superhero movies in general) they are taking bits and pieces of all these comic-book stories and throwing them at us in new versions and combinations.
There was a limited-series Wolverine comic in the 80s that could have been turned into a noirish movie and it might have been something really great.
I’m not completely unhappy with what has happened but I’m not really contented either. I do think that Marvel is cashing in on all these stories and the results have been somewhat interesting but never spectactular.
Shyamalan did something right with Unbreakable.
Comment by danithew — May 5, 2009 @ 5:32 am
Clark: I don’t know anything about Nick Honsby. The song I’m talking about is by Moby.
Comment by Brian J — May 5, 2009 @ 8:47 am
Sorry, I was thinking Bruce Hornsby.
My bad.
Comment by Clark — May 5, 2009 @ 10:16 am
LOL, Clark.
Comment by Supergenius — May 5, 2009 @ 10:43 am