The time has finally arrived. I’ve traded in my Chuck reviews for movie reviews as I embark on a journey through US cinema over the next few months.
It all starts with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, aptly placed at the beginning of the summer. The marketing guys at Fox certainly knew what they were doing, because I think this movie would have tanked had it been surrounded by more able blockbusters.
I’m not saying that Wolverine is bad, but I’m not saying it’s good either. It sort of hovers in the middle between mediocrity and greatness, mostly hampered by a poorly put together plot and downright lousy fight choreography.
The one thing that Wolvie does have going for it, however, is the casting. Every character is well-cast and plays their part to the best of their ability.
I’ve always been a fan of Liev Schreiber and he doesn’t disappoint as Sabretooth. The biggest distraction from his character is actually recollection of X-Men’s Tyler Mane. It’s hard to imagine this sleeker Sabretooth turning into the idiotic cat-man from that movie.
Hugh Jackman, of course, embodies the adamantium-laced superhero better than probably anyone could have imagined. His 10 years experience of being Wolverine certainly come into play as he keeps the character mostly consistent with the previous incarnations.
I don’t know that much about Deadpool, but as I understand it he’s pretty screwed up in this movie. Before the changes to his dna, Ryan Reynolds plays what is probably the most entertaining character in the movie. Sadly, Wade Wilson is only in the movie for a matter of minutes before being forgotten.
By the time he returns he is no longer anything impressive, other than a chance for the movie to finally show off a little bit of choreography by ripping off the Nightcrawler fight scenes from X-Men United and far too many similarities to the Darth Maul fight in Star Wars: Episode 1.
Despite it’s good casting and acting, that’s what Wolverine really boils down to. It is an uninspired recreation of a well-known story with very little to grab the imagination of the viewer.
The fight scenes are mostly horrible. Wolverine and Sabretooth fight multiple times throughout the film, but every fight feels exactly the same. I guess there’s only so much you can do with two nigh-indestructible blokes with nothing but claws for defense.
Things get spiced up a little bit with the addition of Gambit, but the character is so forcefully jarred into the story that it’s hard to really take him seriously. He seems to show up at completely random times, none of which actually serve any purpose but to milk the character.
That alone is a sad thing, because Gambit deserves far better than he got in this script. Fox has now squandered what is arguably the second most beloved X-Men character on a throw-away origin story. Though we may see Gambit again in a future Wolverine movie, I fear that too much damage has been done to his character to salvage it.
Wolverine went out of its way to make sure that it kept consistent with the existing X-Men universe. Though this sometimes seemed forced into the film, I did appreciate the effort. There’s even a surprise cameo in the movie that leads nicely into what we already know of the universe.
As the previews have revealed, Cyclops is in the movie which had me wondering exactly how Cyclops would meet Wolverine for the “first time” in the later X-Men, but a cute little plot device managed to pull that off. Sadly, it was these sorts of possibilities of how the movie affects the later films that had me pondering as I left the theater.
I often wait until Monday to write my reviews so I can let the movie age over days. Oftentimes I will decide I like a movie more as the days pass, but in this case I like Wolverine less and less. Some say it is better than X-Men 3 but I disagree — at least X-Men 3 knew what it was and didn’t get lost in its own story.
I can’t advise skipping this movie. It is a nice return to the X-Men movie universe, and the few cool moments you’ll get are probably worth the price of admission. It is well-acted, and for that I have to begrudgingly recommend seeing it.
If you’re not an X-Men fan, though, you can definitely wait until the blu ray or even television — if ever.
Verdict: C+ Tilt: D+