Movie Review - 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, and Ryan Reynolds Directed by Gavin Hood Rated PG-13

There is not a great deal that’s special about X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The packaging is slick and eye-popping and Hugh Jackman knows this character backwards and forwards, but it simply feels confined by its formula, both as a film following the three-act dramatic structure and as a product quite purposefully placed in the pole position of the summer movie season. At his core, Wolverine has a simple duality: He resists the urge to be an animal while realizing that the only way to mete out justice is to give into his primal, mutant side. That doesn’t work in this movie, because it’s too afraid to go to the darkest corners of Wolverine’s heart and mind and because parts of the character’s origin story are already familiar. Remember the first X-Men movie? Its strength was the Wolverine storyline, but curiously, that’s among the weaknesses of the movie principally about Wolverine. To Jackman’s credit, he is somehow bigger than the script even without an ounce of memorable dialogue and only a smattering of action scenes. Wolverine gets in trouble where most otherwise worthy comic book movies trip themselves up: There are just too damn many characters. Look at what it did to Spider-Man 3 and the rushed last half-hour of The Dark Knight. The beauty of the comic book format is that it’s serialized, so incredibly cool and unique heroes and villains can come and go as the creators see fit. A movie doesn’t have that luxury, and entire arcs have to exist for characters who affect the action in any significant way. If not, audience members ask, “But what happened to that one guy? Where’d he go?” Here, that means creating complete stories for seven characters, including the mutants John Wraith (Will.I.Am), Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber), Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), and Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins), as well as Wolverine and Col. William Stryker (Danny Huston), the government mastermind who is cleaning up the world one incarcerated mutant at a time. Everyone fights on the same side at first, but then a line is drawn in the sand. That’s a lot of activity for a film that lasts less than two hours, and it becomes obvious that some of these characters are only around because they might get their own movies later and need to be introduced to audiences somehow. Wolverine could do without Wraith, Gambit, and Deadpool, none of whom have any bearing on the outcome. The time they occupy would be better served developing Sabertooth and Stryker, two pivotal players in the Wolverine story, which give rise to the best performances in the film. The most curious point about the inclusion of all these characters is that Wolverine was clearly the star of a trio of X-Men movies, which were so cluttered that Wolverine needed his own franchise to enjoy a bigger spotlight.Perhaps it’s because Jackman is so at home in an adamantium skeleton with retractable claws and Schreiber is such an accomplished antagonist and Huston is so adept at playing smirking, oily villains that the other supporting characters feel like the first sandbags that need to be cut from the balloon, but they do unnecessarily weigh down an otherwise interesting dynamic between the three principals, one that succumbs to several mutations too many.

Comments

[Asana]

Damn you Boyd! Damn you and your writing style that keeps me coming back for more!!! You're right of course about too many characters with precious little to do but serve as sidebar distractions. Such is my fear for the Avengers if it ever comes to fruition. At any rate, Wolverine is one of the must see films of the year so I'll snikt my way through to see it.

[Matt]

nice review. I feel the same way about it. I made a quick review at my site.
http://saywhatsreal.com/wordpress/?p=3168

[Nomad]

i thought Liev Schreiber in particular did an awesome job from all the way through; he brought some genuine acting prowess to the whole production

[james_cloud]

bit short and clustered in all honesty...a wolverine film should be an 18 with pure violence and exploring the recesses of wolverines feral mind instead of the watered down film versions we see