Marvel Mania 2: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds
Directed by: Gavin Hood


After the original X-Men trilogy wrapped up, the studio still wanted to milk that franchise for all its worth, so they idea came about for them to keep it going by doing origin stories. Naturally, the one they wanted to start out with was Wolverine, since so much of the trilogy was centered on the mystery of Wolverine's backstory. This could have really opened the potential for them to do a lot of interesting films that dived deeper into the stories surrounding our favorite characters, maybe even get another shot at handling some of the characters they'd mishandled in previous films. All they had to do was get this first film right and a whole bunch of other problems would have been green lit. There was just one problem. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is one of the worst superhero movies I've ever seen. Heck, it's one of the worst overall films I've ever seen. And this is a thought that is shared with the majority of moviegoers. It's a turd and there's no way around that. It fails on nearly every level and I'm going to stay as far away from the positives as I can. They get one paragraph and that's it. Everything else is going to be about why this movie sucks the big one, so let's get right to it.

Getting this out of the way, there are a few characters I really liked seeing in this movie. Liev Schreiber doesn't necessarily have the build I expected to play Sabretooth, but his acting chops (and mutton chops) were appreciated. Ryan Reynolds was made to play Deadpool, so his early scenes in the film as Wade Wilson are one of the only highlights the film has. And seeing Gambit brought to life on the big screen, by Taylor Kitsch, was something fans had been waiting to see for a long time and his scenes were pretty cool to see.

But the big problem with all of this is that these characters are just there. There's not much of an actual plot or narrative that serves these characters to be useful, but there is tons of potential. There's a story between Wolverine and Sabretooth that could've been something compelling, but they sacrifice that by making Sabretooth (referred to more as Victor in this film) a killer that kills for the sake of killing. Gambit is really just there because fans wanted to see him and the studio probably thought they were doing us all a big favor. And what they do to Deadpool by the end of the film is one of the biggest sins that a major comic book film has ever committed. It's never been new to have a bunch of characters in these X-Men movies, but the better X-Men films are the ones that can make all those characters important to the plot. Here, they are just...here.

If there's one thing that didn't hold up from the start of the film, it was the special effects. There's way too much CGI going on that the film feels more like a crappy video game than an actual film. The biggest sin this movie had was how goofy they made Wolverine's claws look. They'd gotten it right in all the other movies, so why did they think that needed to be changed? Why did they need to make the claws bigger and more animated? A few months before the movie was released, I remember nearly everyone bootlegging the film with a version that had a lot of the major special effects not completed yet. Because of that, most people who were going to see the movie had already seen it. The filmmakers probably said "screw it" and phoned in the effects as revenge.

When I was all done with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I was not only disappointed, but underwhelmed. The origin doesn't give us anything the casual viewer couldn't already guess. The "twists and turns" are easily predictable and the most compelling part of the film (where Wolverine and Sabretooth fight through numerous historical wars) is told in the form of an opening credits montage. There are better films out there with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, a much better film to see Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, and a film for Gambit on the way (starring Channing Tatum). So, there's literally nothing redeeming that should have X-Men fans coming back to this film. It's, hopefully, the weakest installment that we'll ever see in this franchise. If I ever live to see a worse X-Men movie come out, may God have mercy on all our souls.

Are the post-credits scenes worth our time? Minor *SPOILERS* for anyone who cares. The mid-credits scene has Stryker interrogated over the death of General Munson, which isn't really relevant after this film ends, so I couldn't care less. And the post-credits scene shows Deadpool start to pull himself together, with his severed head shushing the audience. Were they hinting that THIS Deadpool would be back? Yeah...ok, whatever. I'M FREE!!!! WOO-HOO!!! Thank God! Hopefully, I will never have to sit through another X-Men movie as horrible as this one. I pray I never have to eat those words.


Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

This movie's lucky I sort of like the scenes with Gambit, the early scenes with Deadpool, and Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is all kinds of wrong that throws way too many new characters into the equation, saturates the screen with way too much CGI, and fast forwards through all the interesting aspects of Wolverine's origin to give us something we could have easily predicted. It's wrong on so many levels and is not really recommended for anyone that values the X-Men brand.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine and movie images are copyrighted by 20th Century Fox