Rating of
2.5/4
Wolverine: No Cut Above
GeminiSixty6 - wrote on 05/02/09
Thursday morning started off like any other morning. Nothing too special….Woke up, did my regular morning routine, and walked out the door for work. However, that morning there was something on the wind as the morning breeze rushed past my face. It was the hint of the Summer movie season. It hit me that in less than twenty-four hours I would be sitting in a movie theater enjoying the midnight showing of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Before the film was even released Jackman and company had an uphill slope to climb. The most pressing was the leaked version of the film that found its way onto the Internet at the end of March. Fox released a statement shortly afterwards stating that the film was without many special effects, had missing & unedited scenes, and temporary sound & music. That coupled with the fact that the economy sucks right now might have persuaded some would be theater goers to download the leak, safe money, and watch the film in the comfort of their own homes. In all honestly, that probably might be the way to go, but more on that a little later. Eight out of ten times I venture out to a midnight showing of a blockbuster film the theater is packed. That was hardly the case this morning. Whole rows of seats were empty, and I had plenty of room around me to stretch my legs. I saw both X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand at midnight showings, and they were both sold out.
The film opens to a sick and weak child in the North-West Territories of Canada in the year 1845. Now of course that child one day grows up to be our favorite adamantium bonded sarcastic cigar smoking mutant named Wolverine. This is the perfect way to open the film. It shows the rage manifesting at a young, and it also shows that Logan had a more abnormal childhood than most mutants would. The opening credits are enjoyable to watch since they show Logan and his step-brother Victor (who later will become Sabretooth) going thru most notably Civil War, WWII, and the Vietnam war.
The gist of the film is that Logan and Victor are recruited by William Stryker to become members of his “special” team. After enough innocent blood has been shed Logan decides to walk away and start living his own life. Six years pass, and he has made a good life for himself with a kick ass cabin and live in girlfriend high up in the Canadian Rockies. Suddenly Stryker appears and warns Wolverine that someone is killing off old members of the team. Logan does not heed the warning, and it ends up costing him dearly with the death of his girlfriend at the hands of Victor. Stryker offers Logan the tools to be able to defeat Victor. Those tools of course being the adamantium grafted to his skeleton….The birth of Wolverine. From here on out you are just overloaded with mutant eye candy. Including fan favorites such as Gambit, Cyclops, Blob, Deadpool, and even Emma Frost. Wolverine learns that things aren’t always what they appear to be, and to trust his own animal instincts rather than the words of humans (or mutants). There are some twists and turns along the way, but I don’t want to ruin them with spoilers since someone reading this might not have seen the film yet, and is planning on it.
So, I have seen the film multiple times already and it’s only the first day I know. I saw the leaked version when it was first posted, and I saw it twice in the theater today (once alone, and twice with friends). Like I said before you probably could be content sitting at home and watching the leaked version, because you wouldn’t be missing much. I am a huge Wolverine fan with a lot of his older comic books tucked away somewhere safe, so I will pay homage to one of the greatest superheroes ever by seeing him twice in the theater even tho I have already seen the leaked version. It’s an okay film, but it feels sloppy and lost at certain points. Not necessarily with the characters put more on how they wanted to tell the story. They have so much crammed into a one hour forty seven minute film, that towards the climax it gets a little silly. Not as silly as that damn announcer during the climax of Spider-Man 3, but pretty darn close.
The film is solid and sturdy three quarters of the way thru, but once they started introducing Gambit and a very young Cyclops (who in the comic book lore never had any connection with the Weapon X program) it lost my respect. I felt like I was watching the first Batman franchise sink. I have always believed that comic book films do really well if they stick with one villain. That’s what I was hoping for with Wolverine to have one central villain, and have an internal conflict going on with our hero. Don’t get me wrong, because I wouldn’t classify Wolverine as a bad movie at all. I enjoyed it, but it could have been leaps and bounds above what the final cut ended up being. Bottom line if you enjoyed the X-Men trilogy then you will more than likely enjoy Wolverine.
