MikeInMotion's Movie Review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The origin story that wasn't
MikeInMotion - wrote on 02/23/12

There were 3 X-Men films before X-Men Origins: Wolverine, each one starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Those X-Men films gave us very little background information on where Wolverine came from and how he became the person he was, so people naturally wanted to know more about this great characters origin. This leads us to the creation of this film, one that will supposedly flesh out this character’s mysterious background, and answer all the questions we may have had about him. Although this seems like a great idea in theory, it is not executed nearly as well as it could have been, and ultimately wastes a lot of potential.

The film begins by showing a little boy named James Howlett (Wolverine), who witnesses his father get killed by an unknown man who came barging into his house. This sets the boy off, and as a result of his fury, bone-claws suddenly protrude from his hands. He then kills the man that killed his father, who then reveals himself to be James’ actual father before he dies. Confused? You’re not alone. I guess this was supposed to be some kind of a sad or shocking scene, but there was no build up to it, and you don’t even know who these characters are, so all it really succeeds in doing is creating confusion. So James and his brother Victor run off into the woods and then we see a montage of them suddenly much older in a war fighting together.

This leads to James and Victor teaming up with more mutants, called Team X, under the command of William Stryker. However, James eventually becomes upset with their actions and decides to leave them. Six years later, James is now living the way he wants and staying out of trouble (and now going by the name Logan). Then, all of a sudden, Logan’s brother Victor returns and kills his girlfriend, and now Logan wants revenge. So, he goes back to Stryker, who promises him that the experiment they want to perform on Logan will make him indestructible. However, this is just a ruse and Stryker has much bigger plans up his sleeves.

The above basically sums up the entire films biggest problems: it glosses over story and characters, and fills the run-time remaining with action sequences. Hardly any of the films many interesting characters get more than a couple of minutes of actual dialogue, and some of them get even less than that. Wolverine himself spends most of the run-time roaring like a damn dinosaur, just because he’s confused and angry about who he is and what is going on. So are we! You see, origin stories are usually supposed to give background information on a character, such as what they believe in and what it is that drives them forward, but I guess that’s not what it meant to the crew responsible for this film. It would have been nice to see Wolverine living as a normal person before all of this happened, giving the events that triggered his mutation more emotional depth, but alas, this is Hollywood. Don’t think, just zone out to the action sequences, because the action sequences are what will bring in the money.

In the end, this is an entertaining but disappointing film. It had a great concept on paper, a great cast of actors who all were very good, but all the pieces simply don’t add up to the film we were hoping for. The director gives such an inconsistent effort on all fronts of this film. Some of the dialogue works well and some is horribly cheesy and cliché. Some of the effects are great and some look like they were done by a kid in middle school. Some scenes are fully-realized, and others are half-baked. I’m not saying he is solely responsible for each aspect, but he has the final say, and he simply made some poor decisions. If he just spent more time on this film, and brought more attention to the characters and their stories, this could have been the best entry in the X-Men series yet. Instead, we get a film that is a teaser instead of a pleaser.