X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I never offered my thoughts on X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

• The problem with the flick is that it never deals with “the mutant problem”. In the Singer films, and even in Ratner’s X3 (which I liked more than most), there are always politicians, law enforcement, and military looking to get those pesky mutants. In X2, when Pyro blows-up a cop car, it’s a problem. But in Wolverine the mutants just use their powers without pause, and they do so without ever considering the consequences of their actions, to society or to themselves.

• For the character Wolverine this should have been a film about coming to terms with being a mutant. It wasn’t.

• I was surprised with how faithful the Team X / Weapon X stuff was to the source material, but what I really missed was the torture and brainwashing aspects of the program. In the first three films we get a lot about how tortured Wolverine must have been when he went through the Weapon X program, but we don’t see too much of that here.

• The design of Stryker’s lab and the events that actually take place break continuity with the flashback scenes in X2. In X2 we see men in gas masks, Wolverine covered in his own blood screaming, and Wolverine escaping through a sewer tunnel. Where were those scenes? And if I’m making a prequel, before the script is even finished, the first thing I do is get my design team on the task of recreating the old sets. “Well, we can’t start making costumes ’til we have a cast, but we know we have to re-build that lab!” Why couldn’t they get that right?

• In the film, Team X begins hunting mutants for Stryker’s Weapon X program after Wolverine has left the team. They should have been hunting mutants for the program while Wolverine was on the team, and uncovering the questionable ethics behind Team X should have been what caused Wolverine to leave. The second act should have been Team X bringing Wolverine in, and act three should have been Wolverine assisting in the prison outbreak.

• My childhood was raped with the portrayal of Deadpool.

• The inclusion of Gambit was wasteful, though I’ve never liked the character much anyway outside of a romantic foil for Rogue. If Gambit was to ever be included in the X-Men films, it needed to involve the X-Men suspecting him of betraying the team from within. That’s his only interesting story arc.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was not horrible. Liev Schreiber is quite good as Sabretooth and Hugh Jackman is always great. I thought including Cyclops and Professor X would be hamfisted, but the cameos worked.

Still, the overwhelming feeling I got from the film was “What a waste”. Fox had on its hands one of the best-handled comic book franchises in film history and the last two entries have been rushed into production with no regard for the fans’ feelings, the casual viewer’s self-respect, the integrity of the source material, or the integrity of their own company. Can’t Marvel get the X-Men rights back already?