Way Too Late Movie Review: "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

This one has to be a new record for me. According to Netflix, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was shipped to me on October 15. I just watched it this past weekend. What can I say, never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. I have to say that I liked it, it delivered what it promised, at least in my mind. Some kickass action sequences, Wolverine’s backstory, good character moments, lots of appearances by other mutants that we haven’t seen before.

Liev Schreiber has to be one of my all time favorite actors, and he does a great job in this as Victor Creed (aka Sabertooth). In the comics Wolverine and Sabertooth’s pasts were always mysteriously linked, and in some continuities Sabertooth is actually Wolverine’s father. But making them brothers I thought was a nice touch. It added pathos to the relationship and made their turn to enemies that much more tragic. In Victor we see what Logan could be if he truly did let the animal in him take full control. But despite his brother’s savagery, Logan defends him, even killing to protect him. In the war montage at the beginning of the film, we see that these two violent and savage men never have a shortage of military conflicts to keep their skills busy, proving that no matter how vicious they are, the world is always more so. And the only thing that these two brothers have is each other. But when they join Stryker’s Team X, Logan finally finds the limit to the brutality that he will endure, and he leaves the team and his brother behind. Victor sees this as a betrayal, and Stryker manipulates him and his anger to bring Wolverine back to him, so that he can experiment on him to create his ultimate mutant weapon. Wolverine escapes, and unleashes his animal on Victor and Stryker both.

In Wolverine’s scenes with Silverfox, we see the kind of man that he wants to be, and we see the life that he could have had. That’s what makes her “murder” so devastating. Silverfox, the couple that take him in after he escapes from Weapon X, every glimpse at normalcy that he gets is violently ripped away. Silverfox’s betrayal at the end literally brings him to his knees. He finds out that not only was his chance at a normal life taken from him, he never had it in the first place. His reality is crumbling around him. But in the end, his love for her wins out, and he goes back to save her, to save all of the mutants. This is the conflict that has always been central to the character, what he is versus who he is. The violent animal versus the hero. I think the movie did a good job in portraying this.

The Rest:

Ryan Reynolds did a great job as Deadpool. He struck just the right balance of humor and action that the character demands. My only complaint would be that he wasn’t in the movie long enough. But of course, Deadpool will be getting his own movie soon enough. It just makes me wish that we could have gotten that Flash movie with Ryan Reynolds that we were promised, it would have been killer. The Weapon XI fight at the end was cool, and I loved the way that his eyes darkened to resemble Deadpool’s mask from the comics when he used Cyclops’ power, and the way his severed head kept firing optic blasts all the way down the tower as it fell. One logistical question though: Those retractable swords would make it impossible for him to bend his elbows when they’re retracted, seems kind of inconvenient. How does he wipe his ass? But then, with no mouth, he can’t eat, which means he wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom. So if he doesn’t need to eat, how does he get nutrients? I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, I’m not saying that these questions ruined the movie for me. I’m just curious.

The Blob even got a fair shake, I thought. Sure, he might have been played for laughs during his fight with Wolverine, but they still showed him as a powerful mutant and not a complete moron. And the fat suit didn’t look nearly as ridiculous as I thought it would. In fact, I’d say they did a better job with Blob than X3 did with Juggernaut.

Gambit I was a little disappointed with. Maybe it’s because he’s always been one of my favorite characters, but I just felt like they could have done it so much better. First of all, they didn’t get his eyes right. Gambit is supposed to have black eyes with red pupils. I know it’s a small detail, but I think it would have gone a long way toward making us feel like this was really gambit if they would have done that, especially since they didn’t keep anything from his costume, or even his personality really (apart from him and Wolverine not getting along too well). And I didn’t like they way they casually threw in that origin for his name, the guards on the island called him Gambit because he used to beat them at cards. Really? Does that sound like something a bunch of prison guards would come up with? If that’s really where his name came from, wouldn’t it be ‘That Fucker Who Keeps Beating us at Cards’? His powers were done well, and the fight scene with him and Wolverine was done well, but that then leads to another major problem I have. At the end of that scene, Wolverine has Sabertooth dead to rights, and Gambit stops him from killing him. Why? It was well established that Gambit had no love for Sabertooth, if he really thought that they were there to take him back to the island why wouldn’t he have just escaped when he had the chance? It doesn’t make sense.

In the end, Weapon XI is dead but Stryker manages to erase Wolverine’s memories with an adamantium bullet to the brain, leaving him in the state we find him in the first X-Men movie. The mutants on Stryker’s island are rescued by Professor Xavier, and Wolverine sets out on his own. All in all, it was a good movie. And it leaves me excited for the Deadpool and Magneto movies that have been promised to come.

My Netflix Rating: Four out of Five Stars