X-Men Origins: Wolverine

You'd think with these super sharp adamantium claws I could give myself a decent shave. And let's not even start with the hair...

Go see this movie right now (as long as you are sitting around your house with nothing better to do)!

Justin and I needed something to do tonight, so off to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine we went.  For those of you that don't know, the series of Wolverine films are documentaries that follow the trials and tribulations of a Mexican tamale cart operator in New York City who works from sun up to sun down to support his family and secretly dreams of attending the American School of Ballet and dancing as the Rat King in The Nutcracker.  Wait, hold on, I got confused.  Right, sorry, Wolverine is actually a comic book character who has giant metal claws, has been alive since the early 19th century, is nearly indestructable, and is easily recognized by his extra wide hair (ok, and the huge claws, but those aren't always out).  He's appeared in the three X-Men movies previous; I've seen the first two and they were mildly entertaining.  This one, as you can guess from the title, is all about the back story of how Wolverine came to be.  It's a back story that I'm not going to go into here, because 1) most of you don't care, and 2) those of you that do care probably already know the basic story.  Basically, Justin and I didn't pay to see the movie (thanks for the passes Brooke!) and I suggest you pay as little as possible too.  It's a beer theater flick at best.  Or of course you could wait till it comes out on DVD and use one of the free online 'rental' sites that keep getting in trouble.  It's not that it's a bad movie (it's also not that it's a great movie), it's just that it had a lot to live up to.  After Iron Man, the Dark Knight, and Watchmen, the bar for comic book movies has been raised about 200 times higher than in the past.  Hugh Jackman, who played Wolverine in the three X-Men movies, reprises the role in this one.  He makes a pretty good Wolverine, equal parts gravely voice, rippling muscles, and animalistic yell when needed.  As Anne put it on my Facebook page, "Mmm...Hugh Jackman."  He over acts some of the time, which I suppose could be east to do since this isn't a real deep character to begin with.  The plot feels a little thrown together.  It tries to fit in too many standard Hollywood plot lines.  There's the big back story, there's brotherly love strained and then redeemed (at least for a bit), there's the evil man pulling strings in the background, there's the one good man against all evil and out to right all wrongs, and it doesn't pull any of it off really well, because it has to jump around to keep you up on the other things.  There's also the requisite love story that ends up being a big plot twist.  Lastly, the big action scene at the end is pretty anti-climactic.  It features some cool stunts and CGI (more on this in a minute), but isn't very long and feels like they just ran out of ideas a little ways in and so just ended it.  Basically they made killing the bad guy too easy.  The bad guy is 'Weapon 10,' a.k.a. Deadpool, and he's supposedly a combination of powers from multiple mutants, so you'd think he'd be pretty bad ass.  But it doesn't take the 'Veene very long to dispatch of him, and he does it in what seems a pretty obvious way.

Alright, almost done.  I'm just going to geek out on the special effects for a minute.  Basically it's 50/50.  For the most part their decent.  Cyclops is a minor character in the movie, and the few times that he takes his glasses off and does his pew-pew-lasers-shoot-out-of-my-eyes thing is very cool. They're also pretty good during the final fight, but there's a few times when it's too obvious.  You're thinking 'that's some really bad/obvious green screen work' instead of following the movie.  There's also two times when they're used excessively.  The first is after a fight, and all you see is Wolverine walking towards the camera with a solid wall of fire behind him.  No dead bad guys, no source of what caused the fire, not even the ground, just fire and a completely flame-free main character.  The other is at the very end of the film, when Captain Picard, I mean Professor Xavier, makes his appearance by landing a helicopter in a field.  It almost looks fairy tale-ish.  The grass is too green, the trees are placed just right to make room for the helicopter, and scale scale doesn't quite match with the characters running into the scene.  

I do suggest seeing it if you a) really like comic book movies or b) like seeing things blow up and people get the crap kicked out of them.  Also, if you like 'a' you almost certainly are a fan of 'b', so either aquire it for free or pay $3 dollars to see it so you can enjoy a nice brew at the same time.

And lastly, speaking of fairy tales, here's a thought for those of you well-versed in comics.  The entire movie I was thinking how perfect Hugh Jackman would be as Bigby Wolf (a.k.a. The Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs tale) in Fables.  Word on the street is that their making it into a TV show, which is unfortunate because Jackman is a film star, and they don't stoop to television.