Thursday, May 7, 2009

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I went to see it last night.

I wish I had something awesome and insightful to offer that wasn't completely covered by the rest of the blogosphere already. The first 5 minutes of the movie really are the best five minutes of the movie, and the rest of the film really just lets you down from the high expectations it set.

The rest of the movie was a convoluted mess. It at times adhered to the continuity of the X-Trilogy, and other times it just chucked it out the window. It had a cool cast, but it watered everyone down so much, that no one got enough screen time to really be cool. This movie needed 4 characters to work: Wolverine, Stryker, Sabretooth and Silverfox. That's it. If this movie was recut, and done to really flush out the characters, then the drama of the action would have been fantastic.

Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson was cool, but "Deadpool" was 9 kinds of lame. Have him in one or two scenes, let him mouth off a little, and then leave the rest alone. He ended up being to this movie what Angel was to X3, just in the way of the real story.

Same goes for Gambit and Blob, who were both there for no good story telling reason. They just ate up screen time that should have been reserved for exposition.

Wolverine says, in the movie, he was the best there is at what he does, but at no point in the film before he says that is there any reason to believe it. He mostly has just moped around and got in his team's way. It would have been nice to see him actually do something that would make Stryker's gamble with the adamantium make sense.

All in all, it had a few bright spots, but I think Wolverine was an exercise in wasted potential, choosing to try and fill the movie with as much "cool stuff" as possible rather than trying to tell a simple story of love lost and revenge.

As far as hero movies go, this one ranks around Blade III, Spider-Man III, and Elektra.

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