X-Men Oriigns: Wolverine (2009)
Plot Summary
Two mutant brothers, Logan and Victor, born 200 years ago, suffer childhood trauma and have only each other to depend on. Basically, they're fighters and killers, living from war to war through U.S. history. In modern times, a U.S. colonel, Stryker, recruits them and other mutants as commandos. Logan quits and becomes a logger, falling in love with a local teacher. When Logan refuses to rejoin Stryker's crew, the colonel sends the murderous Victor. Logan now wants revenge.
Be warned, this comes from a board posting of mine so this isn't a usual review:
This movie wasn't as bad as I heard about it. Obviously this movie is flawed from a continuity aspect and i'm not just talking about the comics to film but rather the continuity that was established in the original trilogy. First of all somehow Cyclops was among the mutants captured by Stryker/Sabretooth so you'd think he'd have some kind of foreknowledge of Wolvie in the X-Men films. Yes I know no one thought that far ahead but you can't just wedge an established character in there like that. Another inconsistency is Sabretooth himself. In the original films he's all bestial and animalistic whereas here he's very much his own man and has some charm.
I know a lot of these complaints are slightly unreasonable but the writers really should've found a way to wedge things into the continuity of what came before. This is probably why FOX scrapped everything and started over with X-Men First Class.
That being said there's a lot to like about this movie. Jackman and Schrieber are excellent in their roles and I liked the whole competitive brothers aspect. There is a respect between the two even though they want to kill each other as evidenced by a scene in the film's climax where Sabretooth saves Wolvie from Deadpool.
This brings up another excellent aspect of the movie, and that's the action scenes and things like transitions. I've seen some people say the action was a bit "boring" but to me it was pretty rockin' from beginning to end from the scene where Wolverine, Sabretooth and the other mutants gathered by Stryker as a mercenary team go the African blood diamond boss to find an adamatium sample to the scene where Wolverine singlehandedly takes down a chopper and a couple trucks while being hunted by Stryker's men in the middle of the movie it was all very well filmed.
The transitions are quite good and are very comic book like in nature such as when Agent Zero shoots the elderly couple Wolverine was staying at. They show the tray the old lady was holding shot up then she gets it then her husband gets shot and falls into Wolverine's arms and then the camera zooms from the circular hole in the window and zooms quickly to Agent Zero's gun. It's these kind of transitions and seeing things like Deadpool moving around with all the abilities of the other mutants in the film's climax that makes the movie seem like a real live comic book though the latter scene kind of reminded me of a Mortal Kombat game.
I also loved the scene where Wolverine is trying to find out where Sabretooth is and he has to fight Blob in a ring LOL! That was some funny stuff and Will. I. Am was surprisingly good in his limited role as well. I noticed he was wearing a hat that Wolverine used to wear a lot in the comics but alas Wolvie didn't wear it in the movie.
Now I hate to end this on a sour note but man did they ever screw up Deadpool. They had the characterization pretty much spot on when he was just a "normal" person but once he had gone through the Weapon XI program where he had all the other mutants powers and had his mouth sewn shut....Yeesh, yeah that was taking it too far and it just didn't work at all. It just made Deadpool this hollowed out force of nature rather than a person...Actually that kind of works in terms of Stryker's motivations but it just didn't sit well with me.
This movie just seemed like one of those flicks where there's a really great movie inside just waiting to bust out but it's hobbled by its flaws. I mean, jeez, don't get me started on Gambit. I really wanted to punch him out watching this. So I can only give this **
At least it's better than X-Men: The Last Stand.
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