In honor of the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on DVD and Blu-Ray this week, I decided to re-post my review of the movie, which I posted on my Facebook right after I saw this abortion in theaters. Enjoy.
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So I've just gotten home from an evening that started with a trip to the theater to experience a screening of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Allow me to preface this story by saying that I am a comic book nerd from way back. It's my old man's fault, you see. He got me hooked onto the things in the first place, and I just took it from there. And though I stopped partaking in Comic Book Wednesdays a good five years ago, in the 15 years prior, I acquired vast amounts of knowledge and minutia from Marvel, DC, and all sorts of indy companies; enough knowledge that I already knew Wolverine's story going into this movie.
I'll go ahead and drop this bomb while we're here: Wolverine is a dumb character. The kids love him, and fanboys flock to him, sure, but there's no tangible realism to the character, nor is there any real human depth. Homeboy has been, according to the literally hundreds of writers who have written his "history," a lumberjack, a US soldier, a Canadian soldier (he's not picky, so long as there's war to be had!), an inter-dimensional traveler, a FUCKING SAMURAI, a feral dog, and of course a superhero.
But not only is the entire previous sentence true, but he's also had his memory wiped and had new memories implanted! So if a truly lazy writer is charged with writing a Wolverine story, he or she can just make something up and chalk it up to memory implants! It might not be real! It might be just a dream! Oh, how original and cool! *fart noise*
Here's the point: Wolverine started off as a character who fucked people up with cool metal claws that came out of his hands. He grew into a continuity black hole who was more tedious to care about than he was worth. Now he's just a vehicle to sell magazines and comic books: You put him on the cover, you probably just sold out your issues for that month. He is the one thing standing between the comic book industry and the same terrible fate that has befallen the newspaper industry.
However, floating amongst this morass of stupid crap, like curds in month-old milk, are a few glimmering examples of good storytelling. There have been a few AMAZING Wolverine stories (ORIGIN and WEAPON X are the two I have in mind here), told by such comics luminaries as Barry Windsor-Smith, Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada, and Andy Kubert. These stories are excellent, and should rightfully form the backbone of a movie about Wolverine's origins, right?
Wrong.
No, the genius execs at Fox decided to devote a total of about five minutes of screen time to the events laid out in these critically-acclaimed stories, while instead focusing most of their time rehasing EVERY SINGLE CLICHE stolen from EVERY SINGLE TERRIBLE ACTION MOVIE released in the last fifteen years. Let's go down the list:
Girlfriend/family member killed, prompting a revenge story arc? Check.
Jokes stolen from earlier movies featuring the same character? Check.
Shitty one-liners, stolen ver batim from other movies in the genre? Too many to count.
Main character stoically walking away from an explosion he just caused? Check.
Physics-defying stunts insulting to human intelligence, including a motorcycle flying into a helicopter stolen almost shot-for-shot from LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD? Check.
Characters stolen from the source material and then "translated" to the point that they're no longer recognizable as the characters on which they're based? Check.
The list goes on.
And the thing is, NONE OF IT IS ARTFULLY DONE. The dialogue has the feel of a fourth-grader (or a fifth-grader with a fourth-grade reading level) trying to decide what he would think is TOTALLY AWESOME for Wolverine and the bad guys to say. Liev Schreiber, the main villain, speaks ONLY in bad action-movie cliches ("Well well well, look what the cat dragged in," etc). It's just the same copy-paste hackwork that has kept Fox running for years. No risks taken, no boats rocked, no brain cells left intact.
The progression of the film is straight out of a bad video game: Main character keeps fighting bad guys with one or two super powers each, until he fights the end boss, who has ALL THEIR POWERS COMBINED. OH MY GOD, THAT IS GENIUS. HOW DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT.
And oh yeah, at the end of the movie, THE MAIN CHARACTER FORGETS THE WHOLE MOVIE HAPPENED. Oh, we went there alright. Mix in a little CGI'ed Patrick Stewart, an old couple that reminds you a lot of Ma and Pa Kent, and a whole bunch of homoerotic growling and flexing from Hugh Jackman, and you have this glistening turd of a movie.
Listen, we live in a dark time for nerd movies. WATCHMEN (basically the perfect comic book movie) has run its theatrical course, and it hasn't even managed to outgross BATMAN AND ROBIN, the towering monolith of horrendous filmmaking-by-committee. I know I didn't give you any spoiler alerts or anything, but that is because I want you to understand how TERRIBLE this movie was, and implore you NOT to waste your money on it. If you MUST go see it, buy tickets to another movie and sneak in to the theater showing WOLVERINE. We have to send these dumbass studio execs a message: This brainless, pandering crapola will not be tolerated. I know we're just dumb Americans, but we're smarter than THIS.
I've managed to transcend my comic-book-nerdiness. Let's encourage comic book movies to transcend epic failures like this one.
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