I'm about to save you $20-$30. Lucky.

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.

Spent Cartridges #1: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Spent Cartridges is an ongoing (maybe) series of columns devoted to classic (or sometimes just old) video games. Join us as we explore the past and prance about in the clovered fields of nostalgia.

There are only two things is the world that I take completely seriously and regard with undying reverence. The first is the teachings passed down in the Wu Tang manual by the prophet RZA, and the second is a series of video games about killing Draculas.

I’m of course talking about the Castlevania series from Konami in which you take the role of various and sundry vampire hunters in a quest to finally rid the world of Vlad Tepes Dracula. The history of the series is actually quite complicated, and I’m sure I’m a big enough dork that I’ll explore it in more detail in future articles. Today, we’re just talking about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, originally released for the Playstation in 1997. Up until this point, the Castlevania games had stuck fairly closely to their formula by consistently being really good, and really hard, platformers with a flair for supplying terrific atmosphere and music.


Did I mention the English translation and voice acting sucks? It sucks.

Symphony of the Night was radically different from its predecessors though, largely in thanks to designer, Koji Igarashi, who would go on to be in charge of the whole franchise for 12 years and counting. Igarashi had always dreamed of directing a Castlevania game while developing Japanese dating sims for Konami and finally got his chance with SotN. Apparently he thought the Castlevanias of the past were limiting their audience and lasting appeal by being too linear and challenging. His solution was to open up the game world, loosen up the series’ traditionally stiff controls, and adding RPG elements, that made the game conquerable for even the least experienced action gamers.

Structurally, he basically ripped off Super Metroid, which when you think about it is a completely terrific thing to rip off. Everybody loves that game but nobody (at the time) really copied the formula, and even Nintendo waited a gajillion years to bother making another one. The basic idea of Symphony is that your progression through Dracula’s castle was limited by your character’s abilities, and as you became more powerful and retrieved new relics, new areas would become accessible to you. Can’t reach that passageway on the ceiling? Wait until you get the high jump power up, or learn how to transform into a bat. That kind of thing. It works well, and while there is an invisible guiding hand directing you down the “correct” path, you’re totally free to wander into whatever areas you want.

Having just recently finished SotN for the first time since it was still new, I’m happy to announce that it holds up extremely well. In fact, I’m amazed by how much stuff the younger me missed the first time around. Combining the shield rod item with a shield for example, can cause special effects and power ups to occur. That seems obvious now, but it’s things like this that make SotN considerably deeper than your usual platformer. Another thing I discovered that really surprised me was a reference to my favorite author Kurt Vonnegut. There’s a boss enemy in the game (named “Legion” in future games) that is a floating ball of brainless zombies. In SotN the creature is named “Granfaloon” which is a reference to Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle where he describes a granfaloon as "a proud and meaningless association of human beings." Naturally this intersection of my favorite things gave me a great big nerd boner.

Castlevania is a series that once had a reputation for being notoriously difficult, but with SotN things may have been taken a little too far in the other direction. If you spend time exploring beyond the required paths and looking for secrets (which you absolutely should do), you’ll naturally level up to the point that few areas will offer much of a challenge. The second castle (an inverted version of the first that opens up after you avoid the “bad” ending) is considerably more challenging, but still pretty easy compared to Castlevanias of old. Ultimately though, this lack of challenge didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the game much at all since it’s still such a deep experience.

I wasn’t going to say much about the story at all because despite being a lifelong fan of the series, the story to the Castlevania series is one of those simplistic, yet totally complicated clusterfucks that only seem to happen in Japanese video games. The basic idea is that Dracula comes back to life every hundred years to menace humanity, and uh…this is one of those times I guess. In this one you play as Alucard, son of Dracula (har har) who is totally rebellious and metrosexual and wants to kill his dad and fuck up his house. And I’m serious about the metrosexual thing. Alucard is consistently depicted as a very beautiful lady. SotN is a direct story sequel to the also totally excellent Rondo of Blood, so if you care about your video game vampire continuity, you should play that too I guess. Normal people however, can stick to the basics and not worry about it. If you’re weird or something though, feel free to check out sites like this. Nerd.

Symphony of the Night is one of those “secret” classic games that is well-renowned amongst gamers (dorks) but kind of unknown to more casual enthusiasts. If you’ve missed out somehow, this game is available pretty much everywhere these days. It’s available on PSN and XBLA for just ten bucks, or can be unlocked in the Dracula X Chronicles for PSP. OR you could go to Japan and buy a used copy of the janky Saturn version that never made it to the US. Whichever is most convenient.

(special shout outs to the works of Jeremy Parish and friends for inspiring this ludicrously nerdy column. If you like old nerd stuff their work is required reading. Him and his cohorts can be found at GameSpite and the Retronauts blog.)