Pop your claws!

It’s time to get your bezerker rage on fanboys

By Robert J. Sodaro

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Rated “PG-13” (107 Minutes)

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Ryan Reynolds

Directed by: Gavin Hood

The Bext at what he does!

Well, it is here, the long-awaited Wolverine prequel to the extremely-popular X-Men trilogy. And well, it was —quite frankly — everything that I figured it was going to be (actually, in spite of reading comics for 45 years, I recently only learned that Wolverine was like 150 years old. I mean, I knew he fought in WWII but that was about it.) Needless to say, this is that back story. The film is supposed to capulize all of that in a couple of hours, giving us all of the excitement of an X-Men comic (film) without the complete cast.

Does it do it? As far as I’m concerned (in spite of the all of the faux fanboy whining), it totally delivers the goods. While I did enjoy the backstory which let us in on the fact that Wolverine (and his brother, who winds up being Sabertooth), are about 150 years old, and then we watch at the two lads grow up and fight in virtually every single armed conflict from the mid 1800s to Vietnam, which is when the real story begins. (Interestingly enough, the opening sequence felt a bit like the opening to Watchmen, only with not as cool a soundtrack).

The film is fast and furious and plays well into the legions of who Wolverine is (hey, I’ve been reading comics since the very early ‘60s and until recently I didn’t know that Wolvie had this much back story (I stopped regularly reading X-Men in the mid ‘90s). Anyway, even though I recognized many of the characters (there were a couple I couldn’t completely place) and was aware of much of the plot threads that ran through the film, and still rather enjoyed what was going on in the film version of his past.

I’m comin’ to git ya!

The interaction between Logan (Jackman) and Creed (Liev Schreiber) plays well and you can see some of the animosity that will keep them at each other’s throats. We get to see how an already clawed Logan has Adamantium (a super-cool, wicked-hard comicbook metal) is infused into his bones, and why and how he lost him memories (which he doesn’t fully regain until the X-Men trilogy).

On the down side, those of you who don’t know as much about his visceral past might find some of this film a tad tedious, plus as this is all prequel there are no colorful costumes, and many of the characters that you might have gotten used to seeing in the first films simply aren’t here. Some folks might feel that most fans coming to view the film might want to see more of the kind of large-scale action from the first films, which is missing from this film, as it is much more of a personal story.

As for spoilers, well I have a few of those if you care:

• I can’t believe that they cast the perfect actor for Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), and then take away the one thing that makes him an ideal fit for the character, his ability to talk
• Then they further degrade the appeal of the character of Deadpool by taking away (and implanting
• when we first meet Remy LeBeau (Gambit) he looks more like the very British Alex from A Clockwork Orange than any Frenchman I’ve ever seen
• Then, of course, he has no French accent.
• Sabretooth’s loping attack style was a bit too much Twilight for my tastes
• As stated, the opening sequence very Watchmen, only without as cool a soundtrack
• When Logan left the special team of Stryker’s Mercs in Africa I couldn’t help but to flash on a similar image from more than one WildStorm/Image comic featuring Team 7
• Given the “immortal” nature of Logan and Creed, whenever these two wnet at it a little voice in the back of my head kept saying “There can be only One!”
• I really liked the Three Mile Island reference to the story. I think it fit into the time line of Wolverine’s back-story and this film
• Another reviewer questioned why Logan & Creed, as Canadians would keep fighting in U.S. based wars. My response to that is — what other country has been in more wars over the past 150 years?
• When Creed finds Scott Summers at school, Scot is in detention conjugating a Spanish verb 100 times on the blackboard, in a visual that calls up Bart Simpson

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This entire article is copyright (c) 2009 Freelance Ink, All rights reserved. It cannot be reprinted without specific, written permission from the author.

Robert J. Sodaro has been writing professionally for over 20 years. During that time, his movie reviews and articles have appeared in numerous publications, as well as on the web; currently his reviews appear on the Web here and in print in More Sugar. Questions? Comments? Queries? Log in, and have your own say.

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