The summer movies are already starting to hit the budget theater, which means I finally got a chance to see the innaugural film from this year's summer session, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
This film was equally a good and bad idea. On one hand, this was a good way to continue the X-Men franchise without worrying about trying to get all of the cast members to be free at the same time to film a movie. However, the origin story only works if it's an interesting one. In Wolverine's case, we knew a lot of his origins from the previous X-Men films and there wasn't a huge outcry to see the rest on screen, even if people were interested in seeing him in another film.
The crux of the story here is the relationship between Logan/Wolverine (played once again by Hugh Jackman) and his brother, Victor (played by Liev Schreiber). Both are immortal and have similar mutant powers. Victor, who's also known in the comics as Sabertooth, can grow his nails and has fangs. The film opens with a montage of the two of them fighting in various famous wars. Thanks to good performances by both actors, their relationship is one of the film's strongest points.
The two of them are soon asked by General Stryker (Danny Huston)to join his group of fellow mutants for various military operations. Here's we meet an assortment of other mutants including ones played by Lost's Dominic Monaghan and the Black Eyed Peas' Will.I.Am. One of the other mutants is played by Ryan Reynolds, who later on becomes Deadpool. Many comic book fans were upset by how Deadpool is portrayed here as he's a fan favorite, but isn't given much here. While all of these mutants vary in their levels of cool/interesting characters, you can't help but feel that they're all included in this film simply to see which ones audiences will connect with so they know who to keep for future films.
One other character that would fit into this description is Gambit, who shows up later on in the film. Now this was a character I had a vested interest in seeing as I, like many others became a fan of his, primarily from the 90s X-Men cartoon. I thought he was great here, albeit his time is very limited. This is a cool character and really deserved more screen time, and that includes the previous X-Men films as well. Here's hoping we'll see more of him in future X-Men movies.
Even though this is an origin story, the plot is nothing to write home about. Most of it is setup for the action sequences while throwing in little things to do their best to maintain continuity with the previous films. Some of these continuity scenes seem so forced, however. For instance, at one point in the film we're led to believe that the only thing that will kill Wolverine is an adamantium bullet. However later on, another character states that they won't kill him, but will cause him to lose his memory. The way this scene plays out not only spells out what will happen but comes off sounding like they're just making things up as they go along.
A lot of the film feels rushed and unfinished as I feel this is another big budget film that was a writer's strike victim. I was surprised actually by the look of the visual effects here. A lot of them did not look good and were clearly CGI. Given that this is a comic book movie, I would have hoped that the visuals would have been solid, even if the story wasn't strong.
However, despite the less than stellar quality of everything, I found myself enjoying the film more than I thought I would. The action sequences are fun and the film never really drags. As mentioned before the relationship between Jackman and Schreiber is strong, which carries the film. I also enjoyed the performance of Lynn Collins, who is Wolverine's romantic interest in the film.
With high expectations, this is almost certainly going to come off as a disappointing and underwhelming film. However, seeing this at a budget theater or soon on DVD, this is entertaining enough. There's enough going on here to make this an enjoyable entry in the X-Men series, but clearly far from the best. This isn't quite as good as the first two films, but definitely a notch or two above the abysmal Brett Ratner directed third film. If you've ever had an interest in these films and haven't bothered watching this one yet, I'd say go ahead and give it a look. Grade: B-
No comments:
Post a Comment