Way back in 2000, X-Men arrived on the big screen and (along with Blade) helped reinvigorate the stagnant comic book scene that had pretty much died upon the release of Batman & Robin. X-Men successfully translated the fantastic and rich world of the mutant universe to a believable live action world. It was brought to the big screen under the steady direction of Bryan Singer, a man who seemed to get it when it came to portraying these characters on the big screen. Among the characters that graced that initial film was Wolverine. One of he most popular characters to grace the page instantly became one of the most popular characters to hit the screen. It was only a matter of time before the character got his own feature. It took three X-Men films, but it's finally here. Unfortunately, it fails to live up to the promise delivered by the first two X-films.
With such a large pool of tales to choose from, not to mention innumerable factoids surrounding the character's origin, it should not have been too hard to find the right pieces to build an adaptation from. Which begs the question in the harsh afterglow of my screening: "What went wrong?"
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not really a bad movie, it is just a bad X-Men movie, in much the same way X-Men: The Last Stand is a bad X-Men movie. They suffer from too many characters and an undeveloped plot. Wolverine is a decent action film and given a different name and some character modifications probably would have gone over better with fans.
I went into this movie with low expectations tempered by a small glimmer of hope that it would be done right. In the end, the film is enjoyable and has some fun action sequences but feels like squandered potential. Rather than write a script that developed the characters or allowed any chemistry to build, they wrote a script that depends too much on flashy action. Wolverine, despite another good turn from Hugh Jackman, is reduced from a troubled, complex anti-hero into a guy who screams a lot and always seems to be running towards something.
Article comments
1 - Robert M. Barga
Of course you bring up the dark knight and the first two xmen, all of which i thought were drivel and crappy movies
i did, however, like this xmen.