X-Men Origins: Wolverine by Gavin Hood (2009)
2 May 2009I have to admit that I do enjoy Hugh Jackman as Logan, and did enjoy the first two X-Men movies, even if they did not follow the plot of the comics very well, they had the feel of the comics, and it worked (though the third film was so terrible it hurts). And most of this rollercoaster ride action film I enjoyed, though of course they made Logan not quite as messed up as he was in the comics, and then at the ending they really screwed up Deadpool. Sure was from the same program as Wolverine, also known as Weapon X, but what was the silent thing with the swords coming out of his arms? That is just plain stupid. And the hidden ending that I saw makes it look like he will back, and more of his normal self, but he was horrible in this. Gambit wasn’t too horrible in this though. I guess this was enjoyable enough. Not as good as the first two X-men films, but better than the third. And of course it has very little to do with the comic Wolverine: Origins, but that was to be expected. And there is a problem iin that Danny Huston cannot touch Brian Cox as William Stryker so that also brought things down a notch. Decent enough I guess, but it certainly could have been better, especially with all the reshoots. Still pretty impressive that it made $35 million on it’s opening day after being leaked a month before.
In Canada around 1845 a young sick man named James Howlett (Toye Sivan) sees his father John (Peter O’Biren) killed by his friend Victor Creed’s (michael-James Olsen) father Thomas (Aaron Jeffrey) with a shotgun. The young man becomes enraged, and bone claws extend out through the skin on his hand and he stabs and kills Thomas, but not before Thomas can tell the young man that he is in fact his real father. Victor and James then run off as brothers saying they will always protect each other, and we see them fight in the Vicil War, World War 1 and 2 and then in Vietnam. In Vietnam Victor kills a superior officer who is trying to rape a girl, and the two are to be executed by firing squad, but don’t die thanks to their healing abilities, and they are recruited by William Stryker (Danny Huston) to join his elite mutant hit squad.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….
On the team are the sword wielding non-stop talking Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), teleporter John Wraith (Will I Am), the super strong Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), marksman Agent Zero (Daniel Henney) and the machine controlling Chris Bradley (Dominic Monaghan). First the team invades a diamond trafficing operation, to get a meteorite which was being used as a paperweight. They follow that trail to Nigeria to find the origins of it, and when Victor and the others start murdering the town, James flips out and leaves.
6 years later James, now going by his true last name Logan, is working as a lumberjack in Canada, living with his schoolteacher girlfriend Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins), and is very happy. Victor though is hunting down his old team, and has killed Bradley and Wade. Stryker comes to warn Logan, wanting his help, but Logan refuses, and the next day Silverfox is murdered by Creed.
Logan joins with Stryker who uses the metal from in the meteorite to make the indestructible adamantium, and hoping to bond it to his skeleton and let him survive because of his mutant healing power. Logan has his dogtags changed to Logan on one side, and Wolverine on the other, from a story that Silverfox told him, and he has the metal attached to him. Logan almost dies, but when he does survive, stryker plans on killing him, and using his samples to give his healing factor to Weapon XI, wolverines replacement, but Wolverine hears, and breaks out, and is indestructible now.
Logan ends up at a kindly old farming couples house, which take him in, and even give him their dead sons clothes, but Zero comes in and kills them, and tries to kill Wolverine, but he manages to take Zero out of the sky, and kill him.
Logan goes to find his old teammaters John Wraith and Fred Dukes (who has now become massively obese, and thinks when Wolverine says Bub, that he is calling him Blob). Logan fights Dukes, and beats him, and finds out that one man escaped Strykers base, the Island, so he and Wraith head to New Orleans to find him.
Stryker meanwhile has captured a kid named Scott Summers (Tim Pocock) who shoots powerful beams from his eyes, and has taken him back to the Island.
Wolverine goes and confronts the escapee, a man named Remy LeBeau (Taylor Kitsch) also known as Gambit, who can charge up any object he touches and throw it to make it explode.
Outside Creed kills Wraith, as Logan is knocked through a wall by Gambit. Logan gets Gambit to help take him to the island, which turns out to be three mile island.
On the island Stryker is working on Weapon XI (Scott Adkins) the Deadpool, who was Wade Wilson, who has been given all the powers he can take, healing, blades in his arms (though rididculous samurai swords that would never fit) adamantium, but his mouth is closed over. Stryker also lets Logan know that in fact Silverfox is still alive, and used her power to keep him in check, and was not killed. They have her sister who can turn to diamond as a captive at the Island along with many other mutants.
Logan helps the mutants escape, then goes back to fight Deadpool, where he ends up confronting Creed, and the two fight Weapon XI on top of a reactor housing, where they manage to cut off Weapon XI’s head and destroy the housing. Silverfox is badly wounded in the escape, and Stryker uses adamantium bullets to shoot Logan int he head until his brains are so scrambled, he will heal, but not remember anything. Gambit tries to get him to go with him, but he goes on his own. The mutant kids get picked up by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who takes them to his special school.
After the credits start we see Stryker walking on bloody feat, after being compelled by Silverfox, being arrested for killing a general.
After the credits they have 2 different endings, I saw one with Weapon XI picking up his own head, and it makes a hushing sound as it pulls it back to itself.
The second ending was Logan in a bar in Japan drinking to remember.
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Hugh Jackman is perfect as Wolverine, but the movie is at best mefiocre andI just don’t like what they did with Weapon XI / Deadpool. Maybe he will be more of himself in the sequel (or his spin off) but in this they kind of ruined him.
Brainless and mediocre, had so much potential but just wasted it. Not well written or directed.
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