Movie Review - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

After a whole lot of palaver involving studio interference and nasty leaked work-prints, X-Men Origins: Wolverine has finally fought its way onto the screen, but was it worth the wait?

A prequel to the X-Men trilogy, X-Men Origins: Wolverine explores Logan’s early life and the events which shaped him. Following a defining moment in his childhood, we follow as he and half-brother Victor Creed/Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) unleash their animalistic rage on various wars before being requited briefly into Stryker’s (Danny Huston) select band of mutants, which includes Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), John Wraith (will.i.am) and Bolt (Dominic Monaghan). After defecting to the Canadian mountains for six years, it is revenge which see’s Logan sharpen the claws again and take up the trail of those who have done him wrong and define himself as Wolverine.

After the childhood scene involving the young Logan, the movie explodes on to the screen with a kick-ass opening title sequence which is one of the best I’ve seen since Casino Royale. Logan and Victor are introduced through a frenetically-paced collage of war scenes and battles which serves as a preface of sorts to what is coming. As one reviewer has suggested already, the sequence could almost suffice as a trailer to its own movie in itself.

Hugh Jackman vowed to bring the rage back to the character with the origin story and he does. Both he and Schreiber are monsters when it comes to fight scenes and their brooding presence hangs heavily over much of the movie, reminding you of how dark a tone is trying to be set. Despite a little over-excitement from the wire-fighting team in the early stages, the fight and action sequences are pretty decent; though ordinary hand-to-hand tends to dominate a little more than I expected to see from a movie packed with mutants.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this movie overall was the feeling you got of characters wasted in small, un-expansive roles. It’s as though they tried to cram too many characters into a limited amount of screen time. The movie clocks in at around 98 minutes and when you think about the likes of The Dark Knight, whose bloated frame chewed up close to 160, that’s a lot of extra time for character development that may have been helpful. I know I’m not the only one who was left pining for more from Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds). Early scenes involving Reynolds trash-talking the rest of the team were so promising and reminiscent of the way Wolverine and Cyclops dealt with each other back in X-Men (2000). Meanwhile Kitsch’s Gambit was a wishy-washy role at best, slipping through the plot more as a coupon of convenience than anything else. This is probably the major flaw of the movie, in trying to do too much with really strong characters and ending up spreading itself too thinly.

There were a small scattering of cameo-type appearances of characters from the X-Men trilogy which aided in tying the movie into the later events seen in those. We see a young Cyclops and William Stryker briefly and even Patrick Stewart steps in for a scene as his Professor Xavier.

Humour found its way into many scenes which is a pleasant bonus and the majority of the time it was un-forced. In saying this however, about halfway through the movie goes all Austin Powers on us by introducing its very own Fat Bastard; a character (modelled off The Blob) decked out in what can only be described as a very ambitious fat suit dances around the screen for a bit of misplaced comic relief. Seeing Jackman spring his metal at the pudgy throat of this guy is perhaps the strangest moment in the entire 98 minutes.

In all I was reasonably impressed with what I saw, but I get the feeling the movie was geared towards the general movie-goer as opposed to the die-hard comic book fan. With a short running time and the ever-expanding appeal of the Jack-Man, this movie will no doubt bathe in box office glory, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s the classic that many would have been hoping for.

Director: Gavin Hood

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, will.i.am

Rating: 4/5