X-Men Origins Wolverine (2009)

X-Men Origins Wolverine (2009)

 

Release Date: May 1, 2009

After X-Men: The Last Stand made X-Men 4 a rather unenviable proposition in terms of both where the franchise could go from there and whether the results would be any good, the decision was taken to go back and explore the origins of various X-Men characters. Of course, Wolverine was first out of the gates, and also the last, as the film’s poor reception led to the X-Men Origins spin-off series being canned.

The film starts in 1845, (if it had been set 40 years later, we’d know that the Doc’s alive!) with young James Howlett being put to bed by his father. The bedtime routine is disturbed by a drunken visitor bursting into the house and murdering James’ father. It is at this time James’ mutant abilities manifest themselves, as he grows bone claws between his fingers and impales the intruder with them. As the intruder dies, he reveals that he is James’ real father, and the grief-stricken James runs away from home, accompanied by his older brother Victor. The two mutant brothers fight together through various wars in a neat opening monologue, with Victor, or Sabretooth as he is better known, becoming increasingly bloodthirsty and ruthless, to the point that he is sentenced to death by firing squad for trying to rape a Vietnamese woman. Logan, as he now calls himself, is also punished for trying to stop Sabretooth, but of course the execution fails, because if it didn’t, the film would only last about ten minutes. The brothers are tracked down by the villain of X-Men 2, Colonel Stryker (since this is a prequel, he hasn’t been promoted yet.) Stryker recruits the two to join his group of mutant commandos, with the group’s other members being the teleporting William (I refuse to call him Will. I. Am, his name is William and you will like it!), Deadpool, who has swords and never shuts up, Agent Zero, who has guns and can jump really high, Blob, who skin is so thick it renders him an immovable object, and Bradley, who can… Drumroll please… turn lightbulbs on and off with (does spooky voice) the power of the mind.

If this weren’t a prequel, the kid from X-Men 2 who changed TV channels by blinking would be on the team too.

The group are sent to Africa to get a meteorite, which they find is being used as a paperweight. This is all the excuse the team needs to start committing war crimes, but Logan bails and severs ties with Sabretooth while he’s at it. Six years later, Logan is living in a log cabin with his girlfriend Kayla, while working as a lumberjack. “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay, I sleep all night and I work all day!” Anyway, Stryker returns and tells Logan that someone has killed Deadpool and Merry, sorry I mean Bradley. Logan refuses to help track down the killer, so Sabretooth appears and kills Kayla. This prompts Wolverine to go back to Stryker and agree to be the test subject for having the Adamantium from the African paperweight grafted to his bones. His new codename for Weapon X is Wolverine, which you should know already, since it’s in the title. The operation is a complete success until Stryker demands that Wolverine’s memories be erased. While he searches for the big red erase memories button, Wolverine escapes. All too late, Stryker remembers that there is no big red erase memories button, but he does have the Deus Ex Machina gun, equipped with Adamantium bullets…

Wolverine runs into the Canadian wilderness, and is found by an elderly couple who are concerned that a screaming crazy naked man just ran into their barn. Despite their reservations, the couple give him food, clothes and shelter, until Zero blows up their house in an attempt to kill Wolverine, which works about as well as you’d expect. Since he’s already killing Sabretooth, Wolverine adds Stryker to the list of people to kill, and visits William and Blob for help. After Wolverine beats him in a boxing match, Blob tells him that Stryker is kidnapping mutants and doing experiments on them in his evil lair, the Island, and that a mutant named Gambit escaped from the Island and will take him there. No, I don’t know why Stryker is hiding in a mediocre Michael Bay film either.

Wolverine and William go to recruit Gambit, but since there’s only room for two party members at a time, William kindly gets himself shanked by Sabretooth so that Gambit can tag along with Wolverine. On the Island, Wolverine finds that Kayla was working for Stryker all along, and that her death was faked by Sabretooth because Stryker wanted Wolverine’s powers for his ultimate creation, Baraka from Mortal Kombat. Baraka uses Deadpool’s body as a base and has swords in his arms. Naturally, his mouth has been stitched shut, so he has no mouth, and he must scream. He can also teleport and shoot laser beams from his eyes. I’ll admit I didn’t know Baraka could do that. It must have been in Mortal Kombat Vs DC, because I haven’t played that one. Sabretooth shows up and he and Wolverine team up to fight Baraka, with the fight ending when Wolverine chops Baraka’s head off. Yeah, Wolverine’s Fatality is a bit lame. I mean, Sub-Zero can rip people’s spines out of their backs, how is Wolverine supposed to match up to that? Sabretooth runs away, and Wolverine finds an injured Kayla, who says she really did love Wolverine and wasn’t brainwashing him. Suddenly, Stryker arrives with the Deus Ex Machina gun and shoots Wolverine until he loses his memories. Stryker prepares to shoot Kayla as well, but she uses her powers to tell him these are not the droids you are looking for and makes him go away before dying of her injuries. Stryker doesn’t stop walking until he is arrested by the military for murdering an officer who was concerned Stryker had gone mad with power. Of course he had, have you ever tried going mad without power? It’s boring. Nobody listens to you!

After the credits, Wolverine is drinking in a bar in Japan, when the waitress asks him if he is drinking to forget. Wolverine answers that he is drinking to remember. Don’t you see? People normally forget things when they drink, but it’s funny because Wolverine has forgotten everything already, which means that he can’t forget anything else! Now LAUGH!

Yes! Like this!

Remember when I mentioned the Wolverine shilling in X-Men: The Last Stand? It’s even worse now, as you would imagine since it’s his film. The other characters are portrayed as being inferior to Wolverine in every way, and he’s the only capable of getting anything done. Near the end of the film, Stryker even spells out to Sabretooth that Wolverine is better than him without explanation, just saying that he couldn’t survive Weapon X because Stryker says so. Would it have really been that hard just to include a throwaway line about Sabretooth having a weaker healing factor than Wolverine, which is why he wouldn’t be able to survive Weapon X? Since Wolverine is practically invincible, there’s no reason to care about him since he can’t lose. That’s also a problem with the prequel concept in general. We know Wolverine, Sabretooth and Stryker will survive, because they’re in the earlier films, and we know that the other characters aren’t in the earlier films, so they have to die or otherwise be out of the picture, so there’s no tension. There are ways of getting around this issue, but X-Men Origins Wolverine’s plot is clichéd and uninteresting, and filling in the gaps in Wolverine’s past hurts the character because the mysteries surrounding him were more interesting when they were mysteries. It wasn’t worth spelling out what happened.

A side effect of X-Men: The Last Stand was crowbarring in as many mutant characters as possible, with the cost of some being portrayed in name only. That happens again here, and again it’s worse. The main offender this time is Deadpool, who in the comics is a huge fan favourite, yet is portrayed terribly in the film. To be fair, Ryan Reynolds does a pretty good job with the 5 minutes or so of screen time he has (even if I was imagining his lines being spoken with Nolan North’s Deadpool voice, but that’s on me), but the main source of controversy is the climax of the film when Baraka shows up and has assimilated the other characters’ powers, as if he’s a mutant Mega Man. This character is a radical departure from a highly recognizable and unique character, immediately defined by his motor mouth and awareness of the fourth wall. Specifically, he knows he’s in a comic/TV show/video game (Delete as appropriate), and this trait has given him a large fanbase. Making such a drastic change with such a popular character is a big risk, and here it didn’t pay off. Making Deadpool shut his mouth is the final insult, kicking the fandom while it’s down. 

Yes, the sad music returns, but this time there's a hint of hope. Fitting, considering the recent announcement of a Deadpool film that ignores this one. Now don't screw it up!

Gambit is at least portrayed more faithfully, but he gets similarly shafted in terms of screen time, despite advertising materials playing him up as a prominent character. In the end, he just flies a plane, which isn’t anything Gambit had to do. Giving Gambit a minor role anyone could do is a waste.

Sabretooth is divisive. Considered in the context of this film alone, he’s fine. Sabretooth provides a strong contrast with Wolverine, relishing his animalistic bloodlust while Wolverine tries to hold back and retain his humanity. In the context of the wider series however, he’s a problem. The Sabretooth of this film is completely different to the one from the first film. The original one is enormous and looks ragged like a beast, whereas this one is smaller and better dressed. More importantly, in the first film he shows no signs of recognizing Wolverine. This film establishes that they were half-brothers who fought in various wars together for over a hundred years, and Sabretooth didn’t forget the film’s events, so he really should be able to recognize Wolverine. The easy amnesia seems to have been the only attempt to make X-Men Origins Wolverine tie in to the earlier films, and it’s a mess.

How did this...

... turn into this?

 

At least we can fall back on the effects, I’m sure you’re thinking right about now. But alas, we cannot. The effects look really poor this time, and I can’t figure out why. The first three films had very good effects, X-Men: The Last Stand especially, so why are they so much weaker here? Wolverine’s claws in particular look like they have a plastic sheen over them which wasn’t there before, and makes them look so much less convincing now.

At the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, events in past films are undone as a way of being able to continue the franchise past where The Last Stand left off. X-Men Origins Wolverine is not mentioned in Days of Future Past. They just pretend it never happened, which says a lot about this film. It’s so bad that erasing it from existence was too much acknowledgement that it ever existed in the first place.

Yami Marik of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series is here to provide a second opinion on the movie, just in case I wasn't persuasive enough. He's probably funnier too.

Next Time: Suiting up once again.

Bonus: A 90% finished version of the film was leaked online a month before its release. This, combined with the swine flu epidemic, led to the film being considered a box-office disappointment, though it still did decently despite the above setbacks.