[Review] X-Men Origins: Wolverine
HOLY GAPING PLOT HOLES BATMAN!
Okay. Movie's out.
I went and paid theater prices to see it --when Brett & Lex both voted for it as the movie to see together on Saturday night. In fact, I paid three ticket prices. (Brett, Lex, you guys still owe me $$ for picking up your tickets. $11 each.) Yes, I saw the leaked version. If it was at all possible, my opinion of the movie degraded upon seeing the finished version. Yes, that's right. It got WORSE.
Saving grace of seeing this movie in theater?
1. I can honestly say I saw the legal, completed version, and still hated it. Keeping myself honest, yay.
2. Brett was there to sit there and point out the plot holes and general fail with.
3. Made others suffer --not just me.
4. I will, from now on, refer to Sabertooth's claws as "bag lady nails".
5. Wade did shiny things with swords once within the first 15 minutes.
6. "Gambit" actor was pretty to look at, even if he was not very Gambit-like at all. Wet paper sack. His acting is stuck in there. Somebody help him out. I think most of the cast is in there with him.
7. Saw the Transformers 2 trailer on the big screen.
THIS IS VERY LONG. I'M TELLING YOU THE ENTIRE MOVIE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEE IT.
*** SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS ***
Now, I'm not a hard core Marvel girl. I'm more of a DC fan, so I'm not really up on all my Marvel mythos. I can't imagine how bad this would be if I actually knew my stuff with Marvel.
We start out reasonably enough. We get the past showing Logan/WolverineJames and SabertoothVictor are half brothers. The bone claws on Wolverine look pretty cool. The action choregrapher could do with being beaten a little for all the times when both Wolvie and Saber glide across a shot arms outstretched like they're flying close to the ground. Come on, actually film them running, get some movement in the bodies as they cross the distance. It looks unbelievably awkward when everything is in motion except your protagonist who is statue still.
We see some time-skipping through a few wars where Wolverine is the voice of reason and Sabertooth gets progressively more violent/sadistic/evil. (Pfft. "Wolverine is the voice of reason", there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Wolverine, the violent explosions of temper poster boy.) For all the violence shown, there is a shocking lack of blood or any of the slashes from Sabertooth leaving any visible wounds. I swear, I was expecting something to get CGIed in there. I clearly gave the movie guys too much credit. Wolverine is also shown frequently throughout the movie with a cigar in his mouth. The cigar is never once lit. I have no idea why it's there to begin with if they weren't even going to try to make it look like it was in use.
Eventually W & ST get captured and are attempted to be executed by firing squad for killing a commanding officer. The dead thing, it doesn't really take. Stryker shows up, recruits them for Team X. Flash forward again. We see the boys playing with their new team some. On the plane we see the team, but we don't really get names for anyone but Fred (the Blob). They invade a complex that evidently processes diamonds. More badly choreographed action. Agent Zero makes these jumps and flies through the air with once again that static against a moving background thing. Let's randomly take away gravity and the need to move any part of your body except hands and face in order to accomplish some super-powered movement. It still looks awkward. Similar rounds as we go through everybody on the team. I can tell the guy is trying to emulate comic book panels, I really can, but it's just not working for me. The statue stillness against motion and light just looks so unbelievable. I can suspend disbelief for a lot with a superhero movie, but I expect the characters to actually move. That's the point of taking it to a motion picture format. To see the action happen. The loud-mouthed smart-ass non-mutant on he team, Wilson has one of the more believable superhero sequences if only because his entire body actually moves and twists as he deflects bullets with his katanas. Again though, the lack of blood after he kills so many people is kind of "huh"? Although I did like the all-clear line of, "Okay. People are dead."
Okay, nobody cares about the diamonds, Stryker's after some sort of meteorite. Standard comic book fare. I'm good with that. They track it to some small village, interrogate folk, get no answer, we get a reminder of Wolverine's super-senses that he can tell the cannon-fodder-guy isn't lying because of the sound of his heartbeat and breathing, and then Stryker orders to kill the entire village for not telling where the meteorite is. Wolverine has a problem with this plan. Wolverine stops the killing spree, says he quits the team, and walks off.
For all my complaints, I hope you enjoyed that section. That first 15~20 minutes was the "good" part of the movie. It all goes downhill from there.
Flash forward six years. Wolverine is living god-knows-where in the Canadian mountains with this cute lil' Native American chick, Tanya Silverfox. (Now Marvel fans know, Silverfox was a member of Team X who had no mutant powers, but like most of Team X got implanted with a bit of Wolverine's healing mutation as part of an experiment back in the comics.) Here, she seems to be a no-powers school teacher that plays doting lover to Wolverine out in the back country. Wolverine we learn is working as a lumberjack. Happy Wolverine. Happy Wolverine doesn't even flinch or get the least bit angry when being teased by co-workers. He blows off a sudden visit from Stryker and Zero warning him that something is killing everybody from Team X off. Wade & electro-boy are dead.
One day, coming back home from work, they encounter two trucks blocking a bridge. Silverfox seems concerned he's going to be violent about asking them to move along after the guy is rude --I have no idea why she's worried though. He's been oddly peaceful and tolerant for the character thus far. Heck, I'd welcome some sign of a Wolverine-esque temper at this point. It would be nice to see him do SOMETHING in character. But no, all Wolverine has done is catch the guys fist instead of letting himself get punched. He doesn't even crack any of the guy's bones in his grip. Silverfox comes out to stop the fight and gets the stranger to back off by just putting a hand on him and asking nicely. Stranger complies. She basically announces that she has powers of persuasion activated by touch.
"You ever use that on me?" Wolverine asks.
"You didn't stay in the car, now did you?"
Wolverine quirks a smile, all is happy and well.
Late at night, Silverfox tells Wolverine the story of the Moon and it's lover, Cheezyboogawooga. The jealous Trickster told Cheezyboogawooga that the Moon had said she wanted flowers, and so Trickster sent Cheezyboogawooga to the mortal world to get wild roses. Only, now that he's left the Spirit World, it turns out Cheezyboogawooga can never return. So Cheezyboogawooga howls her[the Moon] name to the sky every night knowing he can never tough her again. Cheezyboogawooga is evidently "Wolverine" in Silverfox's native tongue. So tragicks. (If that isn't an obvious set-up, I don't know what is.)
Lalalala. Honestly this entire bit probably drug on longer than needed to make its point. Wolverine is living a peaceful life. Yay. Wolverine is continuing to be an absurdly OOC pacifist/level-headed guy. Yay.
So, Silverfox drives Logan to work at the lumberyard. Some distance away, she encounters Sabertooth standing in the road. She stops the car in the middle of the road and watches in silence as he gouges claw marks into the cars hood. Flash back to Wolverine. He conveniently notices a weird scent nearby and investigates to find the severed head of an actual wolverine-the-animal and for claw marks (Sabertooth!) on a nearby tree. Now keep in mind, up to this point, the only mention of "Wolverine" in-story has been Silverfox's story from a prior evening. There is NO REASON for Sabertooth to use a wolverine head here as a warning. WHUT? More planning than Sabertooth-the-meat-head should be able to manage going on here. Anyhoo. Logan/Wolverine goes running off through the woods all panicked for Silverfox. He finds her car parked on the side of the road, partially in a ditch, the the claw gouges on the hood. Door to the car is closed, no signs of struggle, no sign of Silverfox. Wolverine picks up another scent. Silverfox! Run-run-run. Silverfox is dead in a pool of blood. (Oh hey, they did budget some fake blood into this movie.) Wolverine howls to the sky in the overly-dramatic-this-really-only-works-in-comic-books way for the second time in the movie. (He did this over his dead papa in the opening scene too.) In live-action, it just looks cheesy. Let me know when you find a movie that pulls that off in a way that doesn't make me laugh. WRYYYY!?! WRY U SEW CRUEL WERLD!?
Wolverine finds Sabertooth at a local bar. They get into a fight. Again the choreography is rotten. A lot of close-up shots while the action is occurring so they don't actually have to show you what just happened. Things randomly gain and lose the effect of gravity as needed by the characters from second to second. It's just very slip shod. Anyways, Sabertooth kicks his butt, then stomps on Wolverine's bone claws, breaking them off. This should take a while to heal, even for Wolverine.
Cut to a hospital emergency room. They're prepping to start working on "a guy beaten up in a bar fight", who seemingly has no wounds under the blood and wakes up unexpectedly. Stryker conveniently walks in right at that moment. "I can help you Logan."
Wolverine actually gets Wolverine-y and throws Stryker around a bit, but agrees to go through this un-named extremely painful process that will allow him to kill Sabertooth.
Really? And you're not suspicious? COME ON! At what point after living through multiple wars did you start thinking the world played along this easily?
Cut forward again to the Weapon X lab. Before going for his metal dip, Logan has them remake his dog tags with the code name "Wolverine". It's now official, yays. This is pretty straight out of the trailers. They fuse the Adamantium (an ore taken from the meteorite Team X was hunting down at the beginning of the movie) to Wolverine's skeleton, making him almost "indestructible". Then, they start discussing wiping his mind so he won't chase down Sabertooth. Wolverine somehow hears this through the glass and water he's suspended in. Yeah, physics whut? Wolverine decides this is a good time to get up and make a run for it --immediately proving he's now pretty bullet-proof and jumping into a huge waterfall and falling into a river in order to escape. Stryker orders Agent Zero to capture him.
Skip to a conveniently located farm. Wolverine runs into the barn, naked, because Wolverine can no longer get through a movie without doing some sort of scene where he has no clothes for an extended period of time. the kindly old man and lady living there don't call the cops, but instead give him food and clothes --that are conveniently just his size-- and let him check out the old man's motorcycle. Now in here, Wolverine accidentally cuts up a bunch of hardware in the elderly couple's bathroom. Just to show off how sharp his new claws are. My problem with that is how they did it. All by accident. It's not like claws are new to Wolverine. He's had them for ages, and used them as weapons for ages. He knows they're there and how long they are. Yes, they're sharper, but they're not new to him to the point that he's going to accidentally take off half a bathroom sink while turning around. Yet that is exactly what he does.
Now, Agent Zero catches up with him. No idea how they found him at an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, obviously no neighbors for miles, no police reports made, and who knows how far the river took him from the lab. Wow, what a convenient plot device that they found him at all. Except there is no device, there's just a gaping plot hole of them suddenly being there, surrounding this random farmhouse early in the morning. And then Agent Zero shoots both the old man and old woman for no apparent reason. This guy has been the perfect soldier all movie, doing exactly as he's told, no more, no less, and out of the blue he shoots the old couple and radios in that Wolverine killed two civilians. I guess we couldn't possibly have anyone on the bad guys team that has not been IDed as 100% patented evil. It was just random and pointless except to make sure you didn't like Zero, who had no personality to like or dislike to begin with. So Wolverine escapes a missile launched at the barn on the old man's motorcycle, and starts doing battle with the helicopters and Humvees that are there to capture him. I really don't get what the plan was here. Aside from the one missile launched at the barn, the heaviest stuff they shoot at him is some Humvee mounted machine guns. They've had six years to play with Adamantium. They know it's strengths and weaknesses. They know those guns are not going to do diddly against him. They worked with Logan for several years. They know his style and habits. Why did they not wait to get something heavy duty enough to actually hurt Wolverine and THEN go after him? It makes no sense.
Wolverine kills Agent Zero. Well, isn't it a good thing you just had him kill a nice old couple? Someone might have liked the character up until then. And we can't have Wolverine killing a character somebody somewhere might like. Once again, the way he survived the helicopter crash was unbelievable, as was the way Wolverine exploded the helicopter. But's what one or two more absurdly blatant fails of physics for this movie?
Scene jump again. Wolverine is at a boxing club, run by the teleporting (John Wraith) guy from Team X. Wet paper sack people. I cannot understand why this character was in the movie, much less this "actor". Boohoo. He feels bad about the horrible things they did after Wolverine left --hunting down other mutants. After the other betrayals of Sabertooth(his half-brother), Stryker(ex-boss), and Zero(ex-coworker), Wolverine has no problems immediately trusting this guy. Nor is there any explination of how he found him. At all. Wolverine is just conveniently there now. More plot holes.
...-_-
Wraith conveniently trains Fred Dukes a.k.a. Blob in boxing (to try to combat his weight problem) who is now recognizable to his comic counterpart. Wraith tells Wolverine that Fred probably knows where he can find Sabertooth, and gets the to go a round in the boxing ring. They fight a little. Wolverine learns that Sabertooth and Stryker are working together and run The Island as a holding prison for the mutants that have been captured. Blatant lot hole alert. Despite not knowing the location of The Island, Fred knows not only who was the only mutant to ever escape, but his full name, where he's likely to be, and the nickname he got from the guards on The Island. And Wolverine, who really should not be trusting anybody --much less old teammates-- in light of recent events, agrees to take Wraith with him.
Meanwhile, in yet another re-tool of Cyclop's history, Stryker captures Scott Summers with Victor's aid to take him to The Island.
Jump scenes again. Wraith and Wolverine are entering a bar where Gambit is. This is way too easy. We meet Gambit. This Southern girl is of the opinion that his "Cajun accent" is not impressive, and a Gambit that doesn't smirk is no Gambit at all. Pretty boy though. He basically tells Wolverine to sod off and that he's never getting anywhere near The Island again, and he's not going to let "you people" capture him again. Gambit attacks, and we go to a nice visual of Wraith out back, watching the alley.
Wraith spots Sabertooth and goes after him himself --like a noble little fellow. No grays here, everybody must be clearly good or evil alignment before they die in this movie. Obviously, Sabertooth kills noble-little-well-intentioned Wraith.
(According to my reading, Will.I.Am had problems with the director, broke a camera with his fist, and basically just wanted to play a Nightcrawler-powers character. I do not know how he got this gig, but being the fellow Wolverine does not need that gets to hang out with him anyways after all the betrayal crap, and then his final fate... screams Gary Stu to me.)
Anyways, Wolverine gets throw through the wall into the back alley by Gambit in time to see Sabertooth standing over Wraith's corpse. Cue angry face. Wolverine and Sabertooth have a stare down, Gambit hops out of the hole in the wall, walks up behind Wolverine (with no staff mind you) and starts a tirade about how he's never going back to The Island, and they won't get their hands on him. To the guy he just followed into the alley. Who is distracted. With Sabertooth. The guy that originally caught him. Shouldn't thief-type-person Gambit be using this to make a run for it? Character logic? WHUT? Wolverine elbows Gambit in the face without looking at him, Gambit evidently passes out. Thank you for turning Gambit into a non-smirking idiot for the movies. Good job Marvel.
Wolverine & Sabertooth fight in the alley. A couple of minutes later, we cut toe Gambit jumping from rooftop to rooftop, from at least 4 buildings away, carrying his staff, and running towards the fight between the two people he wants to get away from.
...There is so much wrong here it hurts my head.
Why is he coming at all? When did he get his staff back from inside the bar? Why is he on the rooftops? Why is he so far away? Shouldn't he be passed out about 50 feet from the fight in the same alley? Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?
Anyways, Gambit jumps in. Gambit and Wolverine fight while Sabertooth runs off. Idiocy, yay. Special effects whoo, but no logic came into this scene. AT ALL. (And honestly, I was hoping for cooler F/X on Gambit's stuff, it was all pretty toned-down looking.
Wolverine beats up on Gambit some. Somehow convinces Gambit that he's going to kill all the bad folk on The Island, and gets Gambit to agree to fly him there.
They fly to The Island. Wolverine exits over the water and Gambit presumably flies away having dropped Wolverine off. I mean, he has no reason to stick around or land if Wolvie did his entrance that way.
Wolverine makes his way past the COMPLETE LACK OF SECURITY to where Stryker is playing Frankenstein in a lab.
As if the "plot" so far wasn't enough, they felt the need to RETROACTIVELY add plot holes. Oh yes.
The girlfriend we killed earlier? Kayla Silverfox was in fact --not dead. So how did oh-so-tortured Wolverine get tricked? Well, she took a drug that slowed her body processes down as to be "almost undetectable" and they splashed her with animal blood.
Which for anyone that's been paying attention is going to go... Hold on a second. Logan, who smelled the severed wolverine head from several yards away through the bushes, who followed her scent trail to her body. Didn't pick up on his super-senses that she was still breathing, heart still beating, or notice the scent of animal rather than human blood? And he didn't notice when he was looking her fallen body over that despite all the blood she had no tears in her clothing much less actual wounds? This ALL escaped the notice of the guy who is known for noticing this sort of crap?
*facepalm*
You see, turns out she was always a member of Team X, and she had been assigned to keep an eye on him so that he never really left. The love? That was all a lie fabricated by her mutant tactile telekinesismind-control.
But wait! Wolverine is angered by this further betrayal. He looks so upset and angry! He tells her he was wrong, she wasn't the Moon and he her Wolverine, she was the Trickster all along, and he turns around and quietly walks out of the building--
WHAT!?
Okay, I knew the story was going to get brought up gain, but fer gods sakes, Wolverine quietly walking off after everything? This is Wolverine. He should be pissed off and AT LEAST smashing, slicing and dicing half of the inanimate objects in sight assuming the animate ones don't further irritate him. Where did the pacifism come from?
After Wolverine exits, we learn that Stryker made two promises that he isn't keeping. Adamantium dip for Sabertooth and the release of Silverfox's sister, Emma. Silverfox tries to get Sabertooth on the he's-never-going-to-fulfill-his-promises boat, and Sabertooth attacks her. Wolverine --who isn't quite gone yet-- hears her scream and goes running back to the rescue, fighting Sabertooth. Wolverine gets the upper hand, but because he is the GOOD GUY (TM),only knocks Sabertooth out rather than kill him.
Silverfox explains the sister angle. Wolverine agrees to help free her. Wolverine and Silverfox bust into the Mutant cages area. We see a few recognizable cameos... if you squint. Among them are Cyclops and sister Emma Frost. Seriously. This is too easy. How is Gambit the only one to have escaped before now?
That's right, Silverfox's sister Emma... is a Twilight vampire! *is killed* No really. Suddenly un-endowed Emma Frost's superpower is turning her skin to diamonds, not psychic powers. Listen, not a Marvel gal and evidently she is supposed to be able to do the diamond thing too, but even I know Frost is most famous as a big-boobied, scantily-clad, blonde telepath.
The previously guard-less facility is now hopping with guys with machine guns, and so Miss SparklePire and Cyclops work as a team to take them out. Because diamond skin deflects bullets without harmful ricochets. Yup yup. (Yes, that's me nit-picking. The rest of the movies been so bad, that I'm just being mean now.)
Panicking, Stryker prematurely activates his Weapon XI Deadpool, played by an entirely different actor from the earlier Wade Wilson and bearing almost no similarity to the comic Deadpool. He has no mouth and the powers of every mutant seen up to this point, including Cyclops and Wolverine's Adamantium bones, but with swords instead of claws. He blocks the exit, so Wolverine opts to go mano-a-mano.
The kids start exiting via tunels lead by Cyclops who can't see because he has no ruby glasses right now, but he's getting directions from somewhere. Silverfox stays behind to wait on Wolverine, and because she got shot, and is dying. Oh hey, maybe there WERE sparklepire ricochets!
Wolverine and Deadpool take their fight onto the top of one of the plant's cooling towers. Evidently Wolvie though he'd have an advange up there. I have no clue. Deadpool is about to decapitate Wolverine, when Sabertooth jumps up literally out of thin air. (Seriously, they're on top of the cooling tower, there was no where for him to come from. Evidently, Sabertooth can teleport in movie canon if it's to save his brother.
Wolverine and Sabertooth work together and manage to decapitate Deadpool, sending its head --still firing Cyclop's optic blasts down into the cooling tower. The cooling tower is torn up in a completely absurd way from this. (By the way, Wolverine can completely block optic blasts by holding his claws in an X shape. Like they're playing Street Fighter.
We busted out laughing at the combined absurdity.
So much of the CG throughout this movie is just badly done. It looks too obviously fake. It's disappointing for the budget involved and the target audience. This last scene just tore it. I could practically pick out the lines of the fake crap used for the crumbling reactor tower. It was just laughable.
Wolverine and Sabertooth jump off the side of the collapsing cooling tower. Sabertooth does not appear again. A big chunk of tower nearly falls on Wolverine, but Gambit uses his power to explode it into little bits, thusly saving Wolverine some healing time.
Wolverine sends Gambit to ensure the kids are safe, while he goes to look for Silverfox, who he somehow magically knows stayed behind. (It's not like he was in a life-or-death fight when that decision got made or anything.)
Wolverine finds Silverfox, who --despite being mortally wounded and unable to walk-- has managed to drag herself into the middle of the chaos, and not get squishy-ed by collapsing tower. Skilled or just absurd? He picks her up, intent on taking her to help, and proceeds to walk --I shit you not-- into the sunset. Don't worry, Stryker also has the skill of magically appearing in the middle of nowhere without even triggering Wolverine senses. He suddenly has magicAdamantium bullets, and is planning to shoot Wolverine in the brain until he has no memory. Wolverine tries to fight Stryker, but Stryker --who couldn't hit Wolverine anywhere vital while standing still and holding a dying girl-- can suddenly take him square between the eyes when he's jumping at him. Magic marksmanship skills. He then buries one more magicAdamantium bullet in Wolverine's skull before Silverfox grabs his ankle. (No, I have no idea how she got over there, he movie omitted her getting from point A to point B. It does that a lot you'll notice.) Evidently touching through your clothes is enough to allow use of her tactile mind-control powers, and she orders him to walk until his feet bleed, and then keep walking. She then dies.
Emerging from the tunnels, the kids encounter a helicopter brought in by Professor Charles Xavier, who has guided them to safety and offers them a shelter at his school. Charles gets all the kids on the copter, and flies off, leaving just as Gambit emerges from the tunnel.
Nice one Professor X. Rescue the kids, leave Gambit and Wolverine to fend for themselves.
Gambit returns to assure Wolverine that the kids are safe. As he walks up, Wolverine is sitting up, healing the last bullet wound.
POOF. Magic bullets hit the right part of the brain. Evidently memories don't grow back with his healing factor. Wolverine does not remember anything. Wolverine sees Silverfox nearby, but still an absurd distance away considering the events that transpired, and doesn't recognize her either.
Gambit tries to get Wolverine to come with him, but without success. They both flee the scene as the ambulances and police arrive.
THE END.
(Actually, there's a couple of scenes in the credits, but really, isn't this enough?)
Okay. Movie's out.
I went and paid theater prices to see it --when Brett & Lex both voted for it as the movie to see together on Saturday night. In fact, I paid three ticket prices. (Brett, Lex, you guys still owe me $$ for picking up your tickets. $11 each.) Yes, I saw the leaked version. If it was at all possible, my opinion of the movie degraded upon seeing the finished version. Yes, that's right. It got WORSE.
Saving grace of seeing this movie in theater?
1. I can honestly say I saw the legal, completed version, and still hated it. Keeping myself honest, yay.
2. Brett was there to sit there and point out the plot holes and general fail with.
3. Made others suffer --not just me.
4. I will, from now on, refer to Sabertooth's claws as "bag lady nails".
5. Wade did shiny things with swords once within the first 15 minutes.
6. "Gambit" actor was pretty to look at, even if he was not very Gambit-like at all. Wet paper sack. His acting is stuck in there. Somebody help him out. I think most of the cast is in there with him.
7. Saw the Transformers 2 trailer on the big screen.
THIS IS VERY LONG. I'M TELLING YOU THE ENTIRE MOVIE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEE IT.
*** SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS ***
Now, I'm not a hard core Marvel girl. I'm more of a DC fan, so I'm not really up on all my Marvel mythos. I can't imagine how bad this would be if I actually knew my stuff with Marvel.
We start out reasonably enough. We get the past showing Logan/WolverineJames and SabertoothVictor are half brothers. The bone claws on Wolverine look pretty cool. The action choregrapher could do with being beaten a little for all the times when both Wolvie and Saber glide across a shot arms outstretched like they're flying close to the ground. Come on, actually film them running, get some movement in the bodies as they cross the distance. It looks unbelievably awkward when everything is in motion except your protagonist who is statue still.
We see some time-skipping through a few wars where Wolverine is the voice of reason and Sabertooth gets progressively more violent/sadistic/evil. (Pfft. "Wolverine is the voice of reason", there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Wolverine, the violent explosions of temper poster boy.) For all the violence shown, there is a shocking lack of blood or any of the slashes from Sabertooth leaving any visible wounds. I swear, I was expecting something to get CGIed in there. I clearly gave the movie guys too much credit. Wolverine is also shown frequently throughout the movie with a cigar in his mouth. The cigar is never once lit. I have no idea why it's there to begin with if they weren't even going to try to make it look like it was in use.
Eventually W & ST get captured and are attempted to be executed by firing squad for killing a commanding officer. The dead thing, it doesn't really take. Stryker shows up, recruits them for Team X. Flash forward again. We see the boys playing with their new team some. On the plane we see the team, but we don't really get names for anyone but Fred (the Blob). They invade a complex that evidently processes diamonds. More badly choreographed action. Agent Zero makes these jumps and flies through the air with once again that static against a moving background thing. Let's randomly take away gravity and the need to move any part of your body except hands and face in order to accomplish some super-powered movement. It still looks awkward. Similar rounds as we go through everybody on the team. I can tell the guy is trying to emulate comic book panels, I really can, but it's just not working for me. The statue stillness against motion and light just looks so unbelievable. I can suspend disbelief for a lot with a superhero movie, but I expect the characters to actually move. That's the point of taking it to a motion picture format. To see the action happen. The loud-mouthed smart-ass non-mutant on he team, Wilson has one of the more believable superhero sequences if only because his entire body actually moves and twists as he deflects bullets with his katanas. Again though, the lack of blood after he kills so many people is kind of "huh"? Although I did like the all-clear line of, "Okay. People are dead."
Okay, nobody cares about the diamonds, Stryker's after some sort of meteorite. Standard comic book fare. I'm good with that. They track it to some small village, interrogate folk, get no answer, we get a reminder of Wolverine's super-senses that he can tell the cannon-fodder-guy isn't lying because of the sound of his heartbeat and breathing, and then Stryker orders to kill the entire village for not telling where the meteorite is. Wolverine has a problem with this plan. Wolverine stops the killing spree, says he quits the team, and walks off.
For all my complaints, I hope you enjoyed that section. That first 15~20 minutes was the "good" part of the movie. It all goes downhill from there.
Flash forward six years. Wolverine is living god-knows-where in the Canadian mountains with this cute lil' Native American chick, Tanya Silverfox. (Now Marvel fans know, Silverfox was a member of Team X who had no mutant powers, but like most of Team X got implanted with a bit of Wolverine's healing mutation as part of an experiment back in the comics.) Here, she seems to be a no-powers school teacher that plays doting lover to Wolverine out in the back country. Wolverine we learn is working as a lumberjack. Happy Wolverine. Happy Wolverine doesn't even flinch or get the least bit angry when being teased by co-workers. He blows off a sudden visit from Stryker and Zero warning him that something is killing everybody from Team X off. Wade & electro-boy are dead.
One day, coming back home from work, they encounter two trucks blocking a bridge. Silverfox seems concerned he's going to be violent about asking them to move along after the guy is rude --I have no idea why she's worried though. He's been oddly peaceful and tolerant for the character thus far. Heck, I'd welcome some sign of a Wolverine-esque temper at this point. It would be nice to see him do SOMETHING in character. But no, all Wolverine has done is catch the guys fist instead of letting himself get punched. He doesn't even crack any of the guy's bones in his grip. Silverfox comes out to stop the fight and gets the stranger to back off by just putting a hand on him and asking nicely. Stranger complies. She basically announces that she has powers of persuasion activated by touch.
"You ever use that on me?" Wolverine asks.
"You didn't stay in the car, now did you?"
Wolverine quirks a smile, all is happy and well.
Late at night, Silverfox tells Wolverine the story of the Moon and it's lover, Cheezyboogawooga. The jealous Trickster told Cheezyboogawooga that the Moon had said she wanted flowers, and so Trickster sent Cheezyboogawooga to the mortal world to get wild roses. Only, now that he's left the Spirit World, it turns out Cheezyboogawooga can never return. So Cheezyboogawooga howls her[the Moon] name to the sky every night knowing he can never tough her again. Cheezyboogawooga is evidently "Wolverine" in Silverfox's native tongue. So tragicks. (If that isn't an obvious set-up, I don't know what is.)
Lalalala. Honestly this entire bit probably drug on longer than needed to make its point. Wolverine is living a peaceful life. Yay. Wolverine is continuing to be an absurdly OOC pacifist/level-headed guy. Yay.
So, Silverfox drives Logan to work at the lumberyard. Some distance away, she encounters Sabertooth standing in the road. She stops the car in the middle of the road and watches in silence as he gouges claw marks into the cars hood. Flash back to Wolverine. He conveniently notices a weird scent nearby and investigates to find the severed head of an actual wolverine-the-animal and for claw marks (Sabertooth!) on a nearby tree. Now keep in mind, up to this point, the only mention of "Wolverine" in-story has been Silverfox's story from a prior evening. There is NO REASON for Sabertooth to use a wolverine head here as a warning. WHUT? More planning than Sabertooth-the-meat-head should be able to manage going on here. Anyhoo. Logan/Wolverine goes running off through the woods all panicked for Silverfox. He finds her car parked on the side of the road, partially in a ditch, the the claw gouges on the hood. Door to the car is closed, no signs of struggle, no sign of Silverfox. Wolverine picks up another scent. Silverfox! Run-run-run. Silverfox is dead in a pool of blood. (Oh hey, they did budget some fake blood into this movie.) Wolverine howls to the sky in the overly-dramatic-this-really-only-works-in-comic-books way for the second time in the movie. (He did this over his dead papa in the opening scene too.) In live-action, it just looks cheesy. Let me know when you find a movie that pulls that off in a way that doesn't make me laugh. WRYYYY!?! WRY U SEW CRUEL WERLD!?
Wolverine finds Sabertooth at a local bar. They get into a fight. Again the choreography is rotten. A lot of close-up shots while the action is occurring so they don't actually have to show you what just happened. Things randomly gain and lose the effect of gravity as needed by the characters from second to second. It's just very slip shod. Anyways, Sabertooth kicks his butt, then stomps on Wolverine's bone claws, breaking them off. This should take a while to heal, even for Wolverine.
Cut to a hospital emergency room. They're prepping to start working on "a guy beaten up in a bar fight", who seemingly has no wounds under the blood and wakes up unexpectedly. Stryker conveniently walks in right at that moment. "I can help you Logan."
Wolverine actually gets Wolverine-y and throws Stryker around a bit, but agrees to go through this un-named extremely painful process that will allow him to kill Sabertooth.
Really? And you're not suspicious? COME ON! At what point after living through multiple wars did you start thinking the world played along this easily?
Cut forward again to the Weapon X lab. Before going for his metal dip, Logan has them remake his dog tags with the code name "Wolverine". It's now official, yays. This is pretty straight out of the trailers. They fuse the Adamantium (an ore taken from the meteorite Team X was hunting down at the beginning of the movie) to Wolverine's skeleton, making him almost "indestructible". Then, they start discussing wiping his mind so he won't chase down Sabertooth. Wolverine somehow hears this through the glass and water he's suspended in. Yeah, physics whut? Wolverine decides this is a good time to get up and make a run for it --immediately proving he's now pretty bullet-proof and jumping into a huge waterfall and falling into a river in order to escape. Stryker orders Agent Zero to capture him.
Skip to a conveniently located farm. Wolverine runs into the barn, naked, because Wolverine can no longer get through a movie without doing some sort of scene where he has no clothes for an extended period of time. the kindly old man and lady living there don't call the cops, but instead give him food and clothes --that are conveniently just his size-- and let him check out the old man's motorcycle. Now in here, Wolverine accidentally cuts up a bunch of hardware in the elderly couple's bathroom. Just to show off how sharp his new claws are. My problem with that is how they did it. All by accident. It's not like claws are new to Wolverine. He's had them for ages, and used them as weapons for ages. He knows they're there and how long they are. Yes, they're sharper, but they're not new to him to the point that he's going to accidentally take off half a bathroom sink while turning around. Yet that is exactly what he does.
Now, Agent Zero catches up with him. No idea how they found him at an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, obviously no neighbors for miles, no police reports made, and who knows how far the river took him from the lab. Wow, what a convenient plot device that they found him at all. Except there is no device, there's just a gaping plot hole of them suddenly being there, surrounding this random farmhouse early in the morning. And then Agent Zero shoots both the old man and old woman for no apparent reason. This guy has been the perfect soldier all movie, doing exactly as he's told, no more, no less, and out of the blue he shoots the old couple and radios in that Wolverine killed two civilians. I guess we couldn't possibly have anyone on the bad guys team that has not been IDed as 100% patented evil. It was just random and pointless except to make sure you didn't like Zero, who had no personality to like or dislike to begin with. So Wolverine escapes a missile launched at the barn on the old man's motorcycle, and starts doing battle with the helicopters and Humvees that are there to capture him. I really don't get what the plan was here. Aside from the one missile launched at the barn, the heaviest stuff they shoot at him is some Humvee mounted machine guns. They've had six years to play with Adamantium. They know it's strengths and weaknesses. They know those guns are not going to do diddly against him. They worked with Logan for several years. They know his style and habits. Why did they not wait to get something heavy duty enough to actually hurt Wolverine and THEN go after him? It makes no sense.
Wolverine kills Agent Zero. Well, isn't it a good thing you just had him kill a nice old couple? Someone might have liked the character up until then. And we can't have Wolverine killing a character somebody somewhere might like. Once again, the way he survived the helicopter crash was unbelievable, as was the way Wolverine exploded the helicopter. But's what one or two more absurdly blatant fails of physics for this movie?
Scene jump again. Wolverine is at a boxing club, run by the teleporting (John Wraith) guy from Team X. Wet paper sack people. I cannot understand why this character was in the movie, much less this "actor". Boohoo. He feels bad about the horrible things they did after Wolverine left --hunting down other mutants. After the other betrayals of Sabertooth(his half-brother), Stryker(ex-boss), and Zero(ex-coworker), Wolverine has no problems immediately trusting this guy. Nor is there any explination of how he found him. At all. Wolverine is just conveniently there now. More plot holes.
...-_-
Wraith conveniently trains Fred Dukes a.k.a. Blob in boxing (to try to combat his weight problem) who is now recognizable to his comic counterpart. Wraith tells Wolverine that Fred probably knows where he can find Sabertooth, and gets the to go a round in the boxing ring. They fight a little. Wolverine learns that Sabertooth and Stryker are working together and run The Island as a holding prison for the mutants that have been captured. Blatant lot hole alert. Despite not knowing the location of The Island, Fred knows not only who was the only mutant to ever escape, but his full name, where he's likely to be, and the nickname he got from the guards on The Island. And Wolverine, who really should not be trusting anybody --much less old teammates-- in light of recent events, agrees to take Wraith with him.
Meanwhile, in yet another re-tool of Cyclop's history, Stryker captures Scott Summers with Victor's aid to take him to The Island.
Jump scenes again. Wraith and Wolverine are entering a bar where Gambit is. This is way too easy. We meet Gambit. This Southern girl is of the opinion that his "Cajun accent" is not impressive, and a Gambit that doesn't smirk is no Gambit at all. Pretty boy though. He basically tells Wolverine to sod off and that he's never getting anywhere near The Island again, and he's not going to let "you people" capture him again. Gambit attacks, and we go to a nice visual of Wraith out back, watching the alley.
Wraith spots Sabertooth and goes after him himself --like a noble little fellow. No grays here, everybody must be clearly good or evil alignment before they die in this movie. Obviously, Sabertooth kills noble-little-well-intentioned Wraith.
(According to my reading, Will.I.Am had problems with the director, broke a camera with his fist, and basically just wanted to play a Nightcrawler-powers character. I do not know how he got this gig, but being the fellow Wolverine does not need that gets to hang out with him anyways after all the betrayal crap, and then his final fate... screams Gary Stu to me.)
Anyways, Wolverine gets throw through the wall into the back alley by Gambit in time to see Sabertooth standing over Wraith's corpse. Cue angry face. Wolverine and Sabertooth have a stare down, Gambit hops out of the hole in the wall, walks up behind Wolverine (with no staff mind you) and starts a tirade about how he's never going back to The Island, and they won't get their hands on him. To the guy he just followed into the alley. Who is distracted. With Sabertooth. The guy that originally caught him. Shouldn't thief-type-person Gambit be using this to make a run for it? Character logic? WHUT? Wolverine elbows Gambit in the face without looking at him, Gambit evidently passes out. Thank you for turning Gambit into a non-smirking idiot for the movies. Good job Marvel.
Wolverine & Sabertooth fight in the alley. A couple of minutes later, we cut toe Gambit jumping from rooftop to rooftop, from at least 4 buildings away, carrying his staff, and running towards the fight between the two people he wants to get away from.
...There is so much wrong here it hurts my head.
Why is he coming at all? When did he get his staff back from inside the bar? Why is he on the rooftops? Why is he so far away? Shouldn't he be passed out about 50 feet from the fight in the same alley? Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?
Anyways, Gambit jumps in. Gambit and Wolverine fight while Sabertooth runs off. Idiocy, yay. Special effects whoo, but no logic came into this scene. AT ALL. (And honestly, I was hoping for cooler F/X on Gambit's stuff, it was all pretty toned-down looking.
Wolverine beats up on Gambit some. Somehow convinces Gambit that he's going to kill all the bad folk on The Island, and gets Gambit to agree to fly him there.
They fly to The Island. Wolverine exits over the water and Gambit presumably flies away having dropped Wolverine off. I mean, he has no reason to stick around or land if Wolvie did his entrance that way.
Wolverine makes his way past the COMPLETE LACK OF SECURITY to where Stryker is playing Frankenstein in a lab.
As if the "plot" so far wasn't enough, they felt the need to RETROACTIVELY add plot holes. Oh yes.
The girlfriend we killed earlier? Kayla Silverfox was in fact --not dead. So how did oh-so-tortured Wolverine get tricked? Well, she took a drug that slowed her body processes down as to be "almost undetectable" and they splashed her with animal blood.
Which for anyone that's been paying attention is going to go... Hold on a second. Logan, who smelled the severed wolverine head from several yards away through the bushes, who followed her scent trail to her body. Didn't pick up on his super-senses that she was still breathing, heart still beating, or notice the scent of animal rather than human blood? And he didn't notice when he was looking her fallen body over that despite all the blood she had no tears in her clothing much less actual wounds? This ALL escaped the notice of the guy who is known for noticing this sort of crap?
*facepalm*
You see, turns out she was always a member of Team X, and she had been assigned to keep an eye on him so that he never really left. The love? That was all a lie fabricated by her mutant tactile telekinesismind-control.
But wait! Wolverine is angered by this further betrayal. He looks so upset and angry! He tells her he was wrong, she wasn't the Moon and he her Wolverine, she was the Trickster all along, and he turns around and quietly walks out of the building--
WHAT!?
Okay, I knew the story was going to get brought up gain, but fer gods sakes, Wolverine quietly walking off after everything? This is Wolverine. He should be pissed off and AT LEAST smashing, slicing and dicing half of the inanimate objects in sight assuming the animate ones don't further irritate him. Where did the pacifism come from?
After Wolverine exits, we learn that Stryker made two promises that he isn't keeping. Adamantium dip for Sabertooth and the release of Silverfox's sister, Emma. Silverfox tries to get Sabertooth on the he's-never-going-to-fulfill-his-promises boat, and Sabertooth attacks her. Wolverine --who isn't quite gone yet-- hears her scream and goes running back to the rescue, fighting Sabertooth. Wolverine gets the upper hand, but because he is the GOOD GUY (TM),only knocks Sabertooth out rather than kill him.
Silverfox explains the sister angle. Wolverine agrees to help free her. Wolverine and Silverfox bust into the Mutant cages area. We see a few recognizable cameos... if you squint. Among them are Cyclops and sister Emma Frost. Seriously. This is too easy. How is Gambit the only one to have escaped before now?
That's right, Silverfox's sister Emma... is a Twilight vampire! *is killed* No really. Suddenly un-endowed Emma Frost's superpower is turning her skin to diamonds, not psychic powers. Listen, not a Marvel gal and evidently she is supposed to be able to do the diamond thing too, but even I know Frost is most famous as a big-boobied, scantily-clad, blonde telepath.
The previously guard-less facility is now hopping with guys with machine guns, and so Miss SparklePire and Cyclops work as a team to take them out. Because diamond skin deflects bullets without harmful ricochets. Yup yup. (Yes, that's me nit-picking. The rest of the movies been so bad, that I'm just being mean now.)
Panicking, Stryker prematurely activates his Weapon XI Deadpool, played by an entirely different actor from the earlier Wade Wilson and bearing almost no similarity to the comic Deadpool. He has no mouth and the powers of every mutant seen up to this point, including Cyclops and Wolverine's Adamantium bones, but with swords instead of claws. He blocks the exit, so Wolverine opts to go mano-a-mano.
The kids start exiting via tunels lead by Cyclops who can't see because he has no ruby glasses right now, but he's getting directions from somewhere. Silverfox stays behind to wait on Wolverine, and because she got shot, and is dying. Oh hey, maybe there WERE sparklepire ricochets!
Wolverine and Deadpool take their fight onto the top of one of the plant's cooling towers. Evidently Wolvie though he'd have an advange up there. I have no clue. Deadpool is about to decapitate Wolverine, when Sabertooth jumps up literally out of thin air. (Seriously, they're on top of the cooling tower, there was no where for him to come from. Evidently, Sabertooth can teleport in movie canon if it's to save his brother.
Wolverine and Sabertooth work together and manage to decapitate Deadpool, sending its head --still firing Cyclop's optic blasts down into the cooling tower. The cooling tower is torn up in a completely absurd way from this. (By the way, Wolverine can completely block optic blasts by holding his claws in an X shape. Like they're playing Street Fighter.
We busted out laughing at the combined absurdity.
So much of the CG throughout this movie is just badly done. It looks too obviously fake. It's disappointing for the budget involved and the target audience. This last scene just tore it. I could practically pick out the lines of the fake crap used for the crumbling reactor tower. It was just laughable.
Wolverine and Sabertooth jump off the side of the collapsing cooling tower. Sabertooth does not appear again. A big chunk of tower nearly falls on Wolverine, but Gambit uses his power to explode it into little bits, thusly saving Wolverine some healing time.
Wolverine sends Gambit to ensure the kids are safe, while he goes to look for Silverfox, who he somehow magically knows stayed behind. (It's not like he was in a life-or-death fight when that decision got made or anything.)
Wolverine finds Silverfox, who --despite being mortally wounded and unable to walk-- has managed to drag herself into the middle of the chaos, and not get squishy-ed by collapsing tower. Skilled or just absurd? He picks her up, intent on taking her to help, and proceeds to walk --I shit you not-- into the sunset. Don't worry, Stryker also has the skill of magically appearing in the middle of nowhere without even triggering Wolverine senses. He suddenly has magicAdamantium bullets, and is planning to shoot Wolverine in the brain until he has no memory. Wolverine tries to fight Stryker, but Stryker --who couldn't hit Wolverine anywhere vital while standing still and holding a dying girl-- can suddenly take him square between the eyes when he's jumping at him. Magic marksmanship skills. He then buries one more magicAdamantium bullet in Wolverine's skull before Silverfox grabs his ankle. (No, I have no idea how she got over there, he movie omitted her getting from point A to point B. It does that a lot you'll notice.) Evidently touching through your clothes is enough to allow use of her tactile mind-control powers, and she orders him to walk until his feet bleed, and then keep walking. She then dies.
Emerging from the tunnels, the kids encounter a helicopter brought in by Professor Charles Xavier, who has guided them to safety and offers them a shelter at his school. Charles gets all the kids on the copter, and flies off, leaving just as Gambit emerges from the tunnel.
Nice one Professor X. Rescue the kids, leave Gambit and Wolverine to fend for themselves.
Gambit returns to assure Wolverine that the kids are safe. As he walks up, Wolverine is sitting up, healing the last bullet wound.
POOF. Magic bullets hit the right part of the brain. Evidently memories don't grow back with his healing factor. Wolverine does not remember anything. Wolverine sees Silverfox nearby, but still an absurd distance away considering the events that transpired, and doesn't recognize her either.
Gambit tries to get Wolverine to come with him, but without success. They both flee the scene as the ambulances and police arrive.
THE END.
(Actually, there's a couple of scenes in the credits, but really, isn't this enough?)