X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Or: How The First Blockbuster of the Season Disappointed a Person Who Has Been Waiting For It For Ages.
*sighs*
'Round these part you all know how much I love Wolverine. He's my guy, you know? The hero I love most in the Marvel U - because of his complexity and his badassery and the whole ultimate redemption thing he's got going on. It also helps that he's completely hotass - whether portrayed by Hugh Jackman or not.
Over the years plenty of comic book writers have taken a crack at Logan's origin story. It's generally accepted canon, now, that the story laid out in Origin = Logan's origin. They included part of this in Wolverine - that little James Howlett manifested his powers and killed a man named Thomas Logan. But then they decided to go with 'Victor Creed is Logan's half-brother' theory that's been around for a long time - and they skipped out on the rather awesome feral!Logan from the comic.
And that's the problem all the way through - Logan's got an epically complicated backstory, true, but the way the writer's have picked and chosen? Is utterly made of fail.
And the plot, oh my God, the plot. They had a good idea - leading up to Weapon XI, but they bungled it massively, and they get trying to tie into the X-films, which was a bad idea, because they ended up shoe-horning in a plot with a young Cyclops and....
*sighs*
And they made Wolverine dark in the wrong way? They tried to make him an angsty Batman style thing - and, sure, Logan's had his fair share of angst over the years but he doesn't deal with it the way Batman does. Logan's an action man of a different sort - and that's why I love him.
Logan is snarky and cool and has little to no moral compunction about killing people that need to be killed. He's the best there is at what he does - and what he does isn't nice. And yet, throughout this film? He doesn't do a lot of killing. They spent so much time making Logan look like a hero - but before he met Xavier? He wasn't very heroic - he did a lot of bad things for a very long time then everything changed.
Logan followed a long path to redemption to become the hero we know now. (And then Wanda gave him all his memories and sort of undid all that good work because since the end of House of M Logan's been on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge the likes of which has not been seen outside of Kill Bill) I really don't know why they didn't try and give us that in the film.
On the brightside - Sabretooth was just about the right level of seriously fucked up. Which was nice. And Gambit was pretty much spot on - despite being woefully misused. There was no reason to have Emma (Frost) in there and, as I said, the Cyclops plot was terribly tacked on.
And then the final disappointment. Fucking. With. Deadpool. I just can't even, you guys. Deadpool has been my other guy since I first picked up a book with him in. And this is the second time a new version of him has fucked about too hard. (The first was Ultimate Deadpool - who was so far removed from my Deadpool that I was almost enraged)
First - they made him a mutant, powers undisclosed, which is just, no, not DP. Half the hilarity comes from the fact that Deadpool's healing factor is essentially a cheap knock-off of Wolverine's - and Deadpool's assertion that, actually, he is a mutant (and wants to be a member of the X-Men - needless to say, Scott declines to issue an invitation). But the point is that he isn't.
Second - they pretended to kill him only to have him reappear as Weapon XI? No. Just a whole world of no. So much no it can't even be quantified. So much no I can't even talk about it, seriously.
I am totally figuring out a way to retcon the end of that movie out of existence so I can still live in hope of a proper Ryan-Reynolds-as-Deadpool movie.
On the plus side, Deadpool-wise, the stuff in the plane and then when they were hitting that building? That was Deadpool. Pitch-perfect and happy making.
I missed the Little Yellow Boxes, though.
In conclusion: the writers stuffed up this movie. And if the rumours of studio interference are true? Then that probably didn't help.
*sighs*
*sighs*
'Round these part you all know how much I love Wolverine. He's my guy, you know? The hero I love most in the Marvel U - because of his complexity and his badassery and the whole ultimate redemption thing he's got going on. It also helps that he's completely hotass - whether portrayed by Hugh Jackman or not.
Over the years plenty of comic book writers have taken a crack at Logan's origin story. It's generally accepted canon, now, that the story laid out in Origin = Logan's origin. They included part of this in Wolverine - that little James Howlett manifested his powers and killed a man named Thomas Logan. But then they decided to go with 'Victor Creed is Logan's half-brother' theory that's been around for a long time - and they skipped out on the rather awesome feral!Logan from the comic.
And that's the problem all the way through - Logan's got an epically complicated backstory, true, but the way the writer's have picked and chosen? Is utterly made of fail.
And the plot, oh my God, the plot. They had a good idea - leading up to Weapon XI, but they bungled it massively, and they get trying to tie into the X-films, which was a bad idea, because they ended up shoe-horning in a plot with a young Cyclops and....
*sighs*
And they made Wolverine dark in the wrong way? They tried to make him an angsty Batman style thing - and, sure, Logan's had his fair share of angst over the years but he doesn't deal with it the way Batman does. Logan's an action man of a different sort - and that's why I love him.
Logan is snarky and cool and has little to no moral compunction about killing people that need to be killed. He's the best there is at what he does - and what he does isn't nice. And yet, throughout this film? He doesn't do a lot of killing. They spent so much time making Logan look like a hero - but before he met Xavier? He wasn't very heroic - he did a lot of bad things for a very long time then everything changed.
Logan followed a long path to redemption to become the hero we know now. (And then Wanda gave him all his memories and sort of undid all that good work because since the end of House of M Logan's been on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge the likes of which has not been seen outside of Kill Bill) I really don't know why they didn't try and give us that in the film.
On the brightside - Sabretooth was just about the right level of seriously fucked up. Which was nice. And Gambit was pretty much spot on - despite being woefully misused. There was no reason to have Emma (Frost) in there and, as I said, the Cyclops plot was terribly tacked on.
And then the final disappointment. Fucking. With. Deadpool. I just can't even, you guys. Deadpool has been my other guy since I first picked up a book with him in. And this is the second time a new version of him has fucked about too hard. (The first was Ultimate Deadpool - who was so far removed from my Deadpool that I was almost enraged)
First - they made him a mutant, powers undisclosed, which is just, no, not DP. Half the hilarity comes from the fact that Deadpool's healing factor is essentially a cheap knock-off of Wolverine's - and Deadpool's assertion that, actually, he is a mutant (and wants to be a member of the X-Men - needless to say, Scott declines to issue an invitation). But the point is that he isn't.
Second - they pretended to kill him only to have him reappear as Weapon XI? No. Just a whole world of no. So much no it can't even be quantified. So much no I can't even talk about it, seriously.
I am totally figuring out a way to retcon the end of that movie out of existence so I can still live in hope of a proper Ryan-Reynolds-as-Deadpool movie.
On the plus side, Deadpool-wise, the stuff in the plane and then when they were hitting that building? That was Deadpool. Pitch-perfect and happy making.
I missed the Little Yellow Boxes, though.
In conclusion: the writers stuffed up this movie. And if the rumours of studio interference are true? Then that probably didn't help.
*sighs*