Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine a Hairy Mess

Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds and a fun cast give it their all, but melodramatic execution and bad effects work against them

By Luke Y. Thompson Apr 30, 2009 6:35 PMTags
X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, Liev SchreiberTwentieth Century-Fox Film

Review in a Hurry: Take a handful of popular Marvel Comics characters, cast them with solid actors (be it Hugh Jackman as Wolvie, Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool or Taylor Kitsch as the card-throwing Gambit) and you can't go wrong, right? Well, you can if you make them spout dreadful dialogue, your effects look cheap and you hire a director who's totally wrong for the material.

The Bigger Picture: A big part of Wolverine's appeal as a character was his mystery, but hey, Marvel finally decided (ill-advisedly) to spill the details of his origin in comic books. So Hollywood has followed, equally ill-advisedly.

Little is revealed about Jackman's metal-clawed mutant that we didn't already gather from the other three X movies, and what is revealed often comes off as downright silly. (He got his name from a stupid faux Indian story his girlfriend made up? Really?)

The movie, which is mostly set sometime in the '70s, starts intriguingly, with a plot that looks like it'll be similar to Watchmen: Someone is picking off former members of a secret military team of mutants, and Wolverine, who quit when the team's methods went too far, must figure out who...and get revenge when somebody close falls victim.

This involves signing up for metal skeleton injections courtesy the villainous Col. Stryker (Danny Huston), who apparently also invented the Bush doctrine of preemptive war on possible terrorists.

The original team includes the likes of Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), an immovable object who will eventually be known as The Blob; super sharpshooter Agent Zero (Daniel Henney); wisecracking sword master Wade "Deadpool" Wilson, who can cut flying bullets in half; teleporter Wraith (a surprisingly good will.i.am); and of course Wolvie and Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), the latter of whom turned evil during the Vietnam War for no particularly good reason.

Internet fanboys have been demonizing Fox's Tom Rothman, but the real reason that what ensues is so poorly executed is most likely director Gavin Hood. The obnoxious sentimentalizing and clichéd execution (characters stare up to the sky and cry out in grief-stricken anger more than once!) were also evident in his inexplicably overrated Oscar winner Tsotsi.

Also, screenwriter Skip Woods wrote the videogame-based bomb Hitman. What did you expect from these two?

The cast gives it their all, but they're wasted in what is essentially an infomercial for potential future spinoffs. And the special effects don't even look finished—are we sure it wasn't the leaked workprint that was screened for press?

The 180—a Second Opinion: Audience members who can truly turn off their brains and just be entertained may be satisfied by the colorful characters having a few cool fight scenes. But remember when the X-Men films actually stimulated our brains instead of deadening them?