X-MEN ORIGINS - WOLVERINE

This is gonna be blabby. Scroll down to the bold section of this if you just wanna read thoughts on the film and don’t give shits about my blah blah.

 

Howdy. Been a while, but I’m still here: "battling" unemployment, tackling boredom head-on (I’m pretty good at it), and spending time out of town (lovely Champagne, IL last weekend - Washington D.C. a week from today). Has summer begun? Absolutely. Summer isn’t what it once was – a rejoice of freedom from school for a few months, a wide open space of freedom where anything goes. I’m older now. Currently, for me, this would be about the time I would be handling finals (or more aptly, papers) as I’m taking time through college. But with a semester off (love those) and having recently been laid off (fuck you, Hollywood Video), I’ve got time for my very favorite thing: FILM. Lots of ‘em. I’m mostly in a re-watching mode; I’m revisiting old favorites and forgotten gems of which I’m unsure of feelings today. It’s what summer IS to me: it’s catch up time. BUT, this long winded intro is a way of saying I don’t really HAVE a start of summer. My calendar is based upon Hollywood. It’s May 1st (or 2nd by the time this is getting posted), it’s a Friday, and that means our first Summer blockbuster is upon us. How is it?

It should be prefaced that I think X-Men is okay, X2 is fantastic, and I really, really don’t like X-Men: The Last Stand, or X3, or whatever you’d like to call it. What was an okay first entry followed with the best thing comic book films have ever offered; X2 is a marriage of fantastic action, supreme effects, quality character development, compelling storylines, social commentary, and dynamic editing. To follow this up with X3 was, in my opinion, the prime example of a Hollywood fuck up. Studios often don’t really understand, or forget, what makes a successful film. To them, success is monetary gain. Understandable. To a film lover, however, we want exactly what X2 was – thought. That’s thought put in, and thought received, and thought provoked. X3 was eye candy, and millions of mutants, and underdeveloped everything. A wonderful example is the trilogy of Bourne films, which are inspired thrillers full of action that makes people flock to theaters, but holds their attention and their brain captive at the same time. This successful business model should be something highly desired, as the Bourne films are widely critically lauded and adored by filmgoers. Wolverine isn’t in the right mold. How do films this dumb actually reach production before SOMEONE decides that audiences should have more than just the explosions and the effects? This is a summer thrill ride, for sure, and it delivers for that. Those hunting for this, line up. I just wanted a bit more.

Wolverine manages to be often thrilling without any point involved. To thrill aimlessly is to shoot blanks – they make a bang to intimidate, but they’re ultimately pointless. That’s not to say that Wolverine isn’t entertaining, because it would be hard to imagine Hugh Jackman and this character which he so firmly owns ever actually doing anything less than thrill. If nothing else, he’s a marvel (ha!) to look at physically, and not just his build. The way he imposes and holds himself as this character is just perfection. For someone who spent his middle school years infatuated with all things X related, Jackman is a more perfect embodiment of Wolverine than I could have ever imagined. I remember there was a great deal of talk a while back when it was so heavily rumored that an X-Men film was getting underway with none other than Jack Nicholson as the leader of the pack. If you’ve seen Mike Nichols’ Wolf, you know this wasn’t such an awful idea. Regardless of what a brilliant actor Nicholson is, he couldn’t touch Jackman. And Jackman’s not the problem with Wolverine, unfortunately it’s just about everything else.

I’ll give them credit for finally managing to work in Gambit, who’s a real fan-favorite character, and actually having his presence make sense. Not just that, but Friday Night Lights’ Taylor Kitsch is perfect casting. That show is chock full to the fucking brim with talent, I tell you. Unfortunately, the one extraneous character that I actually enjoyed barely spends five minutes on screen, and we’re instead forced to endure an endless supply of fabricated and/or misunderstood mutants. There’s this needless idea to include characters specifically made up for the film universe which is absolutely pointless considering the endless supply of pre-existing mutants to introduce. There’s not been a more misaligned character in the X film universe than Deadpool however, which is honestly a waste, as the character acts as a deadly adversary who provides comic relief in the books. Here he’s rendered down to a brief monologue, one action sequence, and eventually he’s used as a device for poor writing by someone forgetting what the main conflict is and should remain. I understand that some of these extra moments are fun, such as Logan’s boxing match with The Blob, Deadpool’s money-shot-laden intro slaughter, and later reintroduction as an engineered killing machine (no matter how lame it is). These scenes are needless excuse for a little action to speed up a story which not only is going nowhere now, but maybe wasn’t going anywhere to begin with -- not to mention, again, sidelining the main conflict. I’d rather enjoy a small group of people with drawn out character and purpose than deal with what amounts to cameos, really. It’s screenwriting 101. And I can’t say that there’s any need for any of these people to be included in the first place. After all, we’re telling Wolverine’s story here, and even if we’re going by movie continuity, it doesn’t make any sense given what people we see involved. For some reason, Cyclops appears as a young child taken captive. Why him? No reason except that people know who he is, and we can’t just introduce any random faceless character made up entirely just for the film...oh wait.

Look, I’m not under any false impressions that my opinion matters any more than the next person, and lord knows the world laughs at an angry blogger. It boils down to this: there’s no reason this film should get a pass just for being entertaining. Get your mind off of the eye candy, and the love story you’re supposed to be falling into, and really see what Hollywood’s trying to pass onto us. This isn’t just a poor excuse for a quality un-controlled franchise entry, it’s just poor filmmaking. It’s an untested director who has no concept of how to pace, shoot, or edit a proper action film. It’s a shoddy script that speeds up where it should slow down – that half-assed love story can’t possibly fool anyone -- and brings in new faces when it should tell us a little bit about the old ones first. The first two films gave us time to learn or care about the characters, and that simply isn’t done here. If you care about these people it’s because you’ve been tricked into it. Come on, will.i.am, and that Asian version of Daredevil’s Bullseye? The editing doesn’t flow, usually in a case like where we’re supposed to believe there was a strong bond between Gambit and Logan, while we only really see them talk for less than a minute. Or the love between Logan and his mystery lover, cut short by disaster. Suspension of belief, I suppose. Oh, right...the effects often blow to make things worse. There’s an awful lot of obvious (bad) green screen work, and there’s a ladder chopping scene which looks about as convincing as something one could conjure up on a home computer using flash animation. Wolverine’s claws often look digital and occasionally don’t appear quite attached to his body...kinda like catching a football in Madden -- just not QUITE there. For every cool action moment there is an equally lame moment to offset it. And let’s not forget the ghost of Patrick Stewart. It might be a spoiler, sorry, but you’ll want to be aptly prepared for what appeared to be a completely CGI rendered version of Professor X, who’s more creepy than he is a welcome sight.

This is disjointed and full of random thoughts, but you hopefully get the skinny. It won’t take much for another summer film to top this for me. It’ll open big this week, but with Star Trek coming on the 7th, and some dismal reviews, I don’t think this’ll have the legs X3 did. I could be wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. It's a crowd movie. I’m going to attempt to write about the big summer pieces I see within the weekend it arrives. I have virtually no excuse not to write. However, if you come here often, you know my attempts usually become failures. Wish me luck.

Anybody else catch it? Have thoughts? Comment below. 

-M