X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review Tom May 4, 2009 Movie Reviews, Movies One of the few things I can remember about the comic books I read when I was younger is that Wolverine was always my favorite in the X-Men. He just seemed like such a bad ass compared to the rest of the group and I know I’m not the only one who felt this way, why else would they push his origin movie to the front. Of course some of the other mutants were cool, but most of them seemed like little whiney bitches compared to Wolverine. I tried not to read any reviews before going into the movie this Sunday, but I did manage to catch a few headlines that said they were less than impressed as well as heard someone mention that the movie had a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is never a good thing, but I try not to let reviews sway my enjoyment of a flick as there have been tons of movies that I’ve enjoyed that critics and other movie goers say I should hate. After seeing the movie for myself I can honestly say that I did enjoy it about as much as I enjoyed X-Men 2, maybe a little more. I haven’t really found myself to be a huge fan of the X-Men movies, I actually very much disliked part 1, enjoyed part 2 and didn’t know what to make of part 3, so my track record with these movies wasn’t the greatest to begin with, but overall I did like this installment. I though the acting was decent for the type of movie, obviously the acting isn’t going to win any oscars, but there weren’t too many laughable scenes. Although there was one scene in particular that the audience did laugh out loud at when Wolverine was fighting Sabertooth at the very end and his hair was all blown out… that was a little strange and kind of took away from the tension of the scene. And I didn’t particularly like the scenes with The Blob, I don’t think they were very necessary and they could have found a better way to get through that stuff. Something about it just didn’t work for me, maybe it was the weird looking CG or the boxing match itself I don’t know, but I just wasn’t feeling that scene. Apparently, after talking to a co-worker who knows more about the comics than I do, there are some things about the movie that didn’t really follow the comic book that some people didn’t like. For one, Sabertooth and Wolverine being brothers. For some reason, with what little I do remember of the comic books, I always thought they were brothers, I don’t know why. I did do a little research a few minutes ago and did find that there was a book published after the original comics called “Origins” and it sounds like that’s what the movie was following with the opening scene as well as the Sabertooth/Wolverine relationship, so while it doesn’t seem to follow the original comics, it may follow that book a little closer. The other thing was Deadpool. I really didn’t know anything about Deadpool other than what he looks like. I knew he has a red suit and carries guns as well as swords on his back, but that is the extent of my Deadpool knowledge. In the movie he’s played by Ryan Reynolds and he does start out with swords… but by the end of the movie he was something totally different than I expected, but again I have no knowledge of what he should have been at this point in the story so I didn’t think anything of it, but after reading some stuff on the internet, a lot of people were kind of unhappy with what they did to him. And with the rumors of a Deadpool spin-off movie, I hope they fix things that might upset the fans. My only other gripe with the movie is something that I really think shouldn’t have happened. It was one thing that I noticed in every single trailer leading up to the release, but I kept hoping they would fix it in final cut of the movie… the CG on Wolverine’s adamantium claws! They looked absolutely terrible. His bone claws at the beginning of the movie looked good, no problems there, but once he got the adamantium fused to his bones, they looked like shit. It was almost like they had an intern open up 3D Studio Max or Maya and model the claws and just fill them with solid silver. They didn’t seem to be lit very well with the scenes and they just looked too perfect the entire time. Now I’m not a scientist so I don’t know how adamantium refracts and reflects light, but there were absolutely no reflections of anything in the claws. You’d think if they were that perfect they would at least have some sort of mirror quality to them, but maybe I’m wrong. There were even a few points where it looked as if the claws would move around on his hands due to bad tracking of the CG with the full motion. I don’t remember the claws looking that bad in any of the 3 X-Men movies so I don’t know what the deal was. And I know I’m not the only one who noticed this, my friend that saw it with me said the exact same thing after we left the theater. It was just weird. So overall I did enjoy the film for what it was. I thought it had a good deal of action, the story never really dragged and it gave me a sense of where Wolverine came from. Now that is coming from someone who doesn’t know much about the X-Men comics, so you may not enjoy it if you’re looking for spot-on accuracy as far as that goes, but I still think most people will enjoy it. What did you guys think? Those of you that are big Wolverine comic book fans, did you like what they did? Those of you that have never read a Wolverine comic, was it a good comic book action movie?
