To comment on this story, e-mail Glen Baity at glen.baity@gmail.com
It’s the first week
of May, which can
only mean one
thing: superheroes,
superheroes,
superheroes.
And where there’s
a superhero, there’s
an origin story. Until
now, Wolverine’s has
remained shrouded in
mystery for moviegoers.
Unless you read the
Wolverine: Origins
comic when it came out
in 2006, all you know is
that he’s very old, and that the same mutant
healing factor that keeps him alive also
helped him survive the procedure that grafted
indestructible metal to his skeleton.
Not to be a killjoy, but: What else do you
need to know? If X-Men Origins: Wolverine
accomplishes nothing else, it proves that
a little mystery is good for a character like
Logan.
The film pulls back the curtain on a
pretty ordinary origin story. Logan (Hugh
Jackman) and his older, similarly-powered
brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) run away
from home, fight in every major American
conflict between the Civil War and Vietnam,
and ultimately join up with Col. William
Stryker (Danny Huston), who spends the
1980s rounding up mutants for testing to get
at the truth behind his own son’s mutation
(you may remember that plot point from the
far superior X2). Soon enough, Wolverine
gets disgusted with the work and retreats to
the wilderness, which causes Stryker to sic
Sabretooth on Logan’s innocent wife (Lynn
Collins).
X-Men Origins: Wolverine piles on the
mutants, which is a mistake here for the
same reason it was a mistake in X-Men: The
Last Stand: because quantity does not equal
quality. If it did, Wolverine would be the
best of the franchise — beyond everyone’s
favorite ornery Canuck and his brother, there’s
Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), Gambit (Taylor
Kitsch), Bolt (Dominic Monaghan), John
Wraith (Will.i.am of the Black-Eyed Peas, in
an ill-advised bit of stunt casting), the Blob
(Kevin Durand) and even a young Cyclops
(Tim Pocock), among many, many others.
When you have this many characters, you’re
simply not going to have enough screen time
to develop most of them. Sure enough, most of
the players pop in for a scene or two and then
step into the background — it’s less a cast than
a mutant roll call. Throw in an overcooked
plot and some unimpressive action, and
you’ve got one giant mess on your hands.And by all means, let’s talk about the action,
which should be Wolverine’s bread and butter.
Bottom line: There’s a difference between what looks fantastical on screen and what just looks silly. Sam Raimi, for example, displays a good sense for this in the Spider-Man movies, but Wolverine director Gavin Hood is clearly not hip to the difference, as sequence after sequence is spoiled by some element that just doesn’t fit. In one scene, Gambit twirls his staff like a helicopter blade to slow his fall, which looks exactly as stupid as it sounds Speaking of helicopters, there’s also the big trailer scene you’ve been seeing for months, in which Wolverine rides the shockwave from a missile explosion onto the back of the chopper that fired it. He subsequently brings the chopper down with the awesome power of his claws, highlighting the film’s unofficial mantra:
The Claws Can Do Anything. Seriously, I get that the claws are cool, but Hood turns them into fetish objects. Every two minutes — snikt snikt!! — the claws come out, magical solutions to every problem. Need to climb something? Claws. Open a door? Claws. Light a fire? You guessed it: Claws. In the end, the claws can do everything except impress an audience.All of this might be forgivable if anyone looked at all like they were having a good time, but the only actor who brings any life to his character is Schreiber. Sabretooth in Wolverine is an actual presence, especially compared to the lifeless strongman version from the first X-Men film (screenwriters David Benioff and Skip Woods don’t even try to bridge the sizeable gulf between these disparate portrayals). But Jackman, for all his enthusiasm about the film in junket interviews, looks like he’s just fulfilling a contractual obligation here as he struggles against the bad script and jumbled plotting. I’m sure Wolverine will make a pile of money, as will anything bearing the X-Men stamp, but until someone with a fresh vision can be brought on board, perhaps it’s time to let this series hibernate.
To comment on this story, e-mail Glen Baity at glen.baity@gmail.com
