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
