The problem isn’t that we’re getting sick of superhero movies, it’s just that we’re running out of new things to write about them. After all, how many times can you say “great effects, convoluted story, not enough character development, diverting but ultimately unsatisfying”? When something like last year’s one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight arrives it only underscores how sloppy and often moronic many big-name superhero films are.
Thing is, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (ahhh yes, the fresh smell of that first blockbuster of summer!) didn’t have to be that way. It’s full of solid actors. It has a smart, thoughtful director (South Africa's Gavin Hood, from Tsotsi and Rendition). It has a fascinating main character. And yet, what we end up with is a grim reminder of what happens when studio execs micro-manage a big film based on what would look good on a convenience-store Slushie cup.
Over the weekend, a Fox studio exec noted that Wolverine was polling with theater-goers “better than expected.” Wow. There’s a ringing endorsement for the power of the cinema. “Welcome to the movies: Not as totally crappy as you thought they would be!” And I agree--Wolverine is not as bad as some of us, still burned by X-Men 3: The Last Stand, had feared.
I won’t go into a lot of fanboy hand-wringing about the origin of one James Howlett, aka James Logan, aka Weapon X, aka Wolverine, aka That Cool Dude With the Sideburns and the Pig-stickers on His Hands. Heck, even as a life-long comic-book reader, I’m only halfway familiar with much of the lore myself. The film’s shorthand goes a little something like this: James and his half-brother Victor (step-brother? whole-brother? brother from another mother? I never quite figured out the exact genealogy) grow up in the Northwest Territories of Canada during the mid-1800s—an admirable feat, since Canada and the NW Territories didn’t technically exist at the time, but what’s a little historical inaccuracy between mutants?
Caught up in a bit of the ol’ accidental patricide, James and Victor display similar mutation traits: strength and agility, ability to heal quickly from nearly any wound, and, of course sharp pokey things popping up from their knuckles (James) or fingernails (Victor). Grown up into Hugh Jackman and Liev Schriber, they embark on a more than 100-year tour of All the Best Wars: fighting for the North in the Civil War, in the trenches during The Great War, landing on Normandy in WWII (mutant healing helps things go a bit smoother for the bros than it did for all those poor Saving Private Ryan guys), and finally in Vietnam, where Victor’s growing sadism and blood lust finally finds an arena in which to shine.
Unable to execute the pair for war atrocities (Victor atrocitied, James tried to stop him), instead the shadowy colonel Stryker (Danny Houston playing a younger version of the character Brian Cox covered in X2) enlists them into his top-secret Team X. It’s one of those nifty Dirty Dozen-type gangs, consisting of disgruntled mercenary mutants who sulk around the globe in the ‘70s quietly toppling third-world dictators as it suits the U.S.’s needs.
All of this sounds terrific, and it really is. The scenes of Jackman and Schrieber hacking and roaring their way through the history books is rich stuff, with the actors saying plenty with a look of rage or disapproval. And the mutant mercenary squad is full of swagger from not just the Canuck brothers, but also team members Ryan Reynolds as the sword-wielding, wisecracking Wade, Will.i.Am as a teleporter, and Dominic Monaghan as a tele-electrical-something or other. And Danny Houston anchors it all with a confident, lizard-oil smirk, one of those so-crooked-they’ll-screw-him-into-his-casket figures that make covert conspiracy movies so much fun.
Except for one small problem. All this is said and done by the 25-minute mark of the film. The boys’ pre-Canadian childhood is laughably rushed, and all those great war bits are piled under the opening credits. (Let’s hear it once again for amazing era-spanning, comic-book credit sequences—that’s two this year, along with Watchmen, that could stand on their own as fabulous short films.) And we get only one dazzling mercenary mission before Logan has seen enough of senseless, cynical slaughter and walks off the team. To become the world’s toughest lumberjack and fall in love with that breaker of so many hard men, the innocent, patient schoolteacher.
It’s a frustrating fool’s game to always want Hollywood to make films the way you envisioned them, but there’s a strong argument that Wolverine could have stuck with those three components: the childhood, the wars, the mercenary life, and come up with a truly magnificent, engaging action film. Especially since the growing divide between Victor’s increasingly savage rage and James’ guilt is easily the best thing about the rest of the film.
At first it might seem hard to find two more different actors than Jackman (a charming showman at heart) and Schreiber (possessed of an almost gleeful intensity), but they make every scene together pay off with a perfect balance of comic-book melodrama and subtle ferocity.
(Whenever a new comic book or fan-favorite project is announced there’s always a flurry of amateur casting, but Jackman remains a reminder of why some casting directors truly earn their keep: no one could look at Jackman the dashing, likable, light-touch heart breaker and think “oh, he should play a short, hirsute, brawler with temper issues and metal claws.” And yet, his charisma and confidence works perfectly in the role.)
Sadly there’s a lot more to the rest of Wolverine. A lot more. More mutants and with them more scatter-shot character motivations. More dicey production choices. (Sorry to get geeky, but Emma Frost’s skin is made of diamonds, not covered with them like Liberace’s toilet seat.) More plot lines, each sillier than the next. More stunts and special effects that, as so often happens in these summer flicks, are more about themselves than the story. And a whole lot more of our hero howling in agony up into a crane shot. All along the way, even when it’s veered off into the usual “pile on MORE stuff!” approach to summer movie making, Wolverine sadly continues to show glimpses of a good movie lost somewhere under all the studio-dictated clutter.
You feel Hood, Jackman, and Schrieber digging for something more, trying to get at the epic fraternal feud, but stymied at each turn by groaning plots and dialogues that seem generated by the Summer Action-O-Matic. As it gets rolling into its second half, Wolverine spins faster and faster until it feels like an out-of-control carousel, whirling out of control around Jackman and Schrieber as they try to pretend they’re in a more focused movie.
Nor are there any outright clunkers in the supporting cast. Houston has a ball growling out evil proclamations in his father John’s drawling cadence, and Reynolds lets his usual eye-twinkle and motormouth turn slightly acidic and scary. Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch shows up later as fan-favorite mutant Remy LeBeau, but he approaches his Cajun accent with a bit of trepidation and doesn’t have much screen time to really find Gambit’s groove.
(The Gambit character was created in the ‘80s as a way of trying to concoct a second Wolverine, that is another swaggering, gruff scoundrel. While I was never much of a fan—his appearance marked the point, for me when the X-Men comic books started to spread themselves too thin, became too jam-packed with mutants and teams—here in the film, Gambit and Wolverine make a fine pair. Once again, a follow-up film about the two of them roaming the world’s bars and back alleys might have been a hoot, but alas it’s not to be either.)
The problem is that the second half of Wolverine abandons any natural flow or character arc for a mad rush to embrace outlandish, silly comic-book mechanisms. Even one of the big moments in Wolverine’s history—the painful Weapon X process that infused his skeleton, including his bone claws with super-strong Adamantium—is glossed over rather quickly. (And while the movie shows us how he got his claws, leather jacket, and motorcycle, it never fully explains how his hair ended up in that pointy-on-the-sides ‘do he has going when he next appears in X-Men.)
Wolverine purports to be not just about how Logan physically became what he is, but what happened to him emotionally to make him who he is. But no time for that sort of navel-gazing here—there’s stuff to blow up, and of course the obligatory Third Act Super Monster to be introduced, dropped into the film with all the narrative cohesion and subtlety as, well, the giant metal spider in The Wild Wild West.
When the dust settles, Logan and Victor are still standing and those viewers who’ve managed to hold on to some sort of hope can tell themselves “well, perhaps Wolverine 2 will settle down and let these two get back at it.” And then, bam. The filmmakers make sure that can never happen either. Instead, the franchise just keeps churning and spinning, letting us know with a wink that more X-flicks can be spawned, ad infinitum, each more frantic and jittery than the next. Hurrah.
(If you're a fan of the X-Men comics or films, I'll be happy to go into great geeky detailed discussion in the comments about any of the film's other aspects, such as the use of Scott Summers, Deadpool, special cameos, secondary mutations, all the stuff from Logan's comic history that was left out, etc.)
I wasn't not a fan who dived into the comic world and remembered the lines and traits of the characters, and I know the animation/cartoon version for X-Men in the '90s were probably already a "mutated" form of the original comic, but animation/cartoon X-men was what lured me into the world of mutants so my comments are based off that.
I love Hugh Jackman as Wolverine; he got the style and the muscle. But the movie was a disappointment for me. Like you already pointed out, the second half of the movie left a horrid distaste in my mouth. If we were to compare, the first half of Wolverine was like X-Men and the second half was similar to X-Men 3, pure action.
I understand that many movie-goers are hoping for the big explosions and a huge heroic scene, but X-Men is much better than that. Wolverine is much better than that. There are bunch of characters who have distinct personalities that would've made the story SO much better if they had only developed them more. For example, the first mutant team Striker created could have been more thoroughly explained and the relationship between them would've brought so much more to the screen if we allow them to interact with each other more. And like you've mentioned, Gambit was nonexistence in the movie. Why bring forth Gambit when you don't even develop the character??
If Fox wanted to make Wolverine an average '90s action movie, they might as well get Arnold, Sylvester, or even Jean Claude to play Wolverine. If there is no change in the way they shoot Wolverine 2 or any other X-Men series, the execs won't ever find any pleasant surprises in the box office.
Posted by: Marty | May 05, 2009 at 08:34 PM