Movie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

It could have been much worse considering how unnecessary it is

As Fox continues to try and keep their X-Men franchise alive they have turned to the origin stories for the characters featured in their original trilogy of films. The first of the bunch is the ill-tempered Wolverine with Hugh Jackman returning to the character he first played back in 2000 in Bryan Singer's X-Men and the subsequent sequels ending with X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, the majority-agreed upon worst of the X-Men trilogy. If it helps in judging X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Last Stand is the film you will find most people comparing it to, and in my opinion Wolverine bests The Last Stand if only by the smallest of margins.

Wolverine is an origin story in the sense it begins with Logan/Wolverine as a young boy in 1840 where we learn of his Canadian origins and meet his half brother Victor who grows up to be played by Liev Schreiber. The opening credits serve as a maturation montage showing Logan and Victor leaving Canada to fight in the Civil War, both World Wars and Vietnam. This is where the film begins as Victor's lust for violence has grown over time whereas Logan has remained comparatively tame considering he is still donning claws made of bone while his brother snarls and snaps at his enemies.

Through a series of events the two become part of a team of mutants led by General William Stryker (Danny Huston), a team that will soon result in Logan's desertion while at the same time we learn Stryker's motivation is more than initially perceived.

Wolverine follows the iconic comic book character from his days of bone claws and regenerative healing to the Weapon X experiment leading him to become the animal he is today with an adamantium-laced skeleton and claws to match. Some of the story elements found in this Gavin Hood (Tsotsi and Rendition) directed feature prove to be a lot of fun. Others, however, tend to drag as audiences already know where a lot of this is heading, even if they aren't comic book experts and especially considering Wolverine fits extremely well into the storylines told by the original films, which already had a large Wolverine element to them to begin with.

While I did enjoy my time watching Wolverine I will admit it is a forced effort to bring this story to the bigscreen as very little seems fresh or at all unique. Jackman as Wolverine hasn't changed one bit as the script gives him very little to do other than snarl and throw his claws around. Like The Last Stand, this film introduces a fleet of additional mutants and injects them into the storyline — admittedly better than in X3 — but they are nothing more than secondary plot candy. The introduction of Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) is intriguing but his five minutes of screen time do little for the story and Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson is probably the second best character in the film and he only gets a few minutes of screen time as well.

The best of the bunch is Schreiber who actually manages to upstage Jackman even though both are relegated to undemanding roles. However, Schreiber's level of menace was understated to the point it seemed natural whereas Jackman seemed to be merely screaming at every possibly turn. This, of course, has a lot to do with the misguided script that definitely could have used another rewrite to clean up dialogue and tighten up the early moments in the story, but considering Jackman's vocal love for this character you would think he would have been more demanding of how he was portrayed.

Wolverine is not a disaster as some will try to tell you. Admittedly it is pretty much an entirely unnecessary story but that doesn't mean you can't get some measure of enjoyment out of it. When compared to the other X-Men features it certainly isn't as good as either of the first two films, but it is definitely an improvement on The Last Stand, at least to the point I wouldn't mind watching this one a second time whereas I have no desire to ever revisit X3.