{"id":5871,"date":"2009-09-24T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T06:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=5871"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:20:43","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:20:43","slug":"x-men-origins-wolverine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/09\/24\/x-men-origins-wolverine\/","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Origins: Wolverine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-wolverine\" X-Men Origins: Wolverine<\/a><\/em> (2009) \u2013 on rental. It\u2019s telling for a film if the only good portions of it are in the first 10 minutes. Wolverine<\/em> begins with a flash back to 1845 where Logan a.k.a. Wolverine and his almost brother Victor escapes from the village mob, and in the next scene we see a collage of the two fighting in the Civil War, World War I and II and finally the Vietnam War. Then the most fun scene of the film rolls: we see the two with a bunch of other mutants pay a visit to a Nigerian crime lord.<\/p>\n

[Not spoiler free.]<\/strong> The next scene is six years later, and from there the film goes downhill and never stops. Firstly, Wolverine<\/em> is stock up the brim with film cliques – there are no surprises in this story. Logan is now living the life of the ordinary with a chick Kayla, but a short scene takes place later with a supposedly irreverent line about feminine powers of persuasion that instead broadcasts the importance of this female character. Such that when Kayla gets killed off, you know she\u2019ll show up again \u2013 and sure enough she does.<\/p>\n

Next, Logan goes on the run and takes refuge with an elderly couple. When the two start mouthing off folksy wisdom about living well to Logan, you know death is awaiting round the corner to claim these two and spare the audience of yet more fortune cookies nuggets. Then you have the general in charge of clandestine operations telling the madman that he\u2019s getting shut down \u2013 and he promptly gets a blade in his back. You\u2019ve seen it all before.<\/p>\n

Were that not bad enough, secondly, there\u2019s miscasting up the gazook in all the roles apart from Wolverine. This is already Hugh Jackman\u2019s fourth outing as the Adamantium-lined mutant and apart from a few more wrinkles around his eyes, he still looks and talks the part as he first did 9 years ago.<\/p>\n

But Liev Schreiber\u2019s Victor Creed \/ Sabertooth is all bark and no bite. He growls and sniggers, and is written as Logan\u2019s amoral opposite \u2013 but he\u2019s given such insipid dialog and grand motivations without the back story that you\u2019re left confused who exactly is he and of his constant oscillation between loyalties to his brother, to himself, and to William Stryker. Rounding off the trio is Danny Huston\u2019s Stryker, but has no physical stature and doesn\u2019t even begin to intimidate when he orders his minions to kill Logan. Brian Cox \u2013 the Stryker from X-Men II<\/em> \u2013 wisely chose not to repeat his role in this turkey.<\/p>\n

Of the supporting cast, only rapper will.i.am\u2019s John Wraith\u2019s performance was fun to watch. He at least looked as though he realized the production was really a grand joke and played his role of the teleporter mutant with a mix of aplomb and half-seriousness.<\/p>\n

And thirdly, even if the story made no sense, had no surprises, and actors routinely hamming it up, the film would had rated a watchable if the action scenes were any good. Unfortunately apart from the very creative opening fight scene, the rest of the film’s was but. For an indestructible mutant with an attitude and equipped with indestructible claws, one would have figured the action scenes would had been more, well, violent and visceral \u2013 especially considering that the film cost a cool $150 million.<\/p>\n

But the CG work was hokey (Patrick Stewart\u2019s reverse aging at the end of the film included), action sequences small-scaled apart from an end-scene of a nuclear reactor implosion that elicited a yawn, and largely bloodless throughout. I\u2019m not asking for gore on every frame, but a couple of decapitations and limbs flying about would had been nice.<\/p>\n

On the whole, apart from a nifty early raid action scene, Wolverine <\/em>is abysmally poor. For admirers of Jackman and persons with claw fetishes only.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) \u2013 on rental. It\u2019s telling for a film if the only good portions of it are in the first 10 minutes. Wolverine begins with a flash back to 1845 where Logan a.k.a. Wolverine and his almost<\/p>\n

Read More X-Men Origins: Wolverine<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}