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#188 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Gavin Hood, 2009
A prequel to the X-Men films that follows Wolverine as he is recruited into a squad of mutant soldiers that ultimately causes all sorts of problems for him.
Morbid curiosity drove me to check out this apparently very bad prequel to the original X-Men trilogy that followed everyone's favourite X-Man and explained his back-story. Even if I were to leave aside how badly this whole film clashes with the franchise as a whole when it comes to continuity or how it supposedly ruins a fan-favourite character or two in the process, it doesn't stop it from being aggressively boring for the most part. Hugh Jackman plays Wolverine the same as usual - general gruffness tempered with the occasional moment of emotional vulnerability. This is countered by Liev Schreiber as his mutant half-brother Sabretooth (who doesn't get called Sabretooth in this movie, but whatever, that's practically nothing compared to a lot of the movie's other problems) who feels like little more than someone trying to do an evil impression of Jackman-as-Wolverine. Most of the other performances don't leave any positive impressions. The exception is Ryan Reynolds of all people as the man who would be Deadpool, with his all-too-brief screen-time being a highlight, which is rare for this film. It's a shame because good performances might have been able to compensate for the incredibly poor writing. The film is riddled with plot holes, badly handled exposition, and blatant clichés that are woeful even for a comic book movie. Now, I know that movies of this calibre are supposed to be for entertainment and I shouldn't take them so seriously. The problem is that this movie's flaws are honestly so egregious that they frequently break the suspension of disbelief in ways that can't simply be credited to characters' apparent lapses in judgment.
You'd think that a recent blockbuster about a popular superhero would at least manage to fit in some decent effects work, but plenty of the effects here are not very well-done even by the standards established in the previous X-Men movies. Extremely fake CGI is everywhere, from Wolverine's claws to an attempt to radically de-age a certain other character. As far as superhero movies go, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is bad in multiple different ways. The fact that it's a prequel starring a pair of nigh-invulnerable immortals and several other characters who definitely survive to be in the franchise's original installments sucks a lot of tension out of the whole film and it's not like the remaining characters are interesting enough to care about anyway. Even though a film as full of problems as this one should present at least some ironic amusement, it's ultimately very lacking in that as well.
Gavin Hood, 2009
A prequel to the X-Men films that follows Wolverine as he is recruited into a squad of mutant soldiers that ultimately causes all sorts of problems for him.
Morbid curiosity drove me to check out this apparently very bad prequel to the original X-Men trilogy that followed everyone's favourite X-Man and explained his back-story. Even if I were to leave aside how badly this whole film clashes with the franchise as a whole when it comes to continuity or how it supposedly ruins a fan-favourite character or two in the process, it doesn't stop it from being aggressively boring for the most part. Hugh Jackman plays Wolverine the same as usual - general gruffness tempered with the occasional moment of emotional vulnerability. This is countered by Liev Schreiber as his mutant half-brother Sabretooth (who doesn't get called Sabretooth in this movie, but whatever, that's practically nothing compared to a lot of the movie's other problems) who feels like little more than someone trying to do an evil impression of Jackman-as-Wolverine. Most of the other performances don't leave any positive impressions. The exception is Ryan Reynolds of all people as the man who would be Deadpool, with his all-too-brief screen-time being a highlight, which is rare for this film. It's a shame because good performances might have been able to compensate for the incredibly poor writing. The film is riddled with plot holes, badly handled exposition, and blatant clichés that are woeful even for a comic book movie. Now, I know that movies of this calibre are supposed to be for entertainment and I shouldn't take them so seriously. The problem is that this movie's flaws are honestly so egregious that they frequently break the suspension of disbelief in ways that can't simply be credited to characters' apparent lapses in judgment.
You'd think that a recent blockbuster about a popular superhero would at least manage to fit in some decent effects work, but plenty of the effects here are not very well-done even by the standards established in the previous X-Men movies. Extremely fake CGI is everywhere, from Wolverine's claws to an attempt to radically de-age a certain other character. As far as superhero movies go, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is bad in multiple different ways. The fact that it's a prequel starring a pair of nigh-invulnerable immortals and several other characters who definitely survive to be in the franchise's original installments sucks a lot of tension out of the whole film and it's not like the remaining characters are interesting enough to care about anyway. Even though a film as full of problems as this one should present at least some ironic amusement, it's ultimately very lacking in that as well.