X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Directed by Gavin Hood
After seeking to live a normal life after 200 years, Logan sets out to avenge a death by undergoing the mutant Weapon X program and becoming Wolverine.
25 connections found
View:
25 films that influenced X-Men Origins: Wolverine
What critics say influenced X-Men Origins: Wolverine
What made “X2,” “Spider-Man 2,” and “The Dark Knight” such powerful films was their ability to combine real-world themes with fantastic elements while never losing sight of what makes their characters unique and compelling.
The battle atop the nuclear cooling tower, for example, pales when compared to the kinetic runaway train sequence in Spider-Man 2 or even the smash-mania at the end of last year's The Incredible Hulk .
Every comic book fan knows that origins in movies are the most boring parts, and that's the main reason that the second entries in superhero series are always the best: X2: X-Men United (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), The Dark Knight (2008), etc.
This is the third summer in a row that the first film out of the gate has been a Marvel adaptation: in 2007 there was the okay Spider-Man 3 , last year the wonderfully fun Iron Man , and now an insubstantial bit of not much, that's still dimly entertaining enough that calling it "bad" would be an abuse of that word.
What made “X2,” “Spider-Man 2,” and “The Dark Knight” such powerful films was their ability to combine real-world themes with fantastic elements while never losing sight of what makes their characters unique and compelling.
"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is not nearly as visually or creatively inspired as the recent " With Sam Raimi's wondrous, grandly-scaled " Spider- Man films and Christopher Nolan's complex, haunting " The Dark Knight " raising the bar so high on what can be accomplished in comic book and superhero movies, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" falls more in line with infamous duds like the Halle Berry-starring " Catwoman " and unnecessary " Daredevil " spinoff " Elektra ."
You could go all the way to the top and look at the believable world and the grit of “The Dark Knight” to see why but you need only look at Singer’s “X-Men” films, both of which were far more unpredictable and interesting than “Origins”.
Christopher Nolan did something ingenious with the Joker in The Dark Knight.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is no The Dark Knight.
Haven't they learned anything from "The Dark Knight"'s success?
Neither suggests that he is, or is in any danger of becoming, “truly lost,” as the man who called himself Ducard described the young Bruce Wayne in the first scene of Batman Begins .
There are many ways to do this, from linking the episodes together with stronger transitions to director Christopher Nolan's approach in Batman Begins of fracturing the time element to create a relentless, forward drive, building up to the moment Bruce Wayne finally "becomes" Batman.
Given the way the film was sold to the masses--Wolverine as savior, Wolverine as hirsute sex symbol--nobody should come to it expecting anything on par with what Christopher Nolan created in his deeper, more intriguing “ Batman Begins ,” which also is an origins movie.
On the upside, there's plenty of it to keep you distracted from the obligatory jumping on a helicopter bit, to a hilltop motorcycle chase sequence (vaguely reminiscent of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape ) and lots of stripped down (literally in Jackman's case) mano-a-mano combat.
Is Wolverine the comic book equivalent of Hal Ashby and Waldo Salt’s Coming Home with mutant powers?
Advertisement
Julia Blake ("My Brilliant career," "Aquamarine") and Max Cullen ("Jindabyne," "Australia") provide a nice diversion from the "X-Men" action as senior farmers who provide Logan a temporary safe haven.
The sequence shows Victor growing increasingly bloodthirsty, then psychotic, so by the time they get to Vietnam, he's like Sean Penn in "Casualties of War."
The battle atop the nuclear cooling tower, for example, pales when compared to the kinetic runaway train sequence in Spider-Man 2 or even the smash-mania at the end of last year's The Incredible Hulk .
The last high-profile comic book entry to take this approach was The Incredible Hulk -- the "rebooted" Edward Norton version -- which had a clunky silliness that kept it from taking off.
Now, don't misconstrue that compliment as me saying “Wolverine” measures up to last summer's superhero movies “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” or “The Incredible Hulk,” but in no way does it deserve the bum rap it is getting.
Considering how many weak, disappointing and simply godawful superhero movies there’ve been in recent years–many of them coming from 20th Century Fox–this origin movie isn’t so bad, basically on par with last year’s “The Incredible Hulk” in that it has solid character moments, some cool action scenes and enough stuff taken from the comics that true fans won’t be completely disappointed.
Borrowing wholesale from "The Incredible Hulk," with Schreiber fairly effective in the Abomination part, "Wolverine" struggles to establish an identity of its own.
On those terms this “First Blood”-lite fails.
That's not even including the long-awaited comic favorite Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), who can inject inanimate objects with kinetic energy (or something).Though the plot follows the standard loner-hunted-by-evil-gang-to-which-he-once-belonged trajectory (and cribs almost verbatim from "First Blood" at one point), far more interesting is the film's fraternal conflict (thanks to Mr. Jackman and Mr. Schreiber, who - ahem - bite into their roles).
Advertisement
As the title suggests, this is an origin story, with the loner hero played once again by Hugh Jackman in his Clint Eastwood/Every Which Way But Loose mode.
The first major action sequence feels like The Dirty Dozen with superpowers and there is lots of outlandish gunplay, swordplay, hand-to-hand combat and all manner of stunts, explosions and use of slow motion.