It is without question that Batman Begins and more so The Dark Knight have changed the way in which comic books are brought to the big screen. Gritty and dark in tone, the reverberations that they have created in the industry are only now beginning to seep down the chain, as we can see here with the completely unnecessary re-telling of Wolverine's origin story. Already told in a series of flashbacks and cuts throughout the original X-Men movie, Origins: Wolverine aims to expand on this in a story riddled with ridiculous plot-holes and dumbassery.
We're introduced to our main characters, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Liev Schreiber's Sabertooth as children in 1845. A quick death which we're not given enough time to care about later and we're in the rather fantastic opening credit montage, which sees the two fight their way through history's major wars, beginning with the American Civil War and ending in Vietnam. Very reminiscent of Watchmen's excellent opening credits. It's never explained why either character ages from childhood and then conveniently stops when they reach their 'Hugh Jackman' and 'Liev Schreiber' years, but who are we to dwell on points such as this?
The movie plods along at an acceptable pace, but thanks to a barebones plot with a myriad of holes, you find yourself wondering if the writers ever actually watched the other X-Men movies that they should have been working in conjunction with. Schreiber's cunning and cerebral turn as Sabertooth makes you wonder how we accepted the freakishly strong and freakishly stupid version that we were given in the X-Men trilogy? What happened to him between the events in this movie and the first X-Men movie that turned him into such a brutish idiot?
Once we brush aside all of this, not even the action segments and the CGI are up to carrying the film across a finish line that we can deem as acceptable. Considering the hammering that internet bloggers gave a leaked work print of the film in terms of CGI, you'd expect that the finished product would be something to shout about. If anything, it's the complete opposite. One scene in particular, in which Wolverine plays with his new adamantium claws in front of a mirror looks glaringly false.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is saved by a handful of performances by actors doing the best with what they're given. Jackman is reliable in his role as always and Schreiber is a great fit for the character of Sabertooth. Glimpses of Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool show bundles of promise, but whether the character will go anywhere is questionable given the events of this film. Not quite the train-wreck of X-Men: The Last Stand, but a needless and poorly-told tale of events nonetheless.
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