Wolverine’s origin story is one of the cornerstones of the Marvel universe, so far as comic book geeks are concerned. As such, it came as no surprise that Marvel would want to bring this story to the big screen, if only in a more palatable format for the movie going audiences to swallow. X-Men Origins: Wolverine tells the story of how James Howlett came to discover his mutant powers, his relationship with his half-brother Victor Creed (Sabertooth), how old he truly is, how he lost his memory and how he ultimately became the Wolverine we know and love.
Wolverine vs Deadpool (Comic)
Wolverine’s origin is complicated and anything but brief, so going into this film I was concerned as to just how they’d be able to pull this off in 107 minutes. Overall I was pretty pleasantly surprised, though I was a bit surprised at how different this Origin was to the one I read when I was a kid. Marvel is anything but afraid of dramatically altering their character’s identities, and this story told in the film is a shining example of revisionist history. I don’t follow the comic anymore, so I can’t say if it follows the “new” Wolverine origin, but I certainly doesn’t follow the classic one that I loved. Still, Marvel kept the fundamentals true, and the new origin (or at least the one presented in the film) was definitely a good choice for movie goers.
Hugh Jackman as Weapon X, after receiving his adamantium skeleton.
As always, Hugh Jackman delivers a fantastic performance as Wolverine. He was born to play the part, really. I also really enjoyed Liev Schreiber as the new, old Sabertooth (the part was played by pro wrestler Tyler Mane in the earlier film) — he’s probably one of modern film’s most under appreciated actors, in my opinion — and Danny Huston was a damn fine Will Stryker. The CG was pretty outstanding, with a few minor exceptions (whoever did the Patrick Stewart touch up work for the younger Xavier should be fired.) My biggest complaint with the film is that it felt too rushed, which is what I expected given the amount of content they had to cover. Every other scene was in a different time period and a different country. It wasn’t confusing so much as it was tedious.
Overall though I think they did the best job they could telling this story in the time they had, and they did a pretty thorough job of it at that.
[rating:3.5/5]
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