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X-Men Origins: Wolverine(2009)

Spoiler Grumbles
WARNING: Please do not continue reading unless you have either seen the movie or do not mind having it spoiled.

I have enough gripes with this movie that I can organize them by character.

Wolverine—Thank the industry for Jackman. There is no better man to play the role. He did a great job in all of the previous movies and he doesn’t fail to pull it off convincingly in this film either. In fact, none of my complaints about “Wolverine” have anything to do with Wolverine. My biggest qualm is with the portrayal of his claws. First off, the animation is just terrible. The scene in the bathroom on the farm is particularly painful. He pulls out his white, cartoon claws and inspects them. His eyes never once focus on the correct area, because in reality he is staring at nothing. He then proceeds to clank them together creating the most unconvincing interaction in the movie. Not only do his claws misalign with his fists, but giant sparks start to shoot into the air. I’ve clanked sharp metal together before, it takes a decent amount of force to create sparks; a force that Wolverine was not using in the bathroom. And worse yet, the sparks don’t even interact with the environment at all. There were no shadows casted by the light or sparks bouncing on the sink. How did this scene ever leave the editing room?
Another small bit of business that bothered me was the fake death of Kayla. Wolverine finds her in a forest covered in blood. This is all it takes for a man with animal instincts to believe someone is dead. Are you telling me that Wolverine didn’t check for the wound? Even if we give Wolverine the benefit of the doubt and say that he was fooled by the drug used to sedate her, what did he do with her body? Did he just leave her in the woods? No burial, no mourning, no love? On that note, this seems like a pretty poor plan on Striker’s part. Give Kayla a drug that has a time limit. What if Logan stayed with her the whole night sobbing and she woke up? Did they know Wolverine was the type of husband to leave Kayla’s body in the woods for the wolves, because I sure didn’t?

Victor—How awesome was this character! Though I let the big, hairy Tyler Mane of the first ‘X-men’ grow on me, I am quite ready to put him aside for Liev Schreiber. Though some fans may shout out “source material”, I really liked the brotherhood developed between Logan and Victor. It was believable to me and created a character depth found nowhere else in this fight-fest. My only grief is the question, “what are fans supposed to do when we watch “X-men”. Sure Logan’s memory is missing, but Sabertooth doesn’t even seem to know who Logan is in the first movie. Aside from this story hole, there is the obvious appearance issue. Victor goes from this cool, primal killer, to a big-foot. Perhaps part of his mutant plight is that he regresses further and further into being an animal, but I doubt that in another 50 years he would be a lion in the zoo :-)

Striker—There wasn’t really anything wrong with this character, I just need to use Striker as an anchor for my next set of beefs. Adamantium bullets! Sigh. Way to make the character of Wolverine super cliché. Need some silver bullets to kill the werewolf, Striker? Even worse, the introduction of these bullets couldn’t come at a more hilarious time. We just finish watching a 10 minute motorcycle chase scene between Agent Zero (the Beethoven of guns) and Wolverine in which Logan pulls a helicopter out of the sky and sets Agent Zero on fire. The movie then cuts to a scene of Striker inspecting a case of adamantium bullets. Ha. You mean to tell me that Striker sent his finest assassin to fight an indestructible beast, when the entire time he had adamantium bullets in his suitcase? That’s totally reminiscent of “Dumb and Dumber” when Lloyd brings out a second pair of gloves for Harry. I can see Agent Zero saying, “you had adamantium bullets this whole time?” (if you don’t get the reference, see the movie, it’s not bad) The next point is one I find very interesting: the murder of some random government official. Why was that scene even necessary? To show that Striker was ruthless and would do whatever it took to get what he wanted? Unnecessary; throughout the entire movie Striker seemed to be his own boss. I don’t think anyone in the audience would have questioned if Striker had the proper permission to make a hybrid mutant. He could have just done it and we would have accepted it. Instead, they have him murder an official. How is that helpful? Now I’m just littered with questions of how nobody caught him right away. And now that he got caught at the end of the movie, how did he swindle his way out to be the man we see in ‘X-2’. The decisions movie teams make sometimes. Oi vey.

Dead Pool—Wow, way to just throw the source material out of the window here. For those who saw the movie, you know that Deadpool’s character was ravaged without mercy. Not only is he M.I.A. after the first 15 minutes, when he does come back it is in the form of this hybrid mutant that has the powers of everyone seen in the movie. Personally, I loved the hybrid mutant but the script writers could have just made it some random creation as opposed to destroying a very notable character. I wonder how they will rectify this in the spin off. I guess it will probably take place before the “Wolverine” film.
Speaking of the hybrid mutant, what a crazy final fight scene. I was pretty impressed with the coolness of ‘Deadpool’, but very disappointed in his inefficiency. He had every power you could hope for and yet he still couldn’t kill Wolverine. If you were at a casino and had to bet on either a man who had claws and the ability to heal or a man who had both of those ability and then ten more, who would you bet on? The answer is obvious, but unfortunately we would all have lost big. Deadpool spends 5 minutes teleporting back and forth between serving both Victor and Wolverine with what seems to be b#tch slaps. Apparently only Woverine is smart enough to know that cutting off your enemies head is the fastest way of disposing of your foe. Guess Stryker dropped the ball on that one.

Gambit---Nooooo. Why did this happen? (Did anyone else see the South Park episode in which the boys are upset because they had to watch “Indiana Jones 4”? That’s how I feel about Gambit in this movie.) Not only was he casted poorly, he clearly was added to the movie as an after thought. And in his addition, the script writers didn’t even decide to consult the source material. Since when does Gambit fight like a sissy, flipping around like a ballerina and completely incaple of holding his own in hand to hand combat? Aside from this tragedy, do you remember when Gambit jumped down from that roof top and caused a mini-earthquake? When did Gambit gain the ability to jump from 100ft and survive the fall? He doesn’t have the healing ability, though it would appear that everyone in this movie was particularly impervious to physical punishment. Along that note, how did Gambit even get onto the roof top? One moment he was knocked out cold by Hugh Jackman, next thing you know he’s jumping off of some roof. What?! I scratched my head inquisitively so many times during this movie that I think I formed a bald spot. And even worse, Gambit did his ariel attack just when wolverine was going to kill Victor. I thought Gambit wanted Victor dead too, why would he interrupt their fight? This makes Gambit not only a sissy fighter, but a completely inept thinker as well. Useless.

But then again, I’m just a dude, what do I know.

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