X-Men Origins: Wolverine

As a fan of comic-inspired cinema, I went into director Gavin Hood’s new film X-Men Origins: Wolverine hoping for an Iron Man level of excellence and a counterpart to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.  Both 2008 blockbusters worked spectacularly: Robert Downey Jr. brought a rakish eccentricity to the character of Tony Stark, and Christian Bale and Heath Ledger transformed Bruce Wayne and the Joker into darker, more adult figures. While Hugh Jackman might look the part of the somewhat feral, metal-boned eponymous character, Downey Jr. and Bale he ain’t, folks.

This is not to say that Wolverine isn’t a fun ride.  It is.  There are battling, exploding, and mutant powers aplenty.  Hood and the producers stay adequately faithful to the Wolverine canon.   And best of all, the film clocks in at 107 minutes, which seems short in this day and age. Unfortunately, they have chosen the much safer Ironman-esque model (i.e., a fast-paced amusement ride) instead of trying to emulate the adult existentialism of The Dark Knight, to which the character of Wolverine would seem to lend itself.  While this is an understandable approach for a director whose major feature film experience up to this point has been the wildly dissimilar Tsotsi and Rendition, he doesn’t execute the thrill-ride style nearly as well as Jon Favreau did, and we’re left wondering what might have been.

Opening in 1845, we follow the man called Logan (Jackman) and his half-brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) as they fight their way through the great wars of the last 150 years.  It quickly becomes apparent that the two men, who have evidently lived as 30-something’s since the Civil War, are not normal humans.  After using their super healing powers to survive a firing squad during the Vietnam War, they are recruited by Commander William Stryker (Danny Huston) for a black-ops unit of the U.S. government.

At this point in the story it seems as though the brothers have finally found their niche. Surrounded by other mutant warriors (whom fans will recognize as various members of the Marvel Universe, featuring Ryan Reynolds in an outstanding portrayal of Deadpool), they engage in espionage and covert operations, overcoming all obstacles with incredible and exciting ease. But as we saw in the opening credit sequence, Logan is not a cold-blooded killer, while his brother is. Logan denounces the unit and goes into hiding in the Canadian Rockies, working as a lumberjack and engaging in character development with the beautiful Kyla Silverfox (Lynn Collins), whom he believes to be a normal human being.

Of course she isn’t, and of course a man of his abilities can’t stay hidden forever.  Logan’s own brother helps lure him back into the fold, where Stryker is able to capture him and nearly turn him into a super weapon, designed to hunt down and exterminate other mutants.  In the process, Logan is imbued with an indestructible metal skeleton, becomes Wolverine, and escapes from Stryker’s clutches.  Thinking (falsely) that Victor and Stryker are responsible for Kyla’s death, he vows revenge. However, Wolverine discovers not only that Kyla is alive, but also that Stryker has engineered a Frankenstein’s monster of a mutant.  This creature is designed to kill Wolverine, and is nearly successful. Only Victor’s unexpected assistance is enough to save our hero, although   not enough to redeem the brothers' relationship.  Just before Wolverine can be reunited with Kyla, Stryker erases his memory (but does not end his life) with a couple of well-aimed bullets to the brain, and the film closes with the requisite “get ready for the sequel” ending.

Unfortunately, instead of a dark and conflicted antihero, Jackman’s Wolverine is an uncomplicated softy who just wants to be left alone, and who spends much of the first two acts running around without a shirt on, showing off his irrefutably impressive physique.  The filmmakers have opted for eye candy, which is workable in theory but which they execute poorly. Wolverine’s signature metal claws look plastic and weightless in close-up, and when Patrick Stewart makes an appearance as a young, nondisabled Professor Charles Xavier at the end of the film, his “youthified” face is cartoonish.  Numerous background effects look comically bad, and Hood’s reliance on overhead shots in which the actor bellows at an ascending camera becomes tedious and clichéd almost immediately.  While it makes for a fairly entertaining popcorn movie, one can’t escape the feeling that X-Men Origins: Wolverine could have been so much more.

                                                 Orson Robbins-Pianka