Wolverine Review

X-Appeal

In the never ending cascade of comic-book-based fodder comes something with a bit more Australian colour, Hugh Jackman's self-produced 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'. Nobody would have guessed way back when the first X-men movie hit the screen but not only has Hugh Jackman's rendering of Wolverine eaten up the X-men films, this spin off likely signals that he's eaten up a good portion of Marvel's cache, even considering the outstanding franchises.

In that sense it's possibly an indicator for future comic book films. So far the box office receipts are strong, which is a good sign for Marvel. If the market gets saturated with superhero movies, it won't be long before the era will draw to a close as the market retreat to the hardcore comic book afficianados only. With that in mind, it's actually quite a brisk, entertaining film.

On a wider perspective, I do continue to wonder if it is healthy for the long term business of films that they adapt so many of these pieces of fiction for built-in audiences.

What's Good About It

Wolverine's Origin tackles the more prosaic aspect of how a superhero comes to be through a quick title-sequence which segues into a montage of wars Wolverine and his brother Sabertooth fight in through history. In that sense it's not really the essential origin (if such a thing can be described) but just another earlier episode that tells us how Wolverine came into the first X-men movie with his memory loss. Skipping the tedium of how any superhero comes to be the superhero is always a good move.

Hugh Jackman is pretty smooth playing Wolverine, now that he's into the fourth movie of playing this guy. If anything we step into this film too seamlessly as we are introduced to a whole rogue's gallery of Marvel universe figures - from Deadpool, Sabertooth Agent Zero, and Major Stryker through to Gambit. It's pretty cool seeing these characters but there's an aspect to this inter-textuality that demands a proper closure, which of course is never going to come within the film. Still, it's pretty interesting to see Gambit and Deadpool.

The action sequences are pretty big and the explosions are heady. It's nice seeing the bits and pieces of Australia and New Zealand peeking through the scenery. The directing is very assured and possibly too good for what is essentially a computer-generated comic book that moves. It's like a waste of talent.

All the same, the film is a nice addition to the X-men franchise of movies that leaves you entertained the whole way through. It's certainly a lot more articulate and more coherent in its problematic than the Hulk movies, and while this film never reaches the richness of sentiment that the Spiderman movies reach effortlessly, it's a very compassionate film about brothers.

What's Bad About It

I take exception with the more technical aspects of this film more than the other comic book movies. Some of the compositing is crap. The Computer graphics weren't all shit-hot as the other X-men movies were. It's some of the shoddiest CGI stuff I've seen in a while. The audio is a little strident and the picture is a little blurry in parts - but that may have been the idiot teenager projectionist butchering the film where I saw it.

Also, the Wolverine  persona as portrayed by Jackman is pretty cool, but I sort of wonder if they're over-investing in one character when the whole X-men Universe needs to move on from the 3rd film, rather than delve into the past to explain this one character. At the end of the day, Wolverine is a gritty angry dude who can't really remember why. So be it, I thought. Why got to this lengths instead of making episode 4?

I kept wondering if there might have been a better story to have attempted, given the talent and budget they've assembled. It's one thing to think this after the film, but I was wondering this half way through the film which is never a good sign.

What's Interesting About It

The world is full of tedious revenge stories. It's as if a good 30% of fiction seems to be motivated by revenge. One of Steven Seagal's best films is 'Hard to Kill', which is about vengeance. The most important play in English, 'Hamlet' is about revenge. We like revenge stories - but if there's one thing you can say about them then, is that that they are *done*.

So to see yet another film building to this stuff made my heart sink. Except at the the climactic encounter between Wolverine and Major Stryker, you come to realise the Revenge thing was a set up. It's a weird moment when Wolverine realises that no, she's not dead at all; they made him think she was dead in order to motivate him to do... what exactly? I don't know, but the action barrels along into the next sequence so quickly it doesn't matter. If you're Wolverine, there's always the next mutant to fight. But it's this weird moment that turns the revenge motif on its head, that is a nice touch. It's almost worth the price of admission when it gets to that moment where Wolverine has to ponder what exactly he's going to do.

The final battle becomes further confused as the sequence of events unravels around the broken revenge motif. Wolvering confronts Sabertooth, but if his girlfriend mutant is not dead, then his motivation for killing him is gone - which segues into the sequence where he frees the captured mutant kids and then into the confrontation with Weapon XI - the re-engineered Deadpool, where he is joined by his brother Sabertooth in fighting this hyper-mutant.

At the end of the film, Wolverine witnesses the death of his lover, but he has no memory of who she is. So going into the future, he is angry about the loss of his memory but he's actually not angry about how his lover got killed in the fight to free the mutants.