The Angry Rant

When the decision was made back in 1999 to cast Hugh Jackman in 2000’s X-Men, fans of the comic were justifiably skeptical. After all, Jackman was a relatively unknown Australian actor who was probably best known for being the ruggedly handsome man that your wife was eying up when you were on vacation in Sydney.

Further compounding the fears of the fans was the fact that Jackman was cast as Wolverine, one of the more popular characters in the X-Men universe. If he didn’t deliver the hardened, tough-as-nails edge that the character needed, who knows what happens to the franchise. Fortunately for everyone involved, Jackman nailed the character and was the breakout star in X-Men, thus launching his Hollywood career, two X-Men sequels, and a slew of superhero movies.

It was only a matter of time before Wolverine was given his own movie, but on this go-round, the filmmakers failed terribly, and delivered a murky, muddled mess that’s teeming with every cliche in the book, coupled with bad writing and direction, and cheesy special effects that do little more than detract from the action.

There are so many things that’s wrong with this movie that I’d feel bad if I left any of it out. The only good things about Wolverine were the performances from the two leads, Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber. At times, Schrieber’s Victor Creed has more precense that Jackman’s Wolverine.

Whenever Jackman or Schrieber aren’t on the screen, the film suffers. The rest of the cast of characters are cliched, poorly written, and not particularly well acted. But even when they are on the screen, it doesn’t get much better. The writing was messy, the plot was silly, and the special effects were laughably bad.

Perhaps laughably bad is a poor way to describe it.

Embarrassingly bad is a better way to put it. Monumentally bad. Apocolyptically bad.

I can count on two hands the number of times that the special effects took away from the scene. Climactic battles looked more like they were filmed for a made for television movie, instead of a big budget blockbuster. But the most egregious use of special effects concerned Wolverine and his trademark claws. At times, they looked drawn on and completely unrealistic, as if though the special effects guys ran out of time, money, or both.

When the special effects weren’t detracting from the experience, the acting and writing were. I knew I was in trouble within the first 10 minutes when a “bonding” scene took place with the main characters that had all the subtlety of a jackhammer. They might as well have screamed out “PAY ATTENTION! THIS IS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! DO YOU NOTICE HOW SOME OF THEM DON’T GET ALONG WITH EACH OTHER! THIS IS IMPORTANT!”

Yeah. Something like that.

This movie could have been good. It could have been really good. Jackman and Schrieber were both solid, but their performances were wasted with a bad story and worse special effects.

In the wake of Iron Man and The Dark Knight, which gave the superhero genre a much needed kick in the brain, perhaps we’ve become spoiled. Those movies brought us solid writing, good acting and characters that we actually cared about.

Look, I’m not asking for The Shawshank Redemption. I’m not even asking for Garden State. I’m just asking that you make a movie that can entertain, but not at the expense of the rest of the movie. The story was borderline insulting, the special effects look like they were made in a high school computer lab from 1998, and an explosion every 12 minutes doesn’t mean the movie is good. It only serves to keep the stupid people entertained.

This movie was not good. In fact, one could say it was horrible. It had a golden opportunity to actually build on the Wolverine character, but it only succeeded in making us care less about what happens next.

Tags:   Movie Review · X-Men Origins: Wolverine3 Comments