Lots of claws, many flaws

Just to be clear, I don’t expect summer blockbusters to be “art”. As long as they entertain me, and do so with efficient purpose, I’ll go along for the ride.

That said, the truth about X-Men Origins: Wolverine is that it’s awful. The movie takes the worst part of the comic book movie form and amplifies it, making you feel stupider for having wasted your time. It’s all explosions and inane dialogue, with a thinly constructed plot that mainly acts as a vehicle for connecting fight scenes.

This might be OK if the fights weren’t just the same people battling each other over and over again—but they’re not. And that’s exactly the problem with Wolverine. This is repetition as movie destroyer.

The list of sins is long and damning. By my count, Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, flies away from an explosion at least six times during the film. At least once on a motorcycle. He also tends to scream at the sky when he’s upset. “My girlfriend died. ROOOAAAAR.” “My brother betrayed me. ROOOAAAAR.” “I got tricked again. ROOOAAAAR.” “I got a paper cut. ROOOAAAAR.”

Do you get it? He’s, like, an animal. Oh you didn’t get it? Here’s some handy dialogue that spells it out: “Logan, you’re not an animal.” Derrrrrr.

The movie opens with young Wolverine, or Logan, as he’s known then, killing the man who just shot his father with his newly found claws. Before the man dies, he says, “I’m your real father.” This is upsetting, briefly, then Logan and his brother run away. Blessed with the ability to never die, the brothers age up until the point where they look like Jackman and Liev Schreiber, respectively. Then they stop. Then a montage shows them fighting in every war up until Vietnam. Whew. We’re about 10-minutes in now, but none of this really matters.

Eventually, after being recruited for an elite mutant action force by William Stryker, a general or colonel or something in the Army, Logan splits because he doesn’t want to kill innocent people. Good for him.

A few years pass. It’s the ’70s? Maybe? No way to tell. Stryker gets all up in Logan’s grill. Bad things happen. He changes his name to Wolverine and goes on a flight of revenge against his brother, Sabretooth, because he killed his girlfriend. Then there’s a bunch of fights, and Wolverine gets tricked, again and again, into to doing things he doesn’t want to. Somewhere in the mix he gets his adamantium skeleton.

It’s unfortunate that Wolverine was made into such an uninteresting character, because Jackman is the perfect fit. X-Men Origins: Wolverine makes his character seem simple and stupid, an easily manipulated wrecking ball. There’s no nuance or thought here—the characteristics that set great comic book movies like The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2 apart. All we get is unrepentant, gorilla-like drudgery.

My only question after watching this movie: If you are an immortal being, why would you bother fighting with another immortal being, as Sabretooth and Wolverine often do? Wouldn’t a normal, semi-intelligent character struggle with this immorality in some way? Oh wait, that’s right. Exploring that question might make for an interesting movie.

As to the particulars of the filmmaking, besides the heavy-handed plotting and characterization, the movie looks fine. A lot of money went into this, and it shows. Well, except for Wolvie’s claws. Their gleam is a little too CGI. The many explosions do look nice.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is basically the lowest form of summer blockbuster entertainment. It is stupid, gaudy and simplistic in the extreme. At the end of the movie, the titular character is struck with a bullet that gives him amnesia.

The audience doesn’t need this. Bullet or no, we’ll forget every moment of this crappy movie.