Wolverine Gets Declawed

Wolverine Gets Declawed

If there was one problem with X-Men 3 that makes it [still] very difficult to watch, it was the abundance of excess characters and plots overlapping at such a pace that they made each other irrelevant. Fortunately, that's not a problem with X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

I came into Wolverine with very low expectations. After X-Men 3, I just hoped for a coherent, linear storyline that would present the X-Men characters well. Wolverine does that for the most part, as characters such as Gambit and the Blob are done fairly well and the plot at least makes some sense. However, the classic character of Deadpool is destroyed, as criticism at iFanboy shows:

BEWARE DEADPOOL FANS:

Don't under any circumstances watch this movie. You might think it has Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, that dude is perfect. He has a 30 second speaking role that's it.

Then the people involve with the film continue on to ass rape him.

If you're watching this for Deadpool, don't. Just don't do it. You'll thank me after the interwebs explode.

This is after Deadpool was portrayed fairly well in the straight-to-DVD animated feature Hulk VS. This once again illustrates my theory that comic book characters can be much more accurately portrayed in animation as opposed to the much more expensive but somehow more marketable live action format. The Curse of the Black Freighter seemed more genuine than Watchmen, the film it was tied to, and the recent Wonder Woman animated movie portrayed that character better than any non-comics incarnation I'd seen before. It'd be interesting if Marvel decided to market one of their animated films to theater-going audiences. I think audiences would be more open to the idea than film executives may think.

Other than the format, there's some major problems with Wolverine. One is continuity. Sabretooth is made to look absolutely nothing like the character did in X-Men back in 2000. Wolverine is also being called "James" when he's a child at the beginning of this movie, but suddenly is being called "Logan" by the time he's grown up. There's no explanation for this, even though there was in the stellar graphic novel Wolverine: Origin.

That's nitpicking, however. For a good action movie, Wolverine does a pretty good job. It's entertaining, going from the awesome (the helicopter fight scenes are great) to the funny (watch the scene in which Logan's freshly adamantium-laced claws destroy a bathroom sink). If you want a fun comic book movie, this surely delivers, but a classic it is not.