May 01 2009
will.i.am Is Not a Good Actor
Okay, so it wasn’t amazing. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers everything it promised to, but I can’t help but feel like there should have been something more.
And I’m not even complaining about the canon. Keep in mind, I’m not the kind of fanboy who would complain about the Juggernaut being depicted as a mutant who’s unrelated to Professor X or Pyro being a dweeby emo kid. The filmmakers, however, seem so dead set to keep everything in the movie canon in order that X-Men Origins: Wolverine loses out on a lot of great plot points.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is how little it really seems to involve Wolverine and Sabretooth. Although we do get to see them grow up together over a span of hundreds of years, this essential part of the story is only shown in the first five minutes. To get a deeper understanding of these characters’ dynamic relationship, one would already have to be. . . well, a fanboy. I mean, I love Gambit and Deadpool as much as the next guy , but do you know who I really love? Wolverine. And I paid nine bucks to see him do what he does best.
But I probably shouldn’t have started a review with all the bad stuff first. The effects are amazing, Hugh Jackman does a fantastic job whenever he’s not looking at the sky screaming, “Nooo!”, and Taylor Kitsch did manage to get me a boner with his portrayal of the ragin’ Cajun, Gambit. will.i.am, not so much.
I really need to applaud the idea of the film as well. 20th Century Fox had a lot of balls to make a movie based solely on one character (even though it didn’t work out like that) and I sincerely hope that X-Men Origins: Wolverine will be the first of a series of movies that goes deeper into the origins of not just the X-Men, but every superhero we fantasize about at work. Because unlike movies, comic books don’t have true endings, just some clearing smoke and an immortal antagonist, making us beg for the next jaw-dropping issue by whispering, “Shhhh.”
Three and a half adamantium claws out of five.
It can be summed up quite easily, good idea, (mostly) good acting, bad writing. I’m glad you weren’t the last person on earth to see it. And that you stayed past the credits.