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Dancing_P [ 3.0 ]
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You know it's gotten bad when someone who knows very little about X-Men is consumed with nerdrage. I've seen the first three films and read a couple of comics when I was a kid and I'm completely fine with that; I don't like X-Men that much. This, however; this is a travesty. This is a waste of a perfectly good budget and shooting schedule. This is time and money that could've been better spent on anything. There is absolutely no motivation behind this film other than instant monetary gain - it is a shallow and empty movie even by superhero blockbuster standards. Anyone with a basic understanding of the X-Men canon could probably crap out a better script. In fact, any movie with Hugh Jackman sporting pointy sideburns could probably be swapped for this one and be of equal quality, even if all he does is mow the lawn.
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chapter11 [ 5.0 ]
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I was searching for "X-Men: First Class" when I discovered that I hadn't actually reviewed "Wolverine", which is unfortunate, since I distinctly remember being marginally entertained, albeit unimpressed, and it really is a quite forgettable film. Jackman is as terrific as ever as Logan - pissy, sardonic, impressively physical - but plot-wise, this one just doesn't have the goods. The first two X-Men films - I even enjoyed the third, but it's just barely part of the same canon - fit together like epic mythology, serving in a larger allegorical context, pieces of a greater whole, but "Wolverine" can barely be bothered to make an effort, tumbling through its convoluted structure with glee, pausing for scant moments at a time on potentially interesting plot points and ancillary characters (hell, Will.I.Am wasn't even _that_ bad -- okay, _pretty_ bad, but he honest, he wasn't as bad as you'd assume Will.I.Am would be) only to move on to the next humdrum setpiece. I don't know, comic-book-flick mediocrity is pretty tedious; it's a medium that lends itself so well to either unqualified success ("The Dark Knight", "Spider-Man 2") or hilarious misstep ("Batman & Robin", "Fantastic Four") that when we get movies like this one and "Thor" and "Green Lantern", where they can't even be bothered to fail with flair, the result is considerably less fun to watch than either of the aforementioned types. Blurgh.
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suminjoo [ 6.5 ]
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For some unclear reason, I had the impression that this movie was terrible, which turned out to completely false! It was quite entertaining and the storyline was pretty good, i.e., connecting well to the X-men series. It was a little sad that Ryan Reynolds had limited + unpleasant scenes but oh well...
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DokBrowne [ 6.5 ]
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I assumed from the get-go (2002, is that when Hollywood first buzzed about making this? Or even earlier?) that this movie would be crap, and then it was, but surprise! It's fun crap.
Unequivocably, this is one bad movie. There are more gaping plot holes than in an entire summer's worth of bonehead action bonanzas. The decayed dialogue is so perfunctory and shopworn it's astonishing to still be hearing some of these cliches in 2009, spoken with straight faces. The ending is kinda admirable merciless in the way it sets up Wolverine for the future, until he wakes up right away afterwards; plus it leaves us with some blue balls, considering he totally fails to get revenge on any of the at least three different characters who unforgivably fucked him over, and who he promised to kill but doesn't ('cuz 2 of them show up in later movies, so they gotta be spared, and one is redeemed). The Marvel comic origin details confused the hell out of me at times - this may be obvious to others but: why doesn't Wolverine age? Will he live forever? Why did he age from the child actor who played him in the opening scene to 35-year-old-looking Hugh Jackman about 10 years later and then just stop right there from the Civil War to the late 1970s? Furthermore, who are these other superheroes he teams up with in the beginning? Did Dominic Monaghan exist in the comics, because his mutant character is pretty badly neglected in the movie. Why is Cyclops so hostile towards Wolverine in the 2000 "X-Men" film if Wolverine singlehandedly saved him from certain death as a teen? What takes Professor X so long to recruit Wolverine (20 years) if he already knew about him from the start? Everyone else at the Mutant Academy Place arrives pretty young.
Also: the amount of overhead upward-panning shots of a character screaming into the heavens in any movie not intended as comedy should be zero, not four. Really, this is a so-bad-it's-good entry. Watch it with friends and go wild. It would've been a classic "MST3K" episode.
However, it's not total garbage. Despite the bad filmmaking, the cinematography can be attractive (capturing the Canadian frontier, old-school New Orleans, Three Mile Island, etc.), the origin story business has kernels of interest (maybe I just enjoy thinking about epic-story continuity between different films and mediums, but I liked trying to place the events here in the context of the 2000 film and its first sequel), there are a couple lively new characters that deserved more screen time (Ryan Reynolds as "Blade 3" Ryan Reynolds as Wade as Deadpool, and Taylor Kitch as Gambit) and may someday receive their own marginal spinoffs, there's plenty of action spectacle (the finale atop a giant cooling tower is pointless but pretty cool) and story momentum to mask the odor of its prequel/origin story stigma (the comatose "Elektra" coming first to mind), the actors are at least qualified even if the material is terrible (Liev Schreiber makes an impression as a snarling animalistic villain, Danny Huston is a decent substitute for Brian Cox, and Hugh Jackman knows how to make the manliest most of his hero without sacrificing the heart), and the whole thing exudes ample guilty pleasure fumes. I had a good time.
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jeff_v [ 5.0 ]
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Purports to answer the question, "What makes Wolverine so pissy?" I see no reason for this film to exist, and the filmmakers don't seem to have one either, other than to line their pocketbooks. At least with Bryan Singer's X-Men movies you felt a guiding intelligence and some emotional stake. This movie mostly just takes up space.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.1 |
| No. Ratings | : 6 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
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