Wolfish

Eventually, I kind of realised I had to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

I also realised that I didn't have to enjoy it... but seeing it was inevitable. I read some of the Marvel Comics version (while it was free as part of Marvel's Webcomic thing that eventually became pay-per-view), which read like the bastard offspring of The Secret Garden and Call of the Wild, so I wasn't really expecting much. I also kind of predicted from Ryan Reynolds' appearance in the posters that he was going to end up being Deadpool, despite knowing next to nothing about the character.

So, the movie...

Taken in its own right, it's a fairly successful actioner. Lots of explosions, gunfire, rippling muscles (seriously, Hugh Jackman must have really bulked up for this one - he looked much bigger all round that he did in any of the X-Men movies!), and buckets of mansweat. None of it stands up to scrutiny, but how many movies do?

While I rather object to the casting of Liev Schrieber as Victor Creed/Sabretooth, rather than bringing back Tyler Mane, I have to admit, he did a reasonable job... He just didn't seem big or scary enough. The confused loyalties and double-crossings for reasons that may or may not have been made clear did not serve to add depth to the story, and the eventual wiping of Wolverine's memory seemed too much like an afterthought, even though one could see it coming even before one of the scientists announced that Adamantium bullets were the only thing that could bring Wolverine down (while any bullets seemed to do a decent job in the X-Men movies). The inclusion of pre-X-Men Scott Summers and a certain Remi LeBeau seemed gratuitous... both could easily have been written out, and seemed to be there only to tie things in to X-Men.

As far as the story goes, the best thing I can say for it is that it referred to the comic book original only very briefly, with sickly young boy running off with his brother in the first few minutes, but none of the Secret Garden stuff, and no sign of the little girl brought in to be his playmate.

Much of Wolverine's history (and Sabretooth's, for that matter) was dealt with in the intro sequence, and suggested that the man is somewhere in the region of 140 years old...

Fun, on the whole, but very disappointing and just a little bit silly.

Before the movie, I did a bit of shopping - more Lemsips to help me kick this bloody cold, and a bunch of DVDs, including Silent Hill (fuelling my current fixation with the series?). I watched that when I got back to the flat, and have to say it's still a pretty good horror movie in and of itself, and a reasonable attempt to add to the mythology of Silent Hill... but the ending is still utterly disappointing and ill-fits the rest of the series.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to pop uptown... Largely to visit Forbidden Planet and/or Orbital Manga... but there may be side trips, and lunch out is part of the plan.

Blogged with the Flock Browser