Cookies, and Conundrums

Episode 1 - The Wolf, The Fox and the Runaway Train

Xmen and 20th Century Fox have developed a pimp and hooker relationship. At first with Xmen & X2 Fox gave us what we want, the Xmen fighting the good fight for mutant kind. Unfortuntely by the time X3 came a calling Fox lost the ability to do a good Xmen movie. To this day when it comes to the Xmen franchise I think of Xmen and X2 but block X3 from my mind. When I heard they wanted to do another Xmen movie, but instead star Wolverine, I was worried wonder will history repeat it self. The answer is Yes!

What follows is a critique of this film of what I like to call the Good, Bad and WTF!


*****WARNING, SPOILER ZONE COMING UP*****

Good

Sabertooth
Leiv Schreiber did his homework, he played a better Sabertooth then Tyler Mane did in the first one. Leiv protray the character as a very animimistic and menancing mutant who just likes to murder. The relationship with Wolverine is on par. The only difference is they're brothers, but at the same time it adds more to the relationship. They truly have a love/hate relationship. Sabertooth went to great links to get out of his brother's shadow by teaming up with Stryker so he can have admantium too. Even though he hates Wolverine for deserting him, Sabertooth doesn't want anyone killing Logan unless it is himself. I also have to give credit to the designers and CGI invole when Sabertooth was charging towards someone. Those scene when he would get on all fours and start running towards his prey it was like watching a lion charging towards a zebra on TLC. Physically he was apposing, those scenes him just standing there and giving that sadastic grin with his fangs poping out was enought to give me chills. I hope if they decide to do an Iron Fist movie they will use him as the main villian.

William Stryker
I knew Stryker would be one of the main villians for Origins since this is staying in Fox's X-Universe. Danny Huston carried the torch that Brian Cox previous held as the evil military scientist. In Origins Stryker became a chess master, because he use everyone ranging from the military, the mutants he capture and even his own Team X as pawn in his end game. He manipulated Wolverine into the adamantium bonding process in order to have Wolverine as his own Weapon X. However that backfired but it didn't matter because he use Wolverine blood to complete his master project Weapon XI.

Bad

Gambit
How many years have we waited for Gambit to be presented on the big screen. When the final Xmen movie ended we all lost hope to ever see the Cajun in a movie. However here comes Wolverine Origins shining into our hopes that we will finally see a live adapation of Gambit. Wow was this ever disappointing. Did the writers read or at least watch the Xmen animated series when it came to casting the character. Gambit is from Louisiana therefore has a very thick, Creole accent. Taylor Kitsch look the part but he was speaking like he is from New York not New Orleans. The funny thing is when Wolverine meets him they are in New Orleans. Would have killed the director to stay somewhat faithful to the comic portral of the character. I am not mad that he wasn't in the movie that long, I expected the scene from the trailer would basically be his scene in the movie.

WTF

Deadpool
Why have Ryan Reynolds in the movie and not use him in more scenes. Perfect casting it was to have Ryan Reynolds play the "Merc with a mouth" , he got the look and the feel of the character. His whole 5 minutes in the movie were great, at that point I thought if they were going to do Deadpool movie Ryan Reynolds is the man for the job. However either Fox got cheap or the director lost his mind because after his 5 minutes in the spotlight we don't see Reynolds anymore, but we do get Deadpool. Sorry correct not Deadpool Weapon XI, which is a mutant that has powers from various mutants, but unfortuntaly he can't talk because his mouth is sewed shut. Why would you do that to a character who is known for mostly talking. I wouldn't have cared if they got some no name actor in role but it's freakin Ryan Reynolds, this was waste of his time and ours. Granted Deadpool does get his healing factor from Wolverine and a lot of his other abilities from the Weapon X program. But making this walking mutant power battery was just poor story telling. There was no need for this character in a Wolverine Origins story. If this was an Xmen movie fine that I could understand but this waste. I hear there is talk of a Deadpool spin off, and that is laughable. The only way you can do a Deadpool spin off is state from the start that he was never in Origins and this is a completely different universe. Really I hope this doesn't come out till Marvel can get the rights back and do the character properly.

Wolverine
I know you are wondering why didn't I put Hugh Jackman performance in the Good section. To answer that question I didn't have a problem with Jackman performance as Wolverine the character, because as usual his performance was stellar. What I had a problem with was the lack of rage he portray. Not once did we get to see him go on a animimistic murderous triade. The only rage we saw was when he looked up at into the sky and screamed. In the opening sceen Logan was holding Sabertooth back from going over the line. I am thinking should he be joining Sabertooth when it came to the killing. On a side issue they didn't explain why he was giving the name Logan. In the Origin story it was given to him by a female companion he had at the time. In the movie they didn't even try to come up with story for the name.
Wolverine is very much like Superman in this one regard that they hold themselves to a certain code of honor. Superman has a no killing policy and Wolverine kills only when he has too. If each character breaks that rule they will lose their humanity. That's the thing they didn't touch on in the movie. Logan has had so much mental trama it has cause him to withdraw from the world and become more feral. Alot of the early years in Logan life he was more animal then man it wasn't till he got to Japan he got the displine to balance his inner nature. They didn't want to do that in the movie, Fox wanted to protray Wolverine as a clean cut super hero who has a few bad breaks in life. Part reason we didn't get this Wolverine was because of the PG rating. Now Fox has to make their money back through the kids with the toys. Parents won't take their kids to an R rated super hero movie. The funny thing is the Wolverine Origins game is apparently more blooder then the movie was. That's a head scarcher. The 3 main topics that must be cover in a Wolverine Origins movie is his time in Canada, Weapon X and Japan. Guess what 2 of 3 doesn't make a good Wolverine movie.

On a closing note I hope the propose Magneto prequel does not get made because it will be garbage. Marvel needs to get the rights back and redo the whole X-universe. Until Marvel gets the rights back Fox will bury this fanchise to the ground.

Till next time.