Dr. Fu's Insidious Review of X-Men: Wolverine

Okay, maybe I should start this off with a little disclaimer. I’m kind of a hardass. Not a huge hardass -- I didn’t hate Indie 4 as much as some on this site and found Transformers pleasantly entertaining. I am a comic book nerd (though more DC than Marvel) so . . . well . . . maybe I should just start the review.

Directed by blah blah actors blah blah. Seriously, if you want to know google it, cuz it's two in the morning over here and I'm awfully tired/lazy. Anyways, the plot is . . . well, Wolverine’s origins. It all starts out with an effing ridonkulous scene from 1845, and then some cool scenes from wars and stuff while the opening credits are going, and then they’re on a plane and Ryan Reynolds cracks some jokes for 30 seconds (the funniest 30 seconds of the movie, by the way) and then there’s some fighting and a Asian guy doing Matrix shooting and stuff . . . and then . . .

*Sigh*

Alright. This movie is very much like a comic book. Not a good comic book. You know the crappy comics they put out when a writer is sort of at a loss of what to write? This is that. This is the, “Oh noes, how will so and so possibly --?” melodramatic, soap opera-y, halfhearted anti-climactic crap. It would be fine as 6 poorly written comics. It’s not fine in a movie, where you don’t have 4 weeks to sit on your hands, where the excitement of that glossy paper in your fingers briefly blots out that fact that this issue doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense and is sort of the last one regurgitated, and they’re fighting again? Isn't this scene sort of recycled? And whatever happened to--?

The writing is garbage. The dialogue is cheesy as hell. As I explained to a friend on the ride home, “It’s sort of like they filmed a bunch of scenes they thought would look cool. And then they just gave them to an old demented lady with ADHD to string together, and said string holding it all together was six or seven words of canned, oft-repeated dialogue.”

. . . yeah, my friend gave me a funny look too. Anyways . . .

I’m not saying that the plot doesn’t make sense at all. It does (though, in retrospect, you’ll find plot holes big enough to pull down a helicopter). It’s just so back and forth it’ll give you whiplash, and the sixteenth or so time Sabertooth and Wolverine fight each other, you sort of wish one of them would kill the other just to mix it up a bit. (And let me say something just real quick. This might just be me being picky, but the whole ‘Wolverine can’t die’ thing pretty much saps all of the intensity and suspense out of the entire movie. If ol’ Wolvie had someone worth protecting, that would have been a completely different story, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.)

All the characters except for Wolverine and Sabertooth are flat as stick figures and about as well fleshed out, and are thrown away just as quickly. Anyone out there hoping for some serious get-to-know time with Emma Frost or Deadpool or Gambit? Well I’ve got some bad news -- and it’s not just that apparently all of them have rockets stuffed up their asses or whatever causes those super human Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon jumps. And as for Wolverine and Sabertooth, I’m counting “Stands around and roars repeatedly” as fleshing-out.

Some of the CGI is terrible. Seriously, a Hugh Jackman buck-ass naked scene actually made me cringe. The guys next to me were laughing through half the thing -- not in the good way. The entire audience was antsy at about the middle point. I just sort of wanted to kill myself. I didn’t care for any of the characters at all. They were so briefly shown and undeveloped that the romance and killing and revenge (ergo, the plot) was not only boring, it was a little bit painful to watch. And without any connection to any of the characters, said plot was ridiculously easy to predict. The movie didn’t bring you along for a fun adventure as much as it just strung you along through the muck of a trying-to-be-Batman drama put together without all that pesky, you know, effort. Also, one lesson film makers should have learned a long time ago was that explosions don’t make up for all else lacking.

Look, maybe I'm just not the audience for this (which would be a sad and sorry thing, since I should be the prime audience for this . . .) Anyways, if you’re looking for a no-brain, explosion-filled fight movie, and you don't care for swiss-cheese plot or anything -- well, then, I would probably hate you in real life. No, but seriously, this is the movie for you -- your average summer blockbuster that will likely be forgotten but for the lonely sobs of comic nerds until the next mangle-job comes out. But if you’re a comic fan of any caliber and your hearts shed a tiny crystalline tear when you walked out of X3 (or Daredevil, or Elecktra, or Catwoman), then, for the love of God, get in the basement and don’t come out until I give the all-clear. I’m not saying this is Jackman or any of the actor’s faults -- they literally had nothing to work with, and did what they could. Some, like Ryan Reynolds and Dominic Monaghan as Bolt, shine in their too-brief roles.

The director, editor, and writers should all be drawn and quartered, however.

Normally, I would give this movie something like a very, very, VERY low matinee or rental for . . . explosiveness? Uhm, unintended hilariousness? And maybe this is just because I’m fresh from the theatre and haven’t let the, “It wasn’t that bad,” sink in . . . But you know what . . . Fuck it. This could have been a great movie. I’m not a huge fan of X-Men, but I really wanted (and hoped for, oh how naive) another great X-Men movie.

And what I got was Fox’s giant middle finger to my agonized, “What the FUCK?!”

So, that being said, it would be wrong of me to support a franchise in any way that insists on dragging its ballsack across the fans’ faces.

Some ol’ bullshit.

*SPOILER*

Seriously, was that Patrick Stewart? Because if it was, I think there's reason to fear that roach monster from Men in Black walks among us.