There’s a entirely good explanation for why 20th Century Fox embargoed all U.S. reviews of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” until today, May 1, the day of its release in North America. That’s because it’s a total laughable turkey and they knew this all along. This is basically putting it nicely.
Reviews that would have arrived early would have slayed the film, and they’re well aware of this, so be on the lookout for a bodyslam of eviscerating reviews, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was seriously that execrable. Early reviews have already called it, “noisy, impersonal, dull-witted” (Variety), “poorly conceived” (THR), a “crude blunderbuss”(Minneapolis Star Tribune) and the “latest evidence that the superhero movie is suffering from serious imaginative fatigue” (the NYTimes), and all of these observations are spot-on, but generous at best.
The Playlist’s disdain for pandering blockbusters is pronounced, as we generally have zero tolerance for films made by/for half-wits, but despite our propensity for frou-frou wine and cheese laborious cinema (or at least mine), even we optimistically hoped the film would be at least an entertaining, escapist actioner that provided thrills and enjoyment.
Could ‘Wolverine’ offer even a slice of those lowered expectations and we might be mildly sated, but this wildly misconceived misfire in the “X-Men” franchise would all but destroy further prequel installments from this series if its audiences weren’t intelligence-bulletproof. In a proper world any goodwill Gavin Hood would have accrued from “Tsosti,” would be instantly vaporized for good, and he would forfeit the right to ever helm a picture again, but by all accounts he will be rewarded for his clumsy handling of this ludicrous and boorish excuse for a super-hero film (God, we thought “Watchmen,” was bad, ‘Wolverine’ makes it look like “The Dark Knight,” as written by Chekov).
But let’s attempt to take ‘Wolverine’ seriously. The picture is essentially a tale of bitter sibling rivalry and brothers torn apart by jealousy, insecurity and misplaced anger (perhaps not unlike Edmund and Edgar from King Lear, no seriously, one of them is a basterd son too). One is utterly savage (Liev Schreiber’s Sabertooth) and one’s primal rage belies a human interior (Hugh Jackman’s Logan/Wolverine). Now obviously there is juicy, tender drama to be explored here, but under Hood’s remarkably silly direction, the vapid plot and the painfully constructed attempts to squeeze in well-beloved Mutants into every friggin’ scene feels like it was simply written in service of Burger King toys or to meet a quota from clueless higher ups that said, “Our research shows that Gambit, Deadpool and John Wraith are considered the coolest X-Men related Mutants, please make sure they’re in the script…in as many scenes as possible.”
Bereft of any good taste or logic, the pre-credit scenes and montages meant to explain their backstory, illustrate their psychological baggage and depict the two boys’ exposure to suffering and hardship, plus their side-by-side grown-up experience through a plethora of wars (The Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc.) is unintentionally amusing, and immediately fails to set the emotional stakes. Essentially ‘Wolverine’ is fucked from the first five minutes.
We’ve gone on about the many potential and thorny predicaments one can fall into when revealing an origin, usually killing a character’s mystique is the chief worry and again, the picture achieves that death so quickly, it really becomes the least of the movie’s worries. To even describe the story seems like a gag. Wolverine and Sabertooth are recruited into the a top-secret military agency called Team X by William Stryker (Danny Huston) during the Vietnam war and soon they’re joined by other mutants (played by Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Henney, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monagh and an astonishingly bad Will.I.Am) in clandestine missions to benefit the glorious nation of the U.S. The four seconds of Sabertooth’s childhood we saw apparently is responsible for his berserker bloodlust and Wolverine has to constantly caution his brother. Finally the killing of innocents sends him packing and he leaves his brother in the group (later on we learn poor wittle Sabertooth felt abandoned – hirsute dude has been an adult for almost 100-years at this point).
It’s now the 1970s (not that you could ever tell) and Wolverine has moved to Canada to be a peaceful lumberjack, but Stryker and Sabertooth can’t let their disparate grudges go. Old Mutant pals are being eliminated at an alarming rate. Stryker suspects Sabertooth, he warns Wolverine and urges him to take care, but the stubborn and now reformed Canadian brushes him off. His comely girlfriend Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins) is then murdered by the ferocious brother and the X-Men hero to be swears bloody revenge (replete with its own comical “Revenege Of the Sith”-like birds-eye-view wail, “Nooooooooooooo!”). The only way to kill his stronger/faster/better Sabe’d brother is to become indestructible, cue adamantium sequence! (the metal liquid poured into his bones to he’ll have an impenetrable body; are you still following any of this ridiculousness?).
Stryker and Sabertooth are then revealed to be in cahoots, this was all a trick as to lure Wolverine back, the pair having banked on his need for vengeance. Stryker had a mutant child kill his wife and he swore an oath to wipe them out, Sabertooth of course just wants revenge, or another excuse to jump around and show off his claws and fangs (why we’ve bothered to even venture into the retarded narrative is beyond us). Oh yeah, and before this, Wolverine met up with Remy “Gambit” LeBeau (Taylor Kitsch) so there would be another mid-story action sequence, errrr.. so the Lousiana native (accent botched to high heaven of course) could take him to Stryker’s mutant experimentation Three Mile Island.
The action then gets ratcheted up and even more spectacularly brainless of course, pushing PG-13 violence to its outer limits (it’s not gory, but much of it is so gratuitous it insults the intelligence of even the most ardent action/hero fans). And the special effects! Oh lord, the godawful VFX. Somehow this $150 million dollar movie scrimped so badly that Wolverine’s claws are a laughable eye-sore, and even basic scenes of driving in the woods and arriving from a helicopter telegraph their horrid CGI-ness from miles and miles away (How in baby jesus’ name do you get the claw VFX right for three X-Men pictures, but then utterly destroy and fumble them for a 4th film> Regression effects? Wow)
There could have been a dramatic story in here somewhere, but it appears as if it was botched by committee, too many cooks and lack of anything resembling a worthwhile story to tell. Instead, “Wolverine,” is completely irredeemable, foolhardily unruly, and odiously ham-fisted. You know when you’re making Bret Ratner look good (and yes, “X-3” is significantly stronger), there’s a big fucking red-flag problem at hand. [D]