A guilty pleasure.

Rating: 7/10 (16 October 2018)

Following the success of X-Men 3: The Last Stand, it was only a matter of time before 20th Century Fox would greenlight a spin-off movie featuring the X-Men's most popular character, Wolverine. With Gavin Hood who had already directed the Oscar-winning film, Tsotsi directing along with a script written by David Benioff and featuring the likes of Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber and Ryan Reynolds, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was shaping up to be a great movie. However, it was overseen by Fox chairman, Tom Rothman. Known for his dislike of genre movies, Rothman was determined to destroy Hood's vision at every turn. The two crashed continuously over the direction of the movie as Hood wanted a more dark and gloomy movie in line with the comics while Rothman wanted a fast-paced and kid-friendly film that would pull in high returns akin to the MCU. This got so bad that Hood apparently left the production of the film after Rothman repainted an entire set. With no one to finish shooting the movie, an unnamed ghost director was brought in, supposedly Richard Donner. The final film did perform well at the box office despite a workprint being leaked online but the critical and fan reactions were far from kind and the movie represents a dark spot on the resumes of all of those evolved.
Now, my first exposure to X-Men Origins: Wolverine came when I first saw a few TV spots for it back in the spring of 09' and while I was impressed by what I saw, I decided to pass on seeing it as comic book movies weren't my thing back in those days. I didn't watch the film until late in 2016 in preparation for seeing Logan so I watched the movie and to my surprise, I didn't find it to be nearly as awful as some of the fans had labeled it as there were certain things I enjoyed like the action scenes and some of the acting, but the story, writing, characters, and tone left a lot to be desired in my eyes.
The film starts in 1845 where we met young James Howlett who witnesses his supposed father being murdered by a groundskeeper. The angst caused by this activated Howlett's mutation where bone claws grow from the boy's knuckles and he straight-up kills the man only to have the groundskeeper reveal that he is James's biological father. Soon after, Howlett fees with the help of his half-brother, Victor Creed. The two spend the next century fighting in The Civil War, both World Wars and The Vietnam War where Victor is arrested for attempting to abuse a woman and he and James are thrown in jail. They are then approached by Major William Stryker and are offered membership in a mutant team. The two join the group for a few years but after seeing the group's as well as Victor's lack of compassion for human life, Logan quits the group and leaves. The film then skips ahead 6 years later where Wolverine now has a girlfriend and works as a logger. Later, Stryker approaches him and asks for his help in stopping Victor but Logan isn't interested until his girlfriend is killed. Now, Wolverine must find and kill Victor to avenge his girlfriend's death while Striker is working on a potently deadly experiment.
With all the production troubles the movie was subjected to and how the final film was received by the general public and professional critics, X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes across as more of a haphazard attempt to tell the backstory of the most popular character in the entire X-men roster rather than trying to tell a compelling and complex story which should be the focal point of any movie but due to the various reshoots the film went through, it seems that what we got was very slapdash and poorly put together. Much like another superhero film released in 2009, Watchmen, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a film that comes along to surely pander to people who aren't familiar with the character or his source material. But in spite of that, the film, unlike Watchmen, feels the need to forgo it's source material and carelessly neuter and re-draw the context of who the character of Wolverine is with an icily dislike for what he stands for and instead opts to destroy one of the most authentically complex, revolutionary and terrifying superhero backstories since Batman into one of the most inferior kinds of watered-down, mundane and PG-rated money-making garbage ever to grace the silver screen.
At the very least, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a film that recognizes how pointless it really is as Wolverine's backstory has already been shown to us in the first two X-men films so none of the events that take place in X-Men Origins: Wolverine have any tangible sense of relevance on the character growth of Wolverine or the other characters for that matter. The viewer understands that by watching the film, everything Wolverine will attain will eventually be removed from his memory and forgotten about with the movie serving only as a mere action-packed memory which, even if something had presented itself and was worth speaking, it would have been fruitless to say anything regardless no matter how much one might want to. Those filmgoers or comic book fans looking for the moralistic and complex character arch that Bryan Singer gave Wolverine in the first two X-Men movies and Days of Future Past as well as what James Mangold did on The Wolverine and Logan or what Bret Ratner tried but failed to do on X-Men 3 will be severely let down by what X-Men Origins: Wolverine does to him.
Though the movie takes place in the 70s and 80s as well as being a prequel to the first three X-Men films, it sadly doesn't give us the glimpse into that world in its foundational years. One would think that this new group of people evolving at this time in history and with the Civil Rights Moment going on at that, you would think that Hood, as well as Benioff and Woods and even Rothman, would want to explore that aspect of who the X-men and Wolverine represent. In lieu of that, however, the movie doesn't seem to any interest in exploring such lofty ideals. As a matter of fact, it appears that there have always been mutants in the previous X-men films, at best centered around the plethora of supporting metahumans, so it really doesn't make a lick of sense why the US and Canadian governments are all of a sudden alarm in the 20 years in the future. If anything, the metahuman population is declining rather than increasing.
But to make such conclusions would be detracting as it is scathing to pick apart loads of little inconsistencies and moronic ideas that the writers and Tom Rothman injected into the finished movie or the incredibly lazy storytelling where the screenplay attempts to try and link X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the previous three X-Men movies much, in the same manner, the Star Wars prequels or the last previous James Bond film do in order to work rather than standing on its own. There's absolutely zero inspiration here in the screenwriting, no joy of life and no fun. Nothing here feels natural or emotional like in some of the other Marvel movies like Spiderman 2 or Avengers: Infinity War. The story simply isn't broad enough to ensure that it'll be taken purposefully, but it's also too nervous to be an all-out fun superhero movie due to the crashing tones set by Rothman's micromanaging. There's also nothing here to add to the character of Wolverine as what is interesting about him has already been explored in the last three movies as well as in Days of Future Past and the two later Wolverine films so this retelling of his backstory feels incredibly unnecessary and run-of-the-mill. It would be forgivable if the movie had tried to add something new to Logan's backstory to make it interesting but it sadly doesn't and all we're left with is a piss-poor origins story lacking any real character's for the viewer to care about or a compelling hero we can symphonize with.
Of course, the film's problems don't stop there as even the CGI looks lazy and half-assed notably with Logan's claws which one would think that they would have been matured over the last three movies. They look like someone just colored them in, and feel like a vast departure from the visual effects that had been used back in 2002 for the first Spiderman film or the effects used in Dr. Strange. In a movie that almost recommends the viewer to suspend the notion of reality for even a simple story to function, it requires great effects to assure the viewer that a helicopter could be parked amongst some trees or that Wolverine is actually diving into some water. The effects here look so bad that they make the effects in Justice League look like Richard Donner's Superman.
Also, given how the movie is only an hour and 59 minutes long, it does seem to not focus on Wolverine's origins for too long as after about 10 minutes of seeing James Howlett as a child, we are then thrown into a montage of him and Victor fighting in several wars. This just highlights again how paper-thin the plot and characters are. So far, we've had very little investment in the character of Wolverine and even less investment in Victor Creed. All we know about the two when we are first introduced to them is that Logan is traumatized due to him killing his father who we never saw him share many scenes with Logan let alone give us any reason to care for him getting skewered by his son and that Victor hates humans even though we never see him attack or try to kill any, we're just told that he hates them making his motives unclean throughout the entire film. Also poorly developed is Wolverine's relationship with his girlfriend and somehow becomes even less authentic by the end. In one scene that is supposed to develop Wolverine and Kayla's romantic relationship, all we get is some bizarre Native American myth about the moon which comes across as dull and randomly comical. Oh, and if this wasn't nonsensical enough, Kayla is, in fact, a mutant so she's mesmerizing Logan in order watch him for Striker, and she the forges her death so that Wolverine will then go aft