Fun movie has nothing to do with Wolverine

Rating: 6/10 (29 September 2009)

Alpha Flight, Bullseye, The Hulk, Mariko Yashida, Stick, Yukio These names are familiar to anyone who grew up reading the X-Men comics. Specifically they all related directly to Wolverine's back story. They are also all completely absent from the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". Wolverine was always a mystery man. That's what I liked about him. That's what *everybody* liked about him. So, I was more than a little skeptical when I heard they were going to be making a movie about his origin story. Instead of the Canadian mountain man who was experimented on to make a Canadian version of Captain America, who survived the procedure due to a mutant healing power, but wwe are served up a guy named "James" who has bone claws and is some kind of Casca-esquire immortal mercenary who's fought in every American war from the Civil War to Vietnam, with his brother (presumably Sabretooth though called "Victor" and played by Liev Schreiber rather than Tyler Mane). The Canadian government seems totally out of the picture, and William Stryker (the anti-mutant televangelist from the Graphic novel 'God Loves Man Kills') who is now some sort of U.S. military/government type who is doing mad scientist experiments on mutants for military purposes sort of like the character Henry Peter Gyrich in the X-Men comics (Gyrich you remember was killed in the first X-Men movie by Sabretooth). I can't actually say the film is unenjoyable - it actually is worth it for some fans. Just know that it isn't quite up to the standards of earlier X-Men movies, nor the classic comics. One almost wishes that the creators had spent more time reading Frank Miller's "Wolverine" mini-series, and less time watching Hong Kong wire work.