Pass the Popcorn! review

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2014)

Up until X-Men: The Last Stand, the things were going very good for the X-Men franchise – both X-Men and X2 were good movies. Looking back at it, X-Men Origins: Wolverine wasn't a bad idea. On one hand, X-Men: The Last Stand was a disaster, but why not continue this commercially successful franchise in form of a prequel of its most marketable (and possibly the most interesting) character – Wolverine? However, just like X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a simply bad movie. And yet two years later, the X-Men franchise managed to redeem itself with X-Men: First Class.
The movie follows Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) during his pre-X-men days. He and his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber), both immortal mutants with amazing healing powers, spent most of their lives fighting in major wars (the civil war, WWI, WWII, Vietnam) before settling in a secret military group, led by William Stryker (Danny Huston), which goal was to supposedly fight for American interests. During one routine mission in Africa, Logan is disgusted by the groups' methods of persuasion and decides to leave them. But, several years later, his past comes back to haunt him.
There are several things very wrong with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. First of them being the serious lack of any kind of coherent, noteworthy plot. The movie is packed with (PG-13) action sequences every five minutes or so, which does get pretty boring very fast; and there is no real dramatic conflict to back those action sequences up. Not only is the plot not satisfactory, but the portrayal of the mutant Deadpool, isn't either. Deadpool, a fan favorite, made his big screen debut in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but in his case the source material is completely disregarded – he is nothing like his comic book counterpart – and as a result, his character is inane.
It's a shame Deadpool was portrayed the way he was since he was played by Ryan Reynolds, an actor many people agree is the perfect choice for playing Deadpool. However, not every casting choice in the movie was as good as this one. For some reason, the singer of Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am, was in the movie and was awful at playing the mutant John Wraith; and the brilliant Brian Cox, in spite of being interested in doing so, isn't in the movie reprising his role of William Stryker. Instead, he is replaced by the charmless Danny Huston. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber are good as mutant brothers (especially Jackman who, after all, is a veteran in his role), but that isn't enough to keep this movie from falling apart.
Rating: 5/10 Read more reviews at http://passpopcorn.com/