I had high expectations...And my god, were they fulfilled...

Rating: 10/10 (28 April 2009)

I was lucky enough to have visited the set of Wolverine whilst it was in production. Believe me, I'll never forget the thrill of watching Logan elbow Gambit in the face in person, or myself shaking hands with Liev Schreiber...with his super-long fingernails on. Hell, I got to advise the editor, Nicholas De Toth, on which take should be used in the final cut. I consider myself super lucky, and admittedly might be a little biased towards the movie. But holy hell. I thought it would be incredible, but I wasn't prepared for the unstoppable onslaught of action my eyes beheld the night of the premiere.
To be fair, I wanted a little more Gambit and Deadpool. They're great characters (and Taylor Kitsch is a really cool guy), and they had the chance to use them a lot more. They didn't, but that's fine - Freddy Krueger was best in the first Nightmare, and he isn't around for much. It made me appreciate the screen time they had. Being a feature film, it's obvious that they can't explain, explore and probe every single moment in Wolverine's life as depicted in the comics, and some die-hard X-Men fans seem to think it's blasphemy to leave out a few details. Well, more than a few. But do you expect to see the tale of Wolverine told exactly the same as it was? I didn't. It's a movie, not a comic, another issue isn't going to be on newstands next week so the story can continue. They have to squish down to 2 hours or so, and with that, the screenwriters did really well.
In case I haven't said so, the action sequences totally blew my mind. Any person who has fantasies of running with a cool jacket on with explosions firing off everywhere, and you must to something super-cool and uber-dangerous to save yourself (I know I have) will find their dreams coming to life on the screen (the helicopter bit is the best example). True, a lot of CGI is used. I usually don't care for CGI, really. For example in Diary of the Dead. Decent movie, CGI was completely unnecessary. I was pining for Tom Savini to return. But in Wolverine's case, there's really no alternative. It fits. It works. It looks great.
All in all, a smashingly entertaining movie that's going to have a place in my collection as soon as a 2-Disc Edition hits the stores. Oh, and for the people who downloaded the unfinished work print...Why? Why would you do that, what is the bloody point? It was missing some special effects, a lot of the music... I didn't see this but I've been told that's how it was. I mean...I don't know what the hell was running through your mind. This is a movie that has to be seen on a big movie screen. And you ruined it for yourself. You may have saved your money but I assure you, you didn't gain anything.