Idiotic, but things do blow up

Rating: 5/10 (3 December 2009)

Despite the great efforts of Hugh Jackman, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is dead on arrival, combining an illogical plot with a raft of clichés that would embarrass the worst porn writer ever. There are too many characters to keep track of, and the action seems to be intentionally frantic, the better to distract you from the fact that little of the story makes a whit of sense.
We get to see the actual origins of Wolverine (that is, as a young child) when he discovers that the man he just killed with his bare, uh, claws was his real dad and that the guy he thought was just a good pal is actually his brother Victor, aka Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber). Later we see Wolverine (known then as Logan) and Sabretooth fighting in four different American wars (Civil, WWI, WWII, and Vietnam), and then he and his brother are eventually brought in as part of a mutant team called Weapon X by a sinister military guy, Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston). The mutants proceed to kick everyone's ass until Wolverine has a bout with decency and quits.
Fast forward six years later and Wolverine's living a placid life as a lumberjack in Canada with his hot girlfriend, Kayla Silverfox, and Stryker finds him and tells him someone's picking off the old team members (oh no!). Can Wolverine help? Who's responsible for these deaths? I bet Stryker knows more than he's telling. He's sinister, you know.
If I had to sum up this movie's plot in one word, it'd be "revenge." Wolverine is constantly avenging someone or something. Sometimes he's just mad in general, but usually he's going after Sabretooth for something or going after Stryker for something or going after unnamed goons in helicopters and tanks for something. Another recurring motif is Wolverine's angst. The guy's like 140 years old, but he has the angst of a cuckolded teenager on prom night. At least twice he looks up to the heavens, arms spread, crying "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Yes, in this day and age of highfalutin gizmodery we still have mopey superheroes.
The movie tries so damn hard to be loved that it forgets it's supposed to be sort of a superhero comic-book movie. There's endless backstory about the two brothers, and it feels like it's shoehorned in, almost as if the makers thought they had to explain themselves. Is it important to know that Wolverine's dad was a gardener? Probably not. Did he have to visit so many of the former members of Weapon X? I'm gonna say no.
Even so, the final villain – Deadpool, who has all the strengths of the other mutants on the team and none of their weaknesses – is pretty damn scary and convincing. Trouble is, they make him so tough to kill that it's difficult to get closure on him. If you know what I mean. I mean, he has all of the strengths of these superhuman dudes without having those namby-pamby weaknesses! What's the point? At least the setting's appropriate for this movie: Three Mile Island, which for you youngsters out there we should note was the scene of a major nuclear-power-plant accident in 1979, which might be when this movie's denouement is set.
Anyway, because there's so much exposition, there's little room for character – either character development or an actual character OF the film. It's bland, the porridge of comic-book movies. There's no cleverness, no wit, nothing more than snide asides and bon mots, as if we were in a faceless Stallone movie circa 1984. Jackman's game, of course, but he's now played Wolverine in four movies, so this wasn't exactly a stretch for him. I'd like to think that this clunker will put to rest any plans for future Origins installments, but I got a feeling we'll be seeing Magneto and Storm get their tales told someday as well.