One of the few films I have a grudge against.

Rating: 1/10 (18 January 2017)

Out of all the X-Men films that have come out over the past decade and a half, this is the worst one ever. I hate this movie with all my passion and I think it is undeserving to be in the X-Men canon. What angers me even more about it is that this film is based off a great origin story from the comics and it has been horribly tainted by just about everyone involved, except Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber.
The plot is basically retelling most of the important details about Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) origin, being discovering his bone claws as a child, fighting in different wars, his relationship with a Native American woman named Silverfox, his time on Team X and in Weapon X, getting the adamantium claws and his grudge against Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber). Also, there are numerous things added that were never part of the origin that just come off as the movie trying to show off other characters for the sake of it. For instance, Blob was never part of Team X and yet he's on the team as a normal-looking guy, and later, he becomes the Blob and used as the butt of a lot of jokes, particularly in a boxing match he has with Wolverine so Wolvie can get info. from him. Wolvie really would have just threatened to cut him open if he was truly like his comic book counterpart or anything like he was in the previous films, not to mention that Wolvie's adamantium skeleton and healing factor would both be strong advantages. Also, Gambit, one of everyone's favorite X-Men (I never liked him) also appears, but it's only for a couple of short scenes and his role is incredibly inconsequential. That is the least of the problems here.
One major problem is the terrible special effects. Many are obviously computer-generated, and the contenders for the worst looking ones include the Patrick Stewart recreation and Wolverine's claws, which were a combination of practical and digital claws in the original trilogy. Usually, films with imperfect special effects can be forgiven if everything else in the film works. For instance, the effects in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial are not ground-breaking, but because I loved the story, soundtrack, and the title character, I didn't care. However, the story and characters here are terrible, so there is no excuse.
The characters are also all expendable, from Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston) to Silverfox. Most of the guys in Weapon X are just there to show off their "cool" powers like Agent Zero's agility, Wraith's (WILL.I.AM) teleportation, and Blob's resistance to gunfire. The scene with Team X raiding an African compound is a special offender in this category. So much time is made for showing off each of these guy's powers, Wolvie and Sabretooth don't get a chance to shine. In X2, it was implied that Wolvie was a much worse person than he eventually became when on Stryker's team, and the film fails to explore that completely. Because these guys on Team X are given no character beyond their bad-a$$ery and their powers, I don't care what happens to them. People say that Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson was the standout among them, but I don't think he was able to prove himself as that character until 2016's Deadpool. Lynn Collins as Silverfox in particular has some of the worst dialogue and acting in the film, and the fact that her (fake) death in the film is Wolverine's reason for getting his adamantium makes the whole thing much more cliché.
A lot of the events in the film don't make sense either. Why does Stryker order his men to blow Wolvie up when Wolvie has a healing factor and the adamantium in his skeleton makes him nigh-indestructible? How does Gambit run back down the alleyway and run back the same way on a rooftop when Wolvie knocked him out before fighting Sabretooth? Why does Wraith try to kill Sabretooth with his bare hands when he knows that Sabretooth has a healing factor? Why is Wolvie reacting to his claws in amazement instead of agony like the X2 flashbacks clearly show? How do adamantium bullets erase Wolvie's memory? That is unacceptable. What does Stryker hope to accomplish by combining the powers of several mutants into Wade, especially when more powerful mutants like Magneto and Professor Xavier could defeat him? How does Wolvie and Sabretooth being brothers add anything to their grudge? Why can't Sabretooth survive the adamantium procedure but Wolvie can, even though they have the same powers? Why do Silverfox's powers work on Wolvie but not Sabretooth? Why? What? How?
The only good thing I can say about this movie is that despite being manipulated by the very poor script, Jackman and Schreiber do what they can with the characters of Wolvie and Sabretooth. Otherwise, this is a pile of junk that is so bad that even before the Days of Future Past retcon, the makers of this series started to forget its existence. It should have been more true to Wolverine's character and been a proper prequel to the original X-Men trilogy and NOT an advertisement for other characters and a poorly-written, clichéd superhero movie. I give this movie the least amount of praise possible and condemn it for the rest of its existence.