A Mess of A Movie

Rating: 2/10 (14 May 2014)

I must admit I am somewhere at a loss of how to begin explaining my feelings of Wolverine's first solo outing in the X-Men series. It is the fourth installment and a prequel to the main trilogy that ended with The Last Stand. I always believed that the reason that prevented the first two from being the best of the superhero genre was the fact that there are too many characters to keep track of (don't even get me started on TLS). There are always characters who feel neglected and in need of more screen time. The fact is that to give all of them what they are due then the films would be in excess of three hours, and I for one do not want a superhero film of that length.
It seemed that a film that would just have one main character and none of the other protagonists would be a qualified success, with a more focused film. Boy was I wrong. The film starts with Logan as a young child, he witnesses the death of his mother and through his anger and rage claws start to protrude from his skin, not made of metal but bone. This scene lacks any emotional impact (like many throughout the runtime of this film). The fact is we cannot form a bond with his mother – it all happens too soon. Compare it to the death of Bruce Wayne's parents murdered in cold blood and it pales in comparison.
There are many different and interesting paths that this film could take, yet Gavin Hood and screenwriter Skip Woods seem interested in giving a dull, limp, lifeless tale that goes nowhere and achieves nothing. Heck, the audience in the first five minutes must accept that Logan just gets claws because he is angry. How did he get these claws? No idea. The film never explains this and we just have to accept it, because the plot demands that he does. Instead we get to see how Wolverine gets his jacket. Yippee. I don't want to know how Wolverine obtained one piece of clothing. Wolverine eventually undergoes an operation which gives him adamantium injected into his body. Then he forms a relationship with the most clichéd romantic interest in movie history. It is as if her character was given a list of check-boxes and the screenwriter ticked every one of them. Later, he faces one of the most dangerous villains in the X-Men series – Deadpool. Just wait till you see what they have done to him This is about as dreary as Origins of Superheroes get.
However, the main problem of the film is that we never care about the main character! How can this be? They have made one of my favourite superheroes duller than ditch water. Wolverine has so much charisma, dry wit and good one liners yet the only reason he is here is for the purpose of action scenes. Within every single one of these pointless escapades, we feel strangely detached. The reason? Wolverine cannot die. In X-Men, Magneto could stop him and control the adamantium that runs through his entire body. In X2, Lady Deathstrike was made of adamantium and proved a powerful nemesis against him. But in Origins he is unstoppable. The one thing that we are told can kill him is a special bullet, which later Stryker changes his mind and somehow says it can only erase his memory which makes the entire film pointless. We already know that in X-Men; Wolverine remembers nothing, so what does this film achieve – you guessed it.
This is the rock bottom for the franchise. It is a complete cash grab and not an ounce of effort has gone into this production e.g. Will.i.am is present that tells you all you need to know. Hugh Jackman tries his best as Wolverine to redeem this god-awful tale but even he cannot save it. This is the equivalent of Batman and Robin for the 21st century. Maybe, some Origins were never meant to see the light of day. An unredeemable, noisy and monstrous piece of film, this is what Superheroes were never meant to be about.