X-Men Origins: Wolverine sounds like an idea for a direct-to-DVD cash-in project: pluck out one character and fill in the back-story, which is considerably cheaper than bringing back the whole cast for another big-screen adventure. But Wolverine aspires to more than that, of course, and Hugh Jackman as the title character probably takes up most the casting budget anyway: He’s the main draw for the X-Men movie series, the most dynamic and complicated of the characters, and if you had to pick the one best-suited to pure action sequences, it’s this guy.
Yet Wolverine still feels like an afterthought, a distant cousin to the original franchise, a sidebar that adds little to the main narrative. That’s probably because the picture is a gloomy exercise: There’s no one to cheer for except Wolverine, and he’s working so hard at being Eyore with Elvis sideburns that it’s hard to root for him anyway. Then again, who can blame him? The character lives in a world populated almost entirely of bad guys. Besides your standard-issue unrepentants, you’ve got good guys who turn out to be bad guys, family members who turn out to be bad guys, trusted leaders who turn out to be bad guys, and lovers, friends, and comrades in arms who turn out to be bad guys, too. There are a few good guys who don’t turn out to be bad guys (I counted two), but they don’t survive long enough to earn a spot beyond the last third of the closing credits.
The biggest problem for me is that the various superpowers on display often fail to follow a consistent physics, let alone common sense or human nature. Wolverine’s talons (Swords? Sharp extra fingers?) rip through flesh and bone, but break when they’re stepped on. The triumph of one character’s super-strength over that of another depends less on clever moves than the requirements of the plot. The ability to disappear and re-appear–useful, that–is deployed to make a fight more interesting, not by a combatant to save his life. A sock in the jaw knocks a mutant to the ground or through a wall, but a helicopter crash barely registers. I guess Bruce Willis and every other action hero gets away with plenty of inconsistencies, too, but those characters are supposed to be human. I’m familiar with humans. Mutants, though, I don’t know what to expect. I’d like to consistently see their strengths and limits so I can know what they’re capable of, and what might defeat them. (You know, in case I run into one.)
Oh–and if you’re looking for a tour of action-picture cliches, you’ve come to the right place. I counted three times that a major character yelled at the sky in anger as the camera pulls away from directly above (otherwise known as the Super Villain Shout–think “Noooo!” or–better–“Kaaaaahn!”). Then there’s the obligatory unaffected-by-the-pyro shot in which the hero walks, expressionless, into the camera and away from a devastating explosion (unless you count a complete lack of expression as an expression).
Is any of this worth your time or money? If you like the X-Men series, then it’s indispensable. If you are perfectly happy with a well-executed genre picture of this type, it’s certainly that. And if for some reason you like an elbow-to-elbow crowd of bad guys, you’ll find so many here you’d swear they shot it at a meeting of the Fidel & Raoul Castro fan club. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is nothing special. But if it’s hot outside and you’re looking for air conditioning and things that go boom, well, this is that.
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