Wolverine: Are Critics on Crack?

Just before seeing “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” I checked the Tomatometer, hoping against hope that there had been a sudden surge since I had last checked it a half hour previously. No such luck: The “Wolverine” TM still stood at a dismal 38%. I glumly trucked over to the theater, fairly certain it would suck, just hoping it wouldn’t “Fantastic Four” suck.

Having now seen it, I have just one question: What are these critics smoking, and where can I get some (ok, that’s two questions)?

To be sure, the first installment of the proposed “X-Men” prequels has its share of flaws, and some of the criticism is more than fair. So let’s get the bad out of way first:

The film is oddly unfocused as far as the main character is concerned, all the more strange because in the first three “X-Men,” though ostensibly ensemble films, Wolverine nonetheless emerged as the clear standout character. Here, in his own movie, he all too often takes a back-seat to a large and (for the most part) completely superfluous cast of fellow mutants who add little to the plot and seem included only to please various X-fans (Gambit and Deadpool, for example, while interesting in their own right, do not belong in this movie).

Second, the computer effects are often shockingly shoddy. (But of what modern action movie can that not be said? I have been lamenting the odious advent of CGI since the ridiculous cartoon dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.”) Wolvie’s claws, for example, which you would think would be the one thing they would spare no expense to get right, look amateurish and two dimensional.

These are the major flaws, but there are others as well; the dialogue is often cliche riddled, and too much left unexplained for an origin tale (why does he go from being called James or Jimmy to Logan? Why are Canucks fighting in the American Civil War?). None of these, however, prevented me from enjoying the hell out of this film. A few reasons:

1) Some breathtaking action sequences – Wolverine brings down a chopper full of agents trying to kill him with nothing but a motorcycle and his claws; the fights between Wolverine and his ferocious and estranged brother Victor (a.k.a. Sabretooth); the exquisite opening montage, which show the two feral brothers throwing themselves into battle after battle in every major war in the last century and a half.

2) Hugh Jackman. Yes, he kissed a dude on Broadway in “The Boy From Oz,” and embarrassed everyone with his song and dance at this year’s Oscars. Nevertheless, Jackman infuses Wolverine with tightly coiled badassness, a strange mixture of conflicted pathos and barely contained, murderous rage. It’s clear that he cares about, even likes, the character, and plays Wolverine with a rare humanity for an on-screen comic book hero.

3) Some surprising plot twists, as well as some abrupt tonal shifts that kept me guessing throughout, a rare and welcome trait in a summer blockbuster – hell, in any movie.

I had a blast watching “Wolverine.” True, it hasn’t the flawless execution and gleeful joy of “Iron Man” or the beating black-heart sublimity of “The Dark Knight.” But at bottom, Wolverine is about a guy with knives in his fists fighting a guy with knives on his fingers.

And if you can’t have fun at a movie like that, well, you’re just not trying.

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, Townhall, and Pajamas Media. He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.” His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.