X-Men Origins: Wolverine

[SDragon]

just saw it. I just have to say...


[spoiler]:wtf:[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Okay, seriously]
We already know the marvel universe revolves solely around Wolverine. I don't need a 100 minute exec wank telling me exactly how he's connected to everybody. Why doesn't anybody remember their first metting with him, anyway? speaking of memory...

Maybe this is a simple matter of semantics here, but somehow, I'm not sure adamantium bullets count as "memory implants". Okay, so technically, it did affect his memory, and technically, it was implanted in his brain, but that's not quite the point, is it?


Also, Fridge Logic at work: "he's pounding me mercilessly in the jaw! He's overpowering me, what can I do?" *gets headbutted* "wait, that's right... I got an indestrucable metal skeleton earlier this week. Hm, wonder why he didn't notice it when he was hitting my jaw..."[/spoiler]


Anybody else see this yet? Anyone have any thoughts?

[Superfluous Crow]

[spoiler]Yeah, i saw Wolverine sunday. From the internet i gathered they had messed it up, but my brother told me it was pretty good and so did the various critics in the newspapers so i hoped the internet was wrong. But really, the movie is... cheesy. And i don't normally care about plotholes as such, but these were glaring. I get the bullet thing though, it ripped apart his brain matter and it regenerated without his memories (why anything else wasn't missing we'll never know). But the entire reasoning behind his skeleton is just silly. And why does there have to be a band of caged mutants in every one of those movies?? But generally the whole movie tried to be awesome, and never realised how much it failed at it. The effects were good though (Gambits stuff was great), and some of the stunts had a lot of potential even if they could have been made in a bit more interesting way (especially Wade's and Zero's stunts in Africa). But in general... bad movie [/spoiler]

[Steerpike]

[spoiler]I felt that the effects, especially in fight scense, were way too ostentatious.  There seems to be a trend in action movies these days (I'm thinking particularly of Wanted, here) to have ridiulously over-the-top uber-warriors.  Like the earlier scenes with Wade and Zero... they're just annoyingly powerful, and so damn smug on top of it, they really, really annoy me.  Kind of a DBZ quality to them, somehow, that stupid "I'm so cool I don't even care" thing, probably exemplified when Wolverine walks towards the camera with the helicopter exploding behind him.  Ugh.

I thought that taken overall the movie was OK.  Probably better than X3, but a lot worse than X1/X2, both of which I really enjoyed.  Hugh Jackman is a good actor, in my opinion, but the Wolverine character is kind of boring before he loses his memory; he's virtually unkillable so there's not a heck of a lot of tension in any of the fight scenes, and the you-killed-my-lover revenge storyline has been done to death.  I liked the moon/wolverine fable and the whole scheme surrounding his seduction, and I liked Stryker's performance, but mostly the plot was pretty rambling... Characterization was also very poor, in general.  Part of the reason the original X-Men movies were so good was that they emphasized the ambiguity surrounding Xavier vs. Magneto, to the point where we almost sympathize with Magneto's point of view, in places - we have an idealistic villain.  In this case, with the exception of the very underplayed "my son is a mutant aaah" motivation of Stryker, the villains were 2D typical comic book baddies whose only real agenda seemed to be "let's be evil."

And then there's Deadpool... sigh.  I don't know a ton about the character, but from what I do know, they screwed up royally with their presentation of Deadpool.  He's known explicitly as The Merc With The Mouth so why make him silent?  And Deadpool isn't supposed to have cyclops' powers, or will-i.am's teleportation either (and don't get me started on will... when he delared "I'll be coming with you" to Wolverine I groaned).  I'm not a comic purist by any means, but they really butchered this guy, who I belive is quite beloved by his fans... bad move.

Overall, my favorite scenes in the movie by far were the bits with Dominic Monaghan as Bolt, who gets wonderfully eccentric after his Team X days and joins the circus, filling his trailer with light bulbs and electric train sets.  I think I'd have rather watched the Bolt spinoff movie.

My other favorite parts were the bits outside the base in Nigeria, which were filmed at UBC (Vancouver), where I just graduated.  That building (Buchannan Tower) is the arts faculty tower where professors have offices - I've been there many, many times, and it was fun to see Victor scale it.  UBC architecture is often jokingly referred to as bunkereqsue and when the film crews showed up and started erecting large razorwire walls and parking armored cars in front of our buildings it seemed oddly approriate.  Ironically they filmed those parts in December/January and it snowed - not exactly what you'd expect for Nigerian weather!  Also the high school that cylcops decimates with his laser-sight was my girlfriend's, who said it was very amusing watching her old school get destroyed.[/spoiler]

[Elemental_Elf]

On a sale of 'Ang Lee's Hulk' being a 1 and 'Dark Knight' being a 10, where does this movie rank?

[Steerpike]

I'd say about 4.  Spider-Man 1 or Iron Man I'd give 7, X2 I'd give 8, Catwoman I'd give -1, and Batman Begins I'd give 9...

[Elemental_Elf]

I'd say about 4.  Spider-Man 1 or Iron Man I'd give 7, X2 I'd give 8, Catwoman I'd give -1, and Batman Begins I'd give 9...

That bad huh?

[Steerpike]

Fun fluff and lots of action but mediocre writing, some annoying stuff, and a vague feeling of "why was this movie necessary?"  If you enjoyed X3 you'll probably like this one.  If you liked X1/2 but hated X3 (as many people do) then this one's not exactly a return to the glory days of the franchise.

[Elemental_Elf]

Fun fluff and lots of action but mediocre writing, some annoying stuff, and a vague feeling of "why was this movie necessary?"  If you enjoyed X3 you'll probably like this one.  If you liked X1/2 but hated X3 (as many people do) then this one's not exactly a return to the glory days of the franchise.

The movie is necessary for Fox to keep the X-Men license.

Hmm... I wasn't a huge fan of X-3, of course my biggest complaint was that they killed Cyclops off but, that was a casting problem (the actor decided to star in the Superman movie instead). Still, X-3 was the weakest of the X-Men movies. I'll probably still see the movie (I enjoy Hugh Jackman as an actor) but I won't expect a masterpiece.

[SDragon]

I'd say that's about right. It's certainly not unbearable, but it's not an Oscar-winning epic, either.

[spoiler]I understand how the memory loss worked on a technical level, but it was handled much differently then the top-secret, high-tech false memory implants in the comics. I don't think I would have been too annoyed by the way they handled it in the movie, but given the quality of the rest of the movie, it felt way too fiat-ish.

Deadpool I was severely disappointed with. I don't know too much about the character, but I do know that they butchered him. The only powers he should have are the healing factor, and the power to never shut up no matter what the situation. He isn't some weird, silent super-amalgam of every mutant under the sun.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=On the effects]These were, on a technical level, very well done. A lot of them were too over the top (Gambit saving Wolverine on Three Mile Island), though. Mu biggest complaint with the effects was the adamantium claws; these were done much better in X-Men. The scene in particular that bothered me the most with this was the bathroom scene. Here, it's very obvious that they're pure CGI, as opposed to X-Men's CGI-enhanced hand claws. This is true even in the shots where you can't see Logan's hands, and CGI wasn't needed whatsoever.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=But on a good note]I did enjoy the acting. I felt that the actors did the best job they could, given what they had to work with in terms of the script and director. Gambit was well played, especially in the casino. If Wade was created completely from scratch with no connection to Deadpool, I think I would have enjoyed him a bit more, too. As always, Jackman is great.[/spoiler]

[Velox]

[spoiler]I did not see the movie, but I am a Deadpool fan; so to all those who say "they don't know much about the character", let me fill you in so you can tell me just how butchered the character is. He started as a troubled young hill billy kid, getting into fights, acting like a punk ass, fighting with his dad. He ended up in the military; he was in some sort of elite special forces deal for awhile; a real badass. Then he got cancer. He didn't have much time left to live, and the Weapon X project (same folks who made wolverine) offered him a possible cure. He joined up, and they started to do experiments on him.... they succeeded in giving him wolverine like regenerative powers, but there was a problem. He quickly lost his regenerative powers, but retained some kind of nasty skin disease, like a cancer, that made him ugly as hell. He was basically a giant walking scar, was slowly deteriorating, dying, and didn't really want to go on living. Unfortunately, he ended up in the Weapon X mental health facility for super-heros. An extremely familiar story developed ("One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest") and while he suffered much abuse at the hands of his captors, he withstood and remained irreverantly chipper and upbeat; a looney house prankster with a death wish. He wanted nothing more than to die, but he was denied, being a valuable experimental subject. Eventually some people close to him were executed, for no other reason than to cause him pain. He finally flipped out and went Rambo on the mental hospital, killed a whole bunch of the staff, tried to die, but found that he couldn't; his regenerative powers had finally kicked in. He escaped and has been making money and cracking jokes ever since. He's not afraid to shoot people! Yay![/spoiler]

[SDragon]

To give you an idea of how much they ruined him, here's what they kept from the comics:

[spoiler]He ended up in the military; he was in some sort of elite special forces deal for awhile; a real badass...  and the Weapon X project (same folks who made wolverine) started to do experiments on him.... they succeeded in giving him wolverine like regenerative powers ... he suffered much abuse.[/spoiler]

Also, they kept his first name. I don't think they ever referred to him as Deadpool.

Here's what they added:

[spoiler]He has optic blasts now! And a natural teleporting power! Oh, and you know how Wolverine has adamantium claws that come out of the back of his hands? Well Deadpool has adamantium katanas that come out of his hands! Everyone knows how epic katanas are! The stitches on his mouth make him silent, too. That's so much cooler then cancer![/spoiler]

As a comic-related sidenote, I always thought that his scarring was the cancer itself. The way I understood it, the cancer cells gained the healing factor as well, so they could spread, but are rendered benign. Losing the healing factor would cause a relapse of malignancy, which would quickly kill him.

[Jharviss]

Wow Doritos, that was painfully accurate.

[SDragon]

Wow Doritos, that was painfully accurate.

Fritos :p

[Ishmayl-Retired]

..I wasn't a huge fan of X-3, of course my biggest complaint was that they killed Cyclops off but, that was a casting problem (the actor decided to star in the Superman movie instead)...

Actually, if you ever get a chance to read the first scripts of the movie when Singer was still at the helm, you'll find that Singer had also planned to kill off Cyclops in the first 10 minutes.  No one knows why, as Marsden had not yet, at the time, accepted a role in Superman.  Probably just a lame excuse for some extra drama, and also a chance so that at the end, Wolverine could yet again be the hero, instead of Cyclops, who should have been there at the end with Phoenix.

[Jharviss]

Fritos, Doritos, point is there are too many snack foods represented on these boards!

Hum hum, yeah.

On the Cyclops note, they needed to kill him off.  Nobody liked him, so he was better off dead.

IMHO