X-Men Origins: Wolverine review

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is better than a lot of Fox-made Marvel movies ... but that's not saying a lot. With the exception of X-Men and X2: X-Men United, Fox hasn't had much success in faithfully adapting these movies. Fantastic Four anyone? Like these other misfires, the movie has very little respect for the source material, at times just making new stuff up completely. Films like The Dark Knight proved that you can make a respected, successful comic book adaption without following the source material word for word. If a company, a director or a writer can show fans that they understand the material, fans will accept changes.

THE GOOD
While the movie absolutely misses the mark, there are some highlights.

• No matter what is going on around him, Hugh Jackman is and will always be Wolverine. For a guy whose casting had a lot of people questioning Bryan Singer back with X-men, Jackman continues to nail the role. If only X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine had better writers to give the guy something to work with.
• Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth brings the character to a new level ... which wasn't all that hard since the previous level for the character was a bit part in X-Men. Schreiber is good in the role and with a meatier script and with more character development, the possibility for a fleshed-out, dimensional adversary would have been possible.
• The action was cool, I guess. Standard stuff. More often than not, the movie played out like a predictable "former soldier on the run" kind of thing just with adamantium claws thrown in. Things blew up. It really is too bad that they didn't make this film darker – a bunch of characters who can rapidly heal armed with extendable claws has the potential to be brutal. A character like Wolverine can take the abuse.
• Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool is funny during the few minutes he's on screen in the beginning. If someone has the fast-talking, wise-cracking thing down, it's Ryan Reynolds. Why didn't anyone consider him as Spider-man instead of the emo-ish Tobey Maguire?

THE BAD
Um, everything else? Where to start ... ?

• The plot is paint-by-numbers simple. The audience is going to be able to guess what happens next at just about every step. There were only a few parts that kind of surprised me, and they were more "geez, that's out of the blue" surprised than "awesome plot twist" surprised. Everything is very rushed too. It's like they had so many set pieces to hit and so many mutants to cram in, no one really bothered paying attention to the pacing of the film.
  
• The ending. SERIOUSLY, REMEMBER THE SPOILER WARNING ABOVE? IT KICKS IN BIG TIME HERE. I hate it when these films come up with a villain they want as the big bad at the end on their own but then feel they have to attach a real villain or superhero's name to it. Studios, if you want to add in a character all of your own, go ahead but don't steal someone else's creations name for it. The big bad at the end of Wolverine? Deadpool ... with Cyclop's laser eyes, a giant sword that retracts out of his arm, the ability to teleport, healing abilities and his mouth erased. Oh yeah ... Col. Stryker can somehow control him through MS-DOS-like entries on his computer. That's the new Deadpool on the right. This leads into my biggest complaint about this film ...
• Lack of any respect for the source material. From the opening scenes, it's apparent that the makers of this film had no intent paying homage to any part of the decades of Wolverine material out there. The Origin limited series of comics from a few years ago that finally revealed Wolverine's past was great because it took what people imagined a young Wolverine to be and flipped it on its head. It had creative plot twists. It was layered. The five minutes of this film that shows young Wolverine? Predictable, poorly acted, and overly dramatic. How Wolverine eventually loses his memory, also lame. Adamantium bullets are something I must've missed in the comics.

Now, I'll still go see this film in theaters. I'll have friends who'll want to see it too. I also feel I owe Fox for the movie I watched today. I'm not going to boycott it or anything, but I do think that this leak gave them what they had coming for screwing around with Watchmen and then trying to profit from it.

The best thing that everyone can do with this franchise now? Take a break. What Brett Ratner destroyed with X-Men: The Last Stand, Fox killed with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Hold off on any of these other Magneto, young X-men spin-offs that are being planned. Let the whole thing sit for awhile. Give it a few years ... and then try Wolverine again. This is a great character with a huge following. He deserves to have a film made the right way. Touch upon Origin, his time in Japan. Flesh out the wars he fought in and how he became a part of Weapon X. Don't rush it. Don't feel that every other mutant in the X-men universe needs a cameo. Take a look at what The Dark Knight got right. Study what this film got wrong. Show some respect for the character.

Personally, I'd love to see Marvel buy back its characters – Spider-Man, the X-Men – from the companies that have rights to them currently and let them live in the blossoming universe they've now established with Iron Man, the Hulk and Nick Fury.

What a shame.