X-Men Origins: Wolverine

After the X-men trilogy made over a billion dollars it was a commercial inevitability that Wolverine, the series most popular brooding hero, would return. This film is the first of three planned solo outings, plotting the years of Wolverine's life before he joined Professor Xavier's team of X-Men. ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, shows us just how Wolverine got his indestructible adamantium skeleton and those famous claws. It also reveals his bitter rivalry with his ferocious half-brother Victor (aka Sabertooth) and the tragedy of his doomed first love.

In the comics, Wolverine’s exact origins were an elusive secret for a long time. In a way, revealing the character’s back-story in such explicit detail does rob him of much of his aura of mystery. Arguably Wolverine is a more intriguing character as a man haunted by a terrible forgotten past. In particular, the introduction of an obligatory love story, feels more like a plot device rather than a genuine emotional connection between the characters. The film’s attempts complicate Wolverine and his origins don’t match the simple animal rage that epitomised his best comicbook incarnations. The film isn’t convincingly dramatic or mindlessly entertaining; but what else is worth watching?

The innate problem with any prequel is that we already know what’s going to happen. It’s all but impossible to generate suspense when we know with absolute certainty who’s going to live and die. Added to the fact that Wolverine is already almost impervious to physical harm, this leaves all the film’s earnest action deprived of danger. Another major challenge for this film is that it has to maintain continuity with all the existing X-men movies. This severely limits the plot, which at times seems contrived and painfully predictable. It's certainly not helpful that X-Men 2 already dwelt heavily on Wolverine’s murky past. Most of the film's supposed revelations will feel overly familiar to anyone with a basic knowledge of the character.

The film draws heavily on the endlessly vast universe of popular characters from Marvel comics for its supporting cast. However, the rapid parade of fan favourites looks like a cynical ploy to widen the appeal of the film as much as possible. The huge potential of characters like Gambit and Deadpool is wastefully squandered on a handful of scenes and a few glib lines. It’s pretty clear, the only reason they’re really here is to test the waters of audience interest before these characters get their own spin-offs. The fact that the studio announced that Ryan Reynolds's Deadpool was getting his own movie, within weeks of Wolverine's opening, seems to confirm these suspicions.

Although the film’s visual effects are without fault, the high standards set by the previous X-men trilogy leaves little room for it to distinguish itself. The spectacular has become so commonplace that it’s now impossible to overwhelm an audience’s good sense with some CGI and a few explosions. Hugh Jackman convincingly captures Wolverine’s iconic feral look yet again, but his surly charms are nowhere near enough to save an uninspired script. Pruning away the ensemble cast of the X-men trilogy was supposed to be a good thing. However, the weight of credibility which actors like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen lend to a film can’t be underestimated. Liev Schreiber is an effectively menacing presence as Victor, but the film generally lacks performances of substances. Good actors fight a desperate losing battle against shallow writing, armed with only limited screentime. The film’s casting was adept; unfortunately almost every other aspect of the production falls disappointingly flat.

Marvel has already announced production on a further five movies in the X-men franchise. Only time will tell if these efforts will repay the faith of comic fans or further disappoint them. Of course you’ll still watch Wolverine, but you probably won’t like it much. Let’s just hope they find a proper script and some real claws for the sequels, because we both know, you’ll end up watching those too.