by The Great White Gypsy

Comic book movies confuse me.

Not conceptually, or as a legitimate genre, I’m just confused why they continue to get things wrong. Now, granted, comic books are modern mythology, not based in any serious reality. But there is still a mythology there that demands a certain level of accuracy when telling the story. The majority of Americans aren’t fan boys; they don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of fictional characters. They don’t care about accuracy, because they have no frame of reference. So it really doesn’t matter what you do.

However, large portions of the people standing in line for movies like X-men Origins: Wolverine are comic fans that do know the story. And, time and time again, these people are disappointed.

X-men Origins: Wolverine is a spin-off prequel to the X-men franchise that was run into the ground when Bryan Singer decided to hand the reins to Brett Ratner and go screw up Superman Returns. It was supposed to cover the ORIGINS of Wolverine, and his back-story that led him to the X-men. But somewhere along the way, writers Skip Woods (Hitman, Swordfish) and David Benioff (The Kite Runner, Stay) decided they would breeze through Wolverine’s beginning, and focus on his shady past.

The film begins when Logan (Wolverine) is a sickly child in the late 1800’s. It’s a quick three-minute intro full of forced tension and over-dramatic acting. They leave out several specifics, and half of the original story, and cut straight to Logan’s life as a mercenary with other mutants (interestingly enough, there are so many mutant “cameos” that you’d have to be a hardcore X-men fan just to know who everyone is). It doesn’t really stop after the intro though, and the entire film is meandering, at times confusing, and over-acted by the entire cast. We know Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, does he really need to roar in every scene for no damn reason? (Do wolverine’s roar?)

The effects are sweet (the final battle is pretty amazing visually), the action is intense, and the film is nothing if not entertaining. Director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Rendition) might want to rethink quitting his day job, but it was a respectable detour for him.

If you were a fan of X2, but thought X-men: The Last Stand was retarded, this will fall somewhere in the middle, and it’s probably worth your 10 bucks to watch him rip people apart with metal claws. My point is that, if millions of people aren’t going to know the difference or give a damn about whether the mythology is correct, why not get it right for the millions (ok, maybe thousands) who do? At the very least, so I don’t get a 20 minute long itemized list of the film’s “factual errors” every time I mention a superhero movie to the bearded gent at borders.

If you already saw this film opening weekend, my apologies for the late review. However, if you were still on the fence about it, and you are reading this, I recommend you see Start Trek instead.

Final Grade: C

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