FILM
REVIEW – X MEN ORIGINS; WOLVERINE (2009)
A very good prequel to the X-Men trilogy, focussing on Wolverine’s dark and tragic back-story. Hugh Jackman gives a very good performance, as do all the supporting cast, and there are some neat cameos for Marvel’s established X Men characters as well as some startling twists and revelations along the way. Live Schrieber really enjoys himself in the role of Victor Creed (Sabretooth) too.
Te story opens in Canada in 1845 when as children, the step-brothers, later to become Wolverine & Sabretooth witness a murder, as their father is killed by their estate’s game-keeper. One boy, Jamie, gets angry and claws spring from his fingers and he kills the killer, who tells him as he dies that he is he child’s real father. The boys run off to escape the consequences of their action, vowing to always watch each other’s backs. There follows a brilliant credit sequence montage of them doing just that through all the wars of modern US history, from The American civil War, through WW1, WW2, & Vietnam – with footage worthy of Saving Private Ryan.
When they kill an officer in Nam after stopping him from raping a young woman, they are sentenced to death by firing squad, but being immortal (it’s never explained how they conveniently stop aging once they matured into the main actors involved in the story). Surviving the execution due to being indestructible, they attract attention from Major William Stryker, who is putting together a team of mutant super soldier mercenaries, Team X, forerunners to the X-Men. Fans of the X-Men films as his character appears in the second film, played will know Stryker by Brian Cox. Here is played by Danny Huston. The brothers join up, meeting fellow soldiers like Agent Zero, combining kinetic energy and infallible fire-arm marksmanship, John Wraith, who can teleport himself at will, Chris Bradley, who can manipulate electricity, and others.
On a mission in Africa, in pursuit of a mysterious meteorite fragment (source of the metal Adamantium. When the team, including Sabretooth, start killing civilians, Logan storms out, creating the conflict with his brother that will soon turn to a blood feud.
Loan returns to his native Canada, and settles down to a peaceful existence with a schoolteacher girlfriend, Kayla (actually a mutant called Silverfox who has some powers of hypnosis, but only in physical contact with those she needs to challenge).
Stryker arrives, warning Wolverine that someone is killing off the old Team X members, (now disbanded0. We know this killer is Sabretooth, as we see him kill Chris Bradley, played by Dominic Monaghan, of Lord Of The Rings & Lost fame). When Sabretooth apparently kills Kayla, (who had given Logan a mythical story about a wolverine in love with the Moon) Logan goes on a brutal rampage in search of revenge, and Stryker convinces him of the merits of being implanted with an Adamantium skeleton, which proves to be extremely painful, but successful. Logan is now the Wolverine. He quickly discovers that Stryker plans to erase his memory, and use him as a new kind of super-soldier, so he escapes again. The rest of Team X are sent to kill him by any means possible, and manage to kill an old couple that take Logan in and give him some sense of human decency again (They are a little too like the Kent family in the Superman stories). Wolverine kills Agent Zero, but learns from him of an Island where more mutant super-soldiers are being bred and to which known mutants are being kidnapped to steal their DNA (the purpose behind Sabretooth’s killing spree). Logan learns that one man, (Gambit), escaped from the island, and sets out to find him. He is aided by teleporter, John Wraith, and they track down invincible ally Fred Dukes, who has become so bloated and fat that he is colossal – He is now a boxer who thinks Logan has called him The Blob (reminiscent of Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers films). The fight between him and Wolverine is hilarious.
Through the Blob, Logan finds out where Gambit is, and that is powers include a manipulation of kinetic energy, and the ability to wield a staff that can make the very earth shake. Gambit mistrusts Wolverine and thinks he is trying to recapture him for Stryker, so they fight. Wraith meanwhile is killed by Sabretooth (brutally ripping his spine in two). Gambit realizes that Logan is on the level and takes him to the Island, (actually Three Mile Island, the site of the nuclear power plant disaster a few years previous to the events given (a decade prior to those in The X-Men),
In the attack on the Island, Wolverine learns that Silverfox is still alive, and that she had been manipulating him all along, but only to save her sister, who was a hostage of Stryker’s. The Major’s real plan is now revealed – he has created a new super-soldier, armed with the combined skills of many other captured mutants including those of a young Cyclops (a character later to appear in the X-Men trilogy of films. As Cyclops is kept blindfolded he ever sees Wolverine at this stage (they clearly meet for the first time in the first of the main films). As Wolverine fights his brother, Kayla frees the other mutants, who escape from the island and get rescued by Professor Xavier, (not yet confined to a wheel-chair) (Patrick Stewart making a very brief cameo), and led off to serve him and be protected by him. Kayla is left mortally wounded though.
Wolverine and Sabretooth end up combining their energies against the new super-soldier, a member of the old Team X, muted and mutated further. Sabretooth only does this because he wants to kill Wolverine himself for breaking their bond of loyalty. The battle on the top of the crumbling cooling tower of the power plant is very well staged.
As the new mutant dies, taking the tower with him, Stryker attacks Wolverine with Adamantium bullets with shatter Logan’s memories. When he wakes up, he has no idea who he is any more, and there is a dead girl at his feet (Kayla). Gambit offers to help him recover, but Logan is too headstrong and proud so he goes off alone with no clear plans. Kayla has, just before death, hypnotised Stryker into walking away until his feet bled and then to keep going. He is seen doing so as the film ends 9in a post-credit sequence). He is seen being arrested by a new mysterious military team, who clearly have their own agenda for him in relation to the growing number of mutants in the world.
Jackman is excellent as the brooding, tragic hero doomed to lose his past, and get all his friends killed. The fight scenes are very well staged, especially the opening wartime scenes, and Three Mile Island engagements. There are echoes of the later films, and some familiar mutants are given minor roles, most notably Cyclops, who is used with some ingenuity here. Wraith is rather too like the later Nightcrawler (X Men “). Toad can be seen among the mutants imprisoned in the Three Mile Island cells, and a young version of Storm was seen in preview footage of this, though her scene was then cut from the finished film).
The film was leaked in pirate copies before release, provoking some outraged and widely publicised anger, especially from Hugh Jackman.
Critical reaction was mixed and largely negative, but the film is actually very good. It manages to have lots of mutants involved without actually saturating the screen with them so that no one gets anything to do as happened in X Men Three The Last Stand. The human drama is never neglected and the relationship between Logan & Kayla is beautifully handled.
LINKS
WOLVERINE ON WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverine_(film)
& THE INTERNATIONAL MOVIE DATABASE http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458525/
Arthur Chappell
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