Sunday, October 25, 2009

Review: X-Men Origins Wolverine movie


X-Men Origins Wolverine

Directed by Gavin Hood

Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Taylor Kitsch, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Henney

Again, I am questioning renting DVDs let alone buying them....but I am getting ahead of myself

Let's see, X-Men Origins Wolverine is a prequel to the series of X-Men movies. The film attempts to answer all the outstanding questions about Logan's missing past.

Up to this point I would have sworn that he was not a mutant but a medical experiment gone bad. But I was wrong.

As we know Wolverine now, without the benefit of the origins movie, he has no memory, but a likelihood that he had a military past because of the dog tags he wears but don't have any record of. He is the survivor of an experiment to replace all his bones, which leads to some freakish abilities. Other than that Logan has no memory of his family or his past. Origins answers all of them and more, which I don't think is fair to get into if you haven't rented the dvd or wait for tv.

I will say the movie is action packed as you would expect from a Marvel vehicle. I really can't say that there is anything unusual or different about the movie. Honestly this could be a Highlander film for all that it's worth, but Logan is an enigma. We know he can not remember his past, so throughout the whole movie you're constantly holding the movie up to what you already against what he clearly remembers and does.

Only at the very near end do you get the tie-in and now Logan can not recall anything, but up until that moment you almost speculate that they must be rewriting Wolverine's history...nope it all works. Maybe that is what makes this move work as well as it did. First off, it IS an bit of an untidy ending, but you know where it's going now, so its ok. There is plenty of action yes, but every bit is Tempered by Logan's sensibilities. This makes him easier to identify with. Which puts it miles ahead of movies like the Fan 4 series.

I might recommend the movie, but what about the DVD
Picture and sound are excellent, no complaints there. But if you call trailers and a tobacco psa extra features....you're golden, I don't. I am beginning to seriously consider that the studio are shunting all the good stuff onto the Blu-ray disks and leave the dvd renters hanging. And that is patently wrong! A lot of the older generation is making the move away from the defunct vhs and buying DVD players. If the studios are marketing the high end to the 20/30 somethings because of disposable cash, they are so wrong! The retirement age viewer has much more entertainment dollars, what they aren't is bleeding edge tech adopters. What they are not going to buy is a marginal product. I know many retirement age movie fans that are just now or will be migrating from VHS to DVD. For the movie marketing machine to totally drop the ball on a large consumer base is insane! lol

So people that have waited for the dvd...well I am going to suggest you just stream it from an online service because there is nothing here for value added in the DVD unless you are up for paying the long dollar I guess for some special release... I would give the movie an 8 but for value added 0 which as you can see gives a ridiculous average so I will just dock it 1 and call it a 7 which is unfortunate because the movie is better than 7 but I am not about to waste my money buying it...even renting it I feel a bit taken.... You decide.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I was under the impression that Wolverine's mutation was extremely fast healing of injuries.

The mad scientists who experimented on him used his mutated ability to absorb damage while replacing his skeleton with adamantium. They also gave him the knuckle-knives.

Beam Me Up said...

Blizno
Yeah, there were several things that didn't gel well. Yes he healed fast, and the explanation was yeah, he would heal, but like turning off a computer, the memory would be gone....They never really cleared up how it is that he was immortal in the film. I never heard that mentioned before. In the movie, the knives were a by product of the adamantium. To be honest, I can't see how that makes him anything special. Fast healing yes, but if you blow off all the soft tissue, all you have is a fancy skeleton - nothing TO grow back. still do not see Wolverine as especially well thought out. But then, it was one of the X-men I drifted towards as a kid. I liked them above the Fantastic 4 or the Justice League in general.