It's with heavy heart that I am writing this post...
...I didn't think X-Men Origins: Wolverine was very good.
I know, as you can tell by my other two posts, I'm a big comic book fan. And Wolverine is one of my favorite heroes. I always felt a connection with him because I was stocky and hairy and had a bad attitude most of the time. And I'm part Canadian.
And when the X-Men movies came out a few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by Hugh Jackman's portrayl of the character. Sure, X-Men 3 wasn't very good, but that wasn't his fault...that was all Brett Ratner, the hack. And to his credit, Jackman does another fantastic job with the hero. I know that as an actor, he really gets what the character is about, and I couldn't think of anyone else in this role besides him.
That being said...the movie itself wasn't very good. I went in with HUGE expectations, and I was definitely let down. Not so much in the first part of the movie, which really established the character well, but with the end part.
Why does Hollywood deem it necessary to stray from the source material and try and make it better? These characters (Wolverine, Sabretooth, Deadpool, Agent Zero, Silver Fox, Gambit) have been around for decades and haven't lost their popularity. Why would they need changing now?
I thought the casting was great, and I think Liev Shreiber did as good a job with Victor Creed / Sabretooth as Hugh Jackman did with Wolverine. I was really looking forward to seeing Ryan Reynolds as the smart-aleck non-stop joking Deadpool. However, his scenes were too short, and Deadpool was totally wasted, as a character, by the end of the film.
And as much as I like Taylor Kitsch on Friday Night Lights, he ended up doing a Kevin Costner and losing his New Orleans accent in about two scenes. While I've never been that big of a Gambit fan, I thought his character in the movie had potential, but was eventually made ridiculous.
And that's my biggest problem with this movie. I was looking forward to a story centered around one major character who, let's face it, is a total bad-ass. Instead, we got another dumb group hero movie. It makes me worried about The Avengers. And the ending was a cheap way to tie this movie into the previous X-Men movies.
I don't understand why Marvel films can't take a cue from the recent DC films that have come out, namely The Dark Knight. One of my favorite quotes that Christopher Nolan said was that the caliber of actors he had in the movie, they could have done Shakespeare. I'm not saying Wolverine is Shakespeare (though how cool would Macbeth be if he had razor sharp claws?), but at least take the characters seriously, and put them in a realistic setting.
I've been disappointed lately with the last two comic book movies I've seen (Punisher War Zone was GD awful), but I've got hope. Here's hoping that the next batch of Marvel movies fare better.
No comments:
Post a Comment