Post by Dino on Jan 2, 2011 20:59:43 GMT -5
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (2009)
Directed by Gavin Hood
Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods
After the extremely disappointing X-Men: The Last Stand, I had high hopes for this film. The trailer looked like it was on the right track but studio interference took what was a good story and ruined it with pointless cameos and stupid story decisions.
The film opens in the 1800s where young James Howlett (Troye Sivan) finds his father dead at the hands of Thomas Logan (Aaron Jeffrey). James lashes out and bone claws pop out of his hands. Just before Thomas dies, he tells James that he's his father. James then runs out of the house and is followed by Thomas' son, Victor (Michael-James Olsen), who tells James that they're brothers and now have to stick together.
The opening credits then run over a series of short scenes of various wars that the adult James (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Liev Shreiber) are involved in over the course of about a century. These end with a scene in Vietnam where after trying to kill their commanding officer, the pair are executed by firing squad, but they don't die. Instead they wake up in a cell with Colonel William Stryker (Danny Huston) telling them that he wants the two of them to join a special team he's putting together.
This team also includes other mutants John Wraith (Will.i.am), Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), Chris Bradley (Dominic Monaghan), and my personal favorite, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds). They invade an African government building trying to find a meteor Stryker wants. After a scene in the village where Stryker orders them to kill, James has decided he's had enough and leaves the group.
James (or Logan, it's never clear when he takes on his father's name) returns to Canada and works as a logger while living with a schoolteacher named Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Everything is peaceful until Stryker and Zero show up, warning Logan that Victor has gone rogue and is killing their former teammates. Victor kills Silverfox and nearly kills Logan. When Stryker returns again, Logan volunteers for the procedure to bond his skeleton and claws with adamantium so he can pursue and defeat Victor.
The process is successful but then Logan awakes before they're supposed to wipe his memory and kill him and from here is where the movie begins to fall apart. The major story is that Stryker is trying to create the ultimate mutant, one who has many different powers. And it's a story that just doesn't work.
But before I get into that, let's start with what does work. Jackman is always a joy to watch as Logan, but one thing that never makes sense is how this links up with X2. In that film, Stryker told Logan that he was an animal before he had his memory wiped but you never get that sense at all. Logan's a bit too heroic for a story that's supposed to be about his past.
I was really impressed with Will.i.am. Usually, characters like Wraith are reduced to small cameos in the film, so I'm glad that he got a chance to really shine and he and Jackman have a good chemistry together. Liev Shreiber was also suitably creepy as Victor/Sabretooth. I wasn't sure if he could pull it off when he was cast, but despite Tyler Mane being significantly more imposing, physically speaking, Schreiber's excellent performance makes Victor much scarier.
There's been enough said about Reynolds as Deadpool that I don't really need to repeat here except to say that he was born to play this role. And despite fans not liking him, I thought Taylor Kitsch did a good job as Gambit, or at least the best he could have with what he had to work with. He had the presence of the character, the sly charm, and I for one was glad he didn't overdo the accent like the cartoons have done. Those portrayals make Gambit almost like a caricature. Naturally, Josh Holloway would have been a better choice, but I'm not going to hold that against Kitsch.
Now as for what doesn't work and hoo boy is there a lot. This was a very simple story to tell and a very simple way to do it was to focus more on Logan's time with Team X (and by Team X, I mean just Logan, Creed, Maverick, Wraith and Silver Fox), show them going up against Omega Red. Take advantage of the Cold War setting and end it with the adamantium. Instead, we have to make this more of an X-Men movie and Fox loves their stupid mutant cameos. Any possible chance they have to shoehorn a mutant character into this movie, they take full advantage of. This includes stupid cameos featuring Cyclops, Emma Frost (who is apparently Silverfox's sister), and others who may or may not be Toad, Quicksilver, Banshee and even Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Professor X (using the same CGI technology to deage him as they used in the third X-Men film). These cameos were handled well in the first two films, but by the third film, cameos were pretty much all the film was about. Fox does the same thing the CW does with Smallville, where they throw in a bunch of references that are supposed to compensate for poor storytelling. It's pretty much the same here, the films relying more on stupid cameos to compensate for bad story.
The ending is even worse. We find out that Sabretooth and Silverfox faked her death using a chemical that would slow her heart rate to the point that she would appear dead and then Victor dumped fake blood over her. Okay, that may fool a normal person but you're telling me someone with Logan's senses wouldn't be able to detect even a faint heartbeat? You're telling me he couldn't tell the difference between fake blood and real blood or even that he wouldn't check for wounds? And then at the end before they part ways, Logan tells Victor that their brief team-up against Weapon XI changes nothing between them. Okay, but if the entire reason Logan was against Victor was because of the death of Silverfox and that she's now alive, wouldn't that mean things actually HAVE changed?
Then there's Weapon XI, where they take what was a great start with Reynolds as Deadpool and then turn him into some knock-off of Baraka from Mortal Kombat with a host of mutant powers and no mouth? It was a total insult to the character and fans of him.
But the biggest bit of bad storytelling is in the amnesia process. In the comics, Logan's memory was wiped during the adamantium process and false memories were implanted. But that wouldn't have worked for the idiotic story Fox wanted to tell. And it seems that they got to the end of the movie and realized, "oh shit, we forgot that he's an amnesiac in the X-Men films." So the answer for that? An adamantium bullet which won't kill Logan but will erase his memory because when the injury heals, the memories won't be there with it. It's one of the dumbest explanations I've ever seen in a movie.
Had Fox been out to make a good movie, it could have easily been done by making it a simple movie focusing on Logan's past. But Fox felt they had to try and compete with the other superhero movies and in the process, just like with their other recent endeavors, they failed miserably.
Directed by Gavin Hood
Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods
After the extremely disappointing X-Men: The Last Stand, I had high hopes for this film. The trailer looked like it was on the right track but studio interference took what was a good story and ruined it with pointless cameos and stupid story decisions.
The film opens in the 1800s where young James Howlett (Troye Sivan) finds his father dead at the hands of Thomas Logan (Aaron Jeffrey). James lashes out and bone claws pop out of his hands. Just before Thomas dies, he tells James that he's his father. James then runs out of the house and is followed by Thomas' son, Victor (Michael-James Olsen), who tells James that they're brothers and now have to stick together.
The opening credits then run over a series of short scenes of various wars that the adult James (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Liev Shreiber) are involved in over the course of about a century. These end with a scene in Vietnam where after trying to kill their commanding officer, the pair are executed by firing squad, but they don't die. Instead they wake up in a cell with Colonel William Stryker (Danny Huston) telling them that he wants the two of them to join a special team he's putting together.
This team also includes other mutants John Wraith (Will.i.am), Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), Chris Bradley (Dominic Monaghan), and my personal favorite, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds). They invade an African government building trying to find a meteor Stryker wants. After a scene in the village where Stryker orders them to kill, James has decided he's had enough and leaves the group.
James (or Logan, it's never clear when he takes on his father's name) returns to Canada and works as a logger while living with a schoolteacher named Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Everything is peaceful until Stryker and Zero show up, warning Logan that Victor has gone rogue and is killing their former teammates. Victor kills Silverfox and nearly kills Logan. When Stryker returns again, Logan volunteers for the procedure to bond his skeleton and claws with adamantium so he can pursue and defeat Victor.
The process is successful but then Logan awakes before they're supposed to wipe his memory and kill him and from here is where the movie begins to fall apart. The major story is that Stryker is trying to create the ultimate mutant, one who has many different powers. And it's a story that just doesn't work.
But before I get into that, let's start with what does work. Jackman is always a joy to watch as Logan, but one thing that never makes sense is how this links up with X2. In that film, Stryker told Logan that he was an animal before he had his memory wiped but you never get that sense at all. Logan's a bit too heroic for a story that's supposed to be about his past.
I was really impressed with Will.i.am. Usually, characters like Wraith are reduced to small cameos in the film, so I'm glad that he got a chance to really shine and he and Jackman have a good chemistry together. Liev Shreiber was also suitably creepy as Victor/Sabretooth. I wasn't sure if he could pull it off when he was cast, but despite Tyler Mane being significantly more imposing, physically speaking, Schreiber's excellent performance makes Victor much scarier.
There's been enough said about Reynolds as Deadpool that I don't really need to repeat here except to say that he was born to play this role. And despite fans not liking him, I thought Taylor Kitsch did a good job as Gambit, or at least the best he could have with what he had to work with. He had the presence of the character, the sly charm, and I for one was glad he didn't overdo the accent like the cartoons have done. Those portrayals make Gambit almost like a caricature. Naturally, Josh Holloway would have been a better choice, but I'm not going to hold that against Kitsch.
Now as for what doesn't work and hoo boy is there a lot. This was a very simple story to tell and a very simple way to do it was to focus more on Logan's time with Team X (and by Team X, I mean just Logan, Creed, Maverick, Wraith and Silver Fox), show them going up against Omega Red. Take advantage of the Cold War setting and end it with the adamantium. Instead, we have to make this more of an X-Men movie and Fox loves their stupid mutant cameos. Any possible chance they have to shoehorn a mutant character into this movie, they take full advantage of. This includes stupid cameos featuring Cyclops, Emma Frost (who is apparently Silverfox's sister), and others who may or may not be Toad, Quicksilver, Banshee and even Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Professor X (using the same CGI technology to deage him as they used in the third X-Men film). These cameos were handled well in the first two films, but by the third film, cameos were pretty much all the film was about. Fox does the same thing the CW does with Smallville, where they throw in a bunch of references that are supposed to compensate for poor storytelling. It's pretty much the same here, the films relying more on stupid cameos to compensate for bad story.
The ending is even worse. We find out that Sabretooth and Silverfox faked her death using a chemical that would slow her heart rate to the point that she would appear dead and then Victor dumped fake blood over her. Okay, that may fool a normal person but you're telling me someone with Logan's senses wouldn't be able to detect even a faint heartbeat? You're telling me he couldn't tell the difference between fake blood and real blood or even that he wouldn't check for wounds? And then at the end before they part ways, Logan tells Victor that their brief team-up against Weapon XI changes nothing between them. Okay, but if the entire reason Logan was against Victor was because of the death of Silverfox and that she's now alive, wouldn't that mean things actually HAVE changed?
Then there's Weapon XI, where they take what was a great start with Reynolds as Deadpool and then turn him into some knock-off of Baraka from Mortal Kombat with a host of mutant powers and no mouth? It was a total insult to the character and fans of him.
But the biggest bit of bad storytelling is in the amnesia process. In the comics, Logan's memory was wiped during the adamantium process and false memories were implanted. But that wouldn't have worked for the idiotic story Fox wanted to tell. And it seems that they got to the end of the movie and realized, "oh shit, we forgot that he's an amnesiac in the X-Men films." So the answer for that? An adamantium bullet which won't kill Logan but will erase his memory because when the injury heals, the memories won't be there with it. It's one of the dumbest explanations I've ever seen in a movie.
Had Fox been out to make a good movie, it could have easily been done by making it a simple movie focusing on Logan's past. But Fox felt they had to try and compete with the other superhero movies and in the process, just like with their other recent endeavors, they failed miserably.
