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The Linfield Review

The student news site of Linfield University

The Linfield Review

The student news site of Linfield University

The Linfield Review

No amount of adamantium will save ‘Wolverine’

Dominic Baez

Trust me when I say that I’m all for Hugh Jackman being half-naked throughout an entire movie. But no amount of gratuitous flesh or insanely stunning action scenes would help make “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” worth the $11 I paid or the 107 minutes of my life I wasted. I will never get that time back. Ever.
For those not in the loop, “Wolverine” is a prequel to the “X-Men” series, focusing on one of the most popular comic book characters of all-time. Instead of focusing on just how badass Wolverine is, I was stuck watching some emo-punk with the most ridiculous hair I’ve ever seen hack and slash his way through life. And that is just the beginning of the myriad of irritations I have with this film.
Is it too much to expect the movie to cover all of its bases and actually explain a thing or two? After watching it, I can tell you this: I left with just as many questions as I had when I went in. I don’t think prequels are supposed to work that way. Regardless, I’m not one for sketchy background plotlines or pointless interludes, which are oh-so-ever present in this movie.
So, the movie begins, and I was graced with what I thought would be a great opening to an even better movie. Not so much. I guess main character Jimmy Creed was born in Canada in the mid-1800s and was always sick or something like that. Two minutes later, two men are dead, including Jimmy’s father, and Jimmy and his brother Victor are running through the woods.
Oh, and his father’s death triggered the manifestation of his mutant powers: immortality; superhuman strength; and the ability to summon sharp, bony, dagger-like protrusions from between his knuckles: Victor possesses similar powers, but he is kind of insane.
I’ve read the comics, but as I watched this, I actually said, “WTF?” out loud in the theater. Then, as the opening credits rolled, I saw both Jimmy and Victor still running and, even though they’re both Canadian, killing their way through American history, fighting in every war from the American Civil War all the way to Vietnam. And in case you couldn’t tell by now, Jimmy is Wolverine and Victor is Sabretooth. And I guess in this amazing rendition, Sabretooth is Wolverine’s brother, not his archrival. Yeah, I’m not too sure what happened there.
As the film progresses, the brothers are about to be executed after killing their own troops but are rescued by the mysterious William Stryker, who wants to make them part of a special unit. Now if that doesn’t sound sketch, I don’t know what does. The plot follows as such: Each unit member has a distinctive mutant power, which Stryker uses to locate some sort of alien meteor with a unique metal alloy; however, when the methods to obtain the meteor become more and more savage to the local denizens, Wolverine walks away.
Now we get to half-naked emo Wolverine, who prefers to be called Logan. Oh, and there’s a girl now, who, from the first moment I saw her, I knew was going to die and screw everything up. But alas, all good things must come to an end.
Stryker finds Logan and convinces him to coat his skeleton in adamantium, which is a completely normal request, I know. It seems as though Stryker’s ultimate goal is to bolster the army with a super soldier: He’s rounded up the world’s mutants and found a way to harvest their powers and combine them without transferring their weaknesses. But let’s not forget the crazy Victor, who has become rather unpredictable and unstable and a threat to the program. Damn those crazy people. Then Stryker wants Logan to kill Victor, but of course that doesn’t happen in the quickest and most precise manner.
So, long story short: Stryker finds Logan; Victor finds Logan; Logan is still half-naked; adamantium is involved; Logan is then fully naked; some insane fights happen; people die violently; blah, blah, blah; the end.
Like I mentioned, for those who love action and nothing else, this is your movie. But for people who actually like to have their questions answered while watching a movie, stay away. You will get sucked into this black hole of mediocrity. Don’t let the box office numbers fool you.
But if nothing else, seeing Jackman scantily clad for an hour and a half was totally worth it.

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    BurgessMay 11, 2009 at 5:52 am

    Were you high when you saw it? Everyone I know who saw it loved it. I guess you know more than the creators of the characters since they loved it too: http://www.newsarama.com/film/090508-claremont-lein-wolverine.html

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