What can I say? I just don't get to see movies on opening day, no matter how much I yearn to. The people most interested in the movie have already seen the dang thing by the time I blog upon it--but a) there's no stopping the opening-weekend people, and b) hardly anyone reads my blog anyway, so, c) I do movie reviews because I love them. I just love movie reviews. I read movie reviews myself after I've seen movies, just to see how other people felt and what they thought about what they saw. The movie review is an airing of an opinion, true, but it's also communally-spirited, in a way. It's sometimes about advising people to wait until a thing comes out on DVD, or telling someone they really should blow off some afternoon at work and go see a movie right-friggin'-now! It's about sharing that opinion with people who will compare it to their own opinion regarding a shared experience.
With that disclaimer out of the way, let me tell you why I am so hopelessly biased, that I would enjoy X-Men Origins: Wolverine a great deal, even if it was a little formulaic and choppy. Because I did--and I think it was. Don't get me wrong. This is a kind of not-yet-summer-summer-blockbuster type movie--and choppy and formulaic are actually not unheard-of or even detrimental to the enjoyment of such pictures. Just, from the pure standpoint of a person who has watched a lot of movies--what are you going to do? Origin story = formula. Prequel based somewhat actually on Marvel comics canon = sad to say, choppy. The Marel Universe is rich, diverse, and loaded with characters. They come and go in the comics. And they come and go in this movie.
(I can point to the DC "Crisis"-type reloadings of their canon as kind of contrived and awkward, but they generate some interesting storylines. Marvel keeps continuity, but a poor reader better have some kind of a memory on them. Also, I think Marvel, just as a brand, has more ruthlessness in their story-lines as far as killing off characters, resurrecting them, having them find out who their real parents are, marrying them off, divorcing them....Their writers over the years have done a lot for character-development, but the problem is--it gets awfully involved to present a story in a movie with that level of character-entanglement.)
But I could just be grousing about there not being enough Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson). I have an open and enduring crush on Mr. Reynolds that began with Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place. He's funny, he's handsome, and I think his muscles are nice. (He acts, too! Blade III, Smoking Aces. I'm not all about the superficial.)
Will.i.am and Taylor Kitsch are also not given as much screen-time as I might've liked as John Wraith and Gambit, respectively. I thought Will.i.am did a pretty good job in his limited role though, and hope I see him on the screen again. Taylor Kitsch as Gambit was brief--but fun. I also want to see him in something else. No, I don't mean "silky briefs and my bedroom." I don't think I mean that, anyway.
And that's where the hopeless bias comes in. Of course Hugh Jackman's Logan is brilliant and I root for him. Of course Liev Schreiber (Keppler, from CSI--so intense and a good actor and, um, like that) is a snarling, fangs and claws-out foil for Wolverine, but still a little likeable.
My bias is, well, I might've been a little, um, you know. With the fighting and the actors I like and the shirtlessness....I'm just saying, it was viscerally interesting. Fight-scenes, explosions, great stunts. Shirtlessness. Hugh Jackman....shirtless, or even nekkid. I'm only human.
The movie had exactly one developed female character in Kayla Silver Wolf, Logan's girlfriend, played by Lynn Collins. She was good. Movie hurted for girl power, though.
I also want to include my :art recapitulates reality: occasional theme to note that the movie features a distinct group of people who are gathered by the government not for anything they did but for what they might do, and are subjected to possibly something like torture on the basis of something they have that the government might want. And that one of the most thought-provoking lines is a dead-pan where, when the villian, Stryker, wants the recently adamantium-enhanced Logan hunted down, he is reminded, "You just spent half a billion dollars to make him indestructible." Yes. Seems problematic, that. The Weapon X folks in the comics were Canadian, like Logan, but in this movie--it's clear he's dealing with USA-holes.
All in all, I liked the movie. There's a cameo by Patrick Stewart in the role of Professor X that is a little creepy, with heavy make-up to try and make him look younger. That character of Scott Summers is intertwined with the action--the young actor playing him shows a youth at first singled out and brought down by his trait, and then able to find a use for it, and even kind of becomes a leader. It was a good touch, including him.
So, as a comics fangirl who sometimes likes movies just based on her libido--I thought it was teh awesome. As a sober movie-critic who reviews because it's the thing to do--there were some disappointments:
But I understand from the grapevine that Gambit and Deadpool/Wade Wilson might get spin-offs? Can they undo what they did to Deadpool's mouth and bring the wisecracking back? Huh? And, well, more Gambit, yeah?
I'm already all in.
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