Saturday 2 May 2009

Review: Wolverine.

SPOILER WARNING. I have seen the new Wolverine movie. It was so good (And, at other times atrocious) that I must speak about it right now. I may randomly review things from now on, just because it's my blog and I'll do what I want to.
And just because it's funny.


His history, which took place mostly during the opening credits, was pretty darn awesome. It showed a rather faithful adaptation of the Origin comic book from a few years back, with Victor Creed as his childhood friend/older brother, and the drunk gardener Logan. (Fun fact, Wolvie is not technically a mutant, neither are Sabretooth, Daken (Wolvie's son) or X-23 (Wolvie's daughter via artificial insemination) since the gardener Logan was a mutant, none of his descendants have mutated since, but merely passed on their powers.)
Anywhoo, they do screw it up a little way in, by cutting out James (Wolvie) Howlett's first love Rose, who was murdered by Victor "Dog" Creed. I understand why though, time restraints, Wolvie's origin is long and complicated, and they had Silver Fox to show his tragic love life. After the opening credits, showing James and Victor going through several wars (And cutting out Wolvie's time in Japan along the way (But that's minor really), we skip to Vietnam and when they got recruited by Stryker (From X-Men 2 movie).
There they meet Wraith, Agent Zero, Wade Wilson (More on him later), Fred Dukes and some bloke who can power electrical devices with his mind. During Stryker's quest to find Adamantium, Wolvie leaves the group and his brother, seemingly for good.
I'll skip a bit, but Wolvie falls for Silver Fox and becomes a lumberjack, until the day Victor kills her. This leads Wolvie on a revenge trip, where he finds out Wade Wilson and the electric guy have both been murdered by Victor, agrees to get the adamantium bonded, then finds out Stryker wants to use him as a weapon (And erase his memories). He busts out, stuff happens, he kills Agent Zero (Whose specialty is being good with guns. He seriously thought he had a chance, moron), then hunts down Fred Dukes and Wraith, in order to find Victor.
Wraith has gone straight and is a boxing promoter, one of the people on his books is Fred Dukes, whose, ah, put on a little weight. Okay, a lot of weight. Alright, quite possibly a metric ton. After a humorous mix-up and a fight scene, Wolvie finds out that Victor was working for Stryker all along, catching mutants for experiments. He and Wraith leave for vengeance, by finding the one mutant who escaped being captured, Remy Lebeau, who can be found in New Orleans playing cards. Wraith tries to cover the back exit but gets killed by Victor, whose just come from killing Fred Dukes. Gambit (Whose powers are accurately portrayed, but most people will think they weren't because they didn't read his comic), fights Wolvie, and in doing so allow Victor to escape.
They then go to Stryker's hideout, which is in a nuclear power plant (If you do watch that scene, remember that this was set in the 70s-80s). Gambit does nothing other than fly the plane, which Wolvie jumps out of.
He goes in, kills a lot of people, saves a whole bunch more, learns stuff he really didn't want to, and just as he's saving a girl with diamond skin and a boy with laser-beam-eyes (Yeah, you can probably guess who they are) he faces Deadpool, Weapon XI (Roman numeral for 11, Captain America was Weapon 0, very important). Somes witty banter later (Not, that entire fight scene has one joke, and it was Wolvie who said it. This isn't the Deadpool we know and love), Victor shows that he does have an honourable bone in his body (Exactly one, which I think he has surgically removed later in life) as he helps his younger brother.
They get the snot beaten out of them, until Wolvie comes up with a great idea, which I won't spoil for you, but has been used in the comic and it didn't work.Then stuff happens, we get the most important cameo in the movie and all the loose ends get resolved, leaving exactly one plot hole (Emphasis on hole).
The action scenes were awesome, Wolvie getting to grips with who he is and what he let happen to himself shows some great acting by Hugh Jackman and there are more than enough cameos to even get some lost on me.

But nobody cares about any of that. What's really been drawing in the crowds is the very first big screen appearance of Deadpool, the single most awesome character ever created in the history of comic books. Ryan Reynolds plays pre-healing factor Wade Wilson to a Tee, being a witty, sharp-tongued ass-kicker that he is. Then they go and ruin it by sowing his GORRAMN MOUTH SHUT! THIS IS DEADPOOL WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE, TALKING IS WHAT HE DOES! THEY DON'T CALL HIM THE MERC WITH A MOUTH FOR NOTHING! HE'S THE GUY WHO'S DESTROYING THE FOURTH WALL BRICK BY BRICK, WITH DYNAMITE!

So yeah, I'm not happy with what they did to their, honestly, third biggest star, behind Wolvie and Gambit.
Also, the officially released action figures are smegging tiny.

2 comments:

  1. I agree completely. I was SO pleased with the movie - then I find out Deadpool's the villain and HE CAN'T TALK and HE GETS KILLED. What the eff. Gambit and Deadpool are like... my favorite comic book characters ever.

    I'm not quite sure what plot hole you're referring to - if it's Cyclops meeting Wolverine and then not remembering him in X-men, come on, he was blindfolded and all he "met" of Wolverine was a voice shouting "Get them out of here!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually, the plothole was the two holes in Wolverine's adamantium skull that are missing from the first movie (They even show that part of his skull).

    ReplyDelete