Wolverine: Origins

I'm rather disappointed with the new Wolverine movie.

I haven't heard what other people have said about the film (other than the group I went to the release with, but we were all pretty much on the same page) so maybe someone out there had a slightly more positive experience...but I don't see how. I don't think there was a single aspect of the storyline that caught me off guard or made me think. Oh no- my friends and I were crowing about "ooh, that's *spoiler's* dad! I betcha it is!", "oh, that guy is so going to die" and "she's really a traitor! Five bucks says she turns on him!" and in every single case, we turned out to be right (sadly) except for the time I said "oh, the elevator is going to be empty when it arrives on the floor" and Deadpool (err...just Wade, actually. They weren't calling him Deadpool yet, I think) was still in plain view when the elevator landed. That may have been the only surprise in the entire movie- and I haven't even read the Origins comics, so it's not like I was cheating! (That also means I don't know how close the movie followed the comics, or indeed if they follow them at all, so don't take this review of the movie as a commentary on the comics.)

As if the transparent plot wasn't insult enough, the special effects wound up leaving the same acidic aftertaste in my mouth as the cheap-as-fuck special effects employed by none other than the SciFi (SyFy now) channel. Granted, they weren't as God-fucking-awful as the SciFi/SyFy effects are, but they were way below par for a movie with the kind of history and fanbase (and one would think with the funding!) usually associated with the X-Men movie franchise. Granted, this is a prequel, and we all know how much those suck, but I still find it difficult to believe no one somewhere along the line of production said to his friend "hmm...do Wolverine's claws look a bit... I don't know, flat? Unfinished, maybe?" because the first thing I thought when Wolvie unsheathed his newly-minted adamantium claws was "those look totally fucking fake", especially in the farmhouse bathroom scene where Wolvie examines his funky snow-white claws in excruciating detail. (Also- am I the only person who asked "when and how the hell did we wind up in Smallville?" when Wolvie showed up at that farmhouse? Seriously- what the fuck?) The explotions and most of the fighting was so-so in quality, pretty much what you'd expect in any typical action flick, though I really dug the one awesome scene torward the end when Sabertooth and Wolvie teamed up against a teleporting Deadpool (for reasons that I'm choosing now to spoil).

Gambit. Oh, for the love of God, why? I spent way too freaking long to see my dear Remy in a movie for THAT to be all I get. Weak accent, not a word of French, very little screen presence and 90% of his fighting techniques were annoying rather than awesome. And, to add insult to injury, he had normal eyes. That's right, not the infamous red-on-black- he had normal eyes. They glowed a wee bit when he used his powers (and only when he used his powers during a closeup), but generally he had normal pupils, normal irises, the whole works. I am PISSED. First they screw up Rogue, now they've gone off and screwed up Gambit, too.

Cheap cheap cheap fucking cheap.

On the plus side, I loved Ryan Renolds as Wade (for the all of five minutes he was actually on the screen), and Liev Schreiber's performance as Sabertooth was excellent- much, much better than the stuntman they had play his part in the X-Men films. And what's more is I've heard there's an extra scene at the end were Deadpool shows up, breaks the forth wall (his trademark in the comics) and shushes the audience, after his *spoilers!* decapitation in the film. Healing powers for the win! The scene I saw at the end of the credits in the particular theater I attended just showed Wolvie drinking at a Japanese bar and being mopey. *end of spoilers*