This opening chapter of the X-Men Origins series focuses on Wolverine, the best loved superhero of the bunch, and what shaped him. The vastly talented Hugh Jackman is Logan / Wolverine, and he is the thing you can’t stop watching.
The story begins during the 1840s in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Logan is a sickly child, terrorised by his brother and forced to flee when tragedy strikes. His rage becomes tangible and frightening, and drives him to kill. Anger, fear and shame haunt him into adulthood along with his new blades.
His elder brother (Liev Schreiber) who eventually becomes X-Man Sabretooth is a nasty piece of work, cunning, violent and opportunistic, driven by jealous hatred of his younger sibling. But they flee their home together and head out into the world as professional soldiers, fighting in the Civil War, World War I, World War II and Vietnam.
Stryker later plans to have Logan ‘upgraded” to be a better mutant superhero. It’s clear just because Huston’s so good at being bad, that he has something wicked in mind. But for now, he seems like a benefactor.
His lover (Lynne Collins) is too lovely, good and beautiful to be true, as they while away what seems like most of their time off from lumber jacking and teaching in bed – in their mountain top cabin. This is the quiet life to which Logan has escaped after work with Stryker’s team went to hell. Tragedy strikes.
Another bucolic scene occurs when a dear old couple of homesteaders take him in after he’s gone through hell at Stryker’s hands. The Kents to Jackman’s Superman. Tragedy strikes again and Logan acquires an iconic item and inspiration for his mission.
Hood gives us a peek at Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), Bolt (Dominic Monaghan) and the Blob (Kevin Durand) future X-Men who provide interest and a little humour.
It’s exhilarating, fun, silly and sentimental. And it looks spectacular. The early life segments look old fashioned, sienna toned and crackly … a nice flourish. It weaves together then and now and reality and memory. It feels like real human history and has richness and depth. It feels important and gives weight to the comic book franchise.
The modern day stuff moves like lightning, its slick and sleek and fun, but suffers from gaping holes in the plotline and off base dialogue. For instance, if something is made to be indestructible, then how can it be destroyed? But then there’d be no movie.
Shot almost entirely in Australia and New Zealand and meant to look like British Columbia and the North West Territories of Canada, Wolverine is a travelogue, jammed with all-natural eye candy. The mountainscapes and waterfalls and logging camps are otherworldly visually and thematically.
The natural world represents the opposite of what life was like for our hero in the middle years inside Stryker’s band of mutant warriors. Time at work banging heads for his country is ‘evil’. Turns out, Logan / Wolverine isn’t part of the US military corporate machine – he’s Canadian! Time working as a lumber jack, living in a mountain aerie, far from the nasty brutish humans and mutants, in love with a beautiful schoolteacher is ‘good.’ It’s all so clear.
Hugh Jackman is all rippled manliness and ferocious intensity. He struggles with his own good and evil sides. He is tender in love but clear eyed in battle. Jackman seems born to the part, with the dancer’s grace and speed, the handsome face of a poetic seeker, the acting chops to help us suspend disbelief. He carries the film almost entirely, and with great ease.
Stay for the credits.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
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