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X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Hugh Jackman, Live Scheiber, Danny Huston

"I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice." - Wolverine

I’m on a deadline. I’m a zombie. Just need a little sleep before I attempt to review another superhero film, Wolverine. Three a.m. Yelps and howls from the living room. Throwing on a pair of sweat pants, I stumble towards the living room. The only way I can describe what is playing out in front of me is to imagine Moe and Curly, loaded on Bud Light and cheap Walmart wine, re-enacting a John Woo film. My two housemates are shooting each other with a pellet gun. Their stupidity can be forgiven. They are only 37 and 20 years old after all. Over the last few months I had witnessed stranger nocturnal scenes fueled by Bacchus. There was the time I walked in on them using the puppy’s shock training collar to see how much electric current they could take. They learned that turning the dial up to 10 on the remote control really hurts. I learned that the puppy was the smartest creature in the room, because she chewed up the collar when it was left on the floor instead of returning it to the drawer. There was the faith healing service to cure the pooch of her deafness. For some unknown reason, Jesus did not bestow hearing to an animal that spends her days drinking out of the toilet and licking herself in the most inappropriate places when guests come over. There was the pouring of gun powder onto the street in front of the house. It was supposed to spell my name. Why this would make me happy is beyond me? Then the stagger, the slip and fall into the burning substance. Maybe it was the stress of work… the stress of not having any money… the stress of drowning in debt… the frustration of being in a long distance relationship and worrying that she really did not like me. Something in me snapped and for a moment in my mind I was Wolverine with his adamantium claws going berserk, cutting to ribbons, lighting fast, these two idiots who were shooting each other in the backside with hard plastic, orange BBs. Instead, I just shook my head and went back to bed.

The truly great superheroes are iconic, much like the ancient Greek and Roman gods, speaking to deeper truths within the human psyche. Something inside of the reader identifies with the protagonist hero. Every man who the world sees as common and ordinary believes, if given the chance, they could be extraordinary, a Superman escaping their Clark Kent exterior. The same power fantasy goes for women. It is little wonder that Gloria Steinem used the image of Wonder Woman for the women’s liberation movement. Every nerdy teenage boy finds himself walking in the shoes of Peter Parker. Those who feel like they do not belong, that they are mutants, different, battle along side of the X-Men. The darkness of the male psyche finds a home in the brooding Batman who is ultimately doomed to be alone. Explosive rage that bubbles just below the surface is embodied in The Hulk. The 98-pound weakling imagines himself transforming into Captain America, who is a man out of his own time like so many of us feel. What victim of crime does not want to pick up a gun and take the law into his or her own hands like The Punisher? Wolverine is one of these iconic characters.

Much like Barack Obama in real life, Wolverine has had an amazing rocket ride, becoming one of the most popular superheroes in the Marvel Universe and even entered the larger public consciousness. He was originally designed as a throw away character in 1974, an afterthought to solve a dilemma by writer Len Wein. The Hulk had been driving north into Canada and needed a super powered opponent to fight, another monster of the month. Dressed in his blue-and-yellow costume, other than being an agent of the Canadian government, little about the character was revealed. A few months later, Wein, who was also writing the X-Men, had the mutant group recruit him. For the most part, he was a background character overshadowed by the more established members of the team and there were frequent discussions of dropping him altogether. Much like television background characters like Steve Urkel, Frazier Crane, or Mimi Bobeck, given his hyper masculinity and unstable nature, Wolverine struck a cord with readers and quickly began to upstage his fellow superheroes especially when Canadian artist John Byrne took over the artwork. In the early 1980s, writer Frank Miller, helped transform the genre from stories for children to adult fare. He took a minor superhero on the verge of being canceled named Daredevil, darkened him and produced stories never seen in the paneled world of comics before. He asked for a crack at the character in a limited four-issue solo series. Soon other up-and-coming writers and artists wanted to show what they could do with the cigar chomping Canuck A superstar was born. Last year “Wizard Magazine” ranked him as the greatest comic book character of all time and “Empire Magazine” placed him fourth on their list.

But comics for the most part are a ghetto, and it would be another accident of history that would bring him front and center before the public. In 2000, the X-Men were brought to the big screen. After considering actors like Glenn Danzig, Russell Crowe, Aaron Eckhart, and Viggo Mortensen for the role of Wolverine, the part was offered to a young actor named Dougray Scott. At the last moment Scott had to drop out of the movie due to schedule conflicts with another film he was in, Mission: Impossible II. Acting quickly, the studio turned to an actor named Hugh Jackman, who, other than three short lived Australian television series, a couple of minor movie roles and some musical theater, was unknown. Hey, world’s sexiest man (at least according to People magazine), opportunity is knocking. Supposed to be just one of the crew, Jackman became the break out star of the franchise and now Wolverine’s future is so bright he needs to wear shades.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a prequel, detailing the origins of James Howlett, aka Logan, aka Wolverine. Taking elements from Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X graphic novel, the newest installment of the X-Men franchise details Logan’s childhood, with his brother and future nemesis, Victor, aka Sabretooth (Liev Schrieber), and how he became Wolverine through the efforts of the movie’s main villains, William Stryker (Danny Huston) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds). The brothers are soldiers who wound up in the brig when Victor crosses the violence line one too many times. Enter Stryker, who offers the boys a chance out of the pokey if they agree to join an elite special ops team made up of mutants. As Victor grows increasingly out of control, Logan decides to walk away and live as a lumberjack in the Canadian wilderness with his girlfriend. Trouble is not too far away because someone is killing his fellow mutants and Stryker heads up north to warn our young hero and, of course, Logan tells him he can take care of himself. The quiet life is about to end for our hero. Who is killing the mutants? Why does Logan turn towards his former commanding officer to transform him into the ultimate killing machine?

So is this a great film? I love comic book movies and have even tried to enjoy those on the margins like Ghost Rider (What are you going to do with a guy with a flaming skull?) and The Punisher films. Wolverine is nowhere in the league of last summer’s superhero releases (The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Hulk, Hellboy 2) and kind of falls apart logically at the end. It is probably closer to Spider-Man 3 than to Spider-Man 2 in quality and suffers from many of the problems of the former film. Mark my words: it is only a matter of time until 20^th Century Fox announces a Gambit movie. (Along with Wolverine, another casualty of Marvels no smoking policy.)

Wolverine is ultimately about raw masculinity, testosterone with claws. It is what makes him such a great character. At least that is what I was thinking when I asked my housemates if I could see the pellet gun that they had been shooting each other with. Handed over. I admire the pistol and ask how much it costs. $20. Smash. I shatter the thing against the wall. “I owe you $20. Never wake me up again.” Wolverine would be proud.

Verdict: Closer to Spider-Man 3 than 2.