Wednesday, May 6, 2009

SNIKT!! X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Easton Movie Review

“My claws are adamantium, the strongest metal known man--capable of slicin' through vanadium steel like a hot knife through butter…”

In the ‘80s-era X-Men comics, either the narrator stated it every time you read SNIKT, the “sound” Wolverine’s claws make when they extend, or Wolverine was thinking it while he flew through the air on his way to some “slicin’ and dicin’, bub.” I always loved that in comic books the hero’s inner dialogue was three paragraphs long during a split-second event. Unfortunately, that’s detail that can’t be captured in a movie. And one would be remiss in expecting that from Hollywood. One would be remiss in expecting much at all from Hollywood.

So yesterday, a friend of mine and I went and saw the Wolverine movie. As a mature human being, I didn’t go into the movie, thinking (to be said in a pinched and nasally voice) “I hope they get this movie right and stay true to the comic.” I think all us geeks were shaken out of any remaining naiveté that Hollywood would be interested in staying true to our childhood heroes when we saw the new Star Wars movies.

It was very cool to see this movie with the dude I did, because he’s about 12 years younger than me (he’s our neighbors son), and is pretty much me, just younger. Since I stopped mentally maturing about 15 years ago, it works great. He's already my intellectual elder. He collected X-Men during the ‘90s and so he caught me up on all the characters I missed, that make up most of the characters in the movie (i.e. Gambit and Deadpool).

So how was the movie? Not bad considering it’s an action movie not made in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so you can’t hold it too high (but I do anyway).

First, the good:

The opening scenes with Wolverine (Jimmy/Logan) as a kid were great, and played by an excellent young actor to whom you immediately relate. Sabertooth (Victor, his brother and nemesis) is also cast well, and you can see that they could easily be brothers. The scenes of Wolverine and Sabertooth fighting together during every war since the Civil War is very cool and is a great way to show his history in a very short amount of time, though I wished they would have shown us more of each time period. But that’s just me being a history nerd.

The relationship between Logan and Victor is fun to watch unfold, and seeing Victor turn more and more ruthless is a bit unnerving, but understandable considering what he’s required to do under Stryker’s command (a secret paramilitary leader who uses mutants to do his double-secret eeevil bidding).

Ryan Reynolds needs to be in more action flicks. His delivery of humor and sarcasm and his ability to look like an action hero was excellent, and brought more personality to the movie, not that personality was lacking, but really, can you have too much? Verily I say unto you, nay.

Besides the casting, I can’t think of any other good things to say, except that the first hour is just fine. I have almost no problems with it, almost. It’s not amazing, it doesn’t blow me away, but it’s fine and entertaining and all that.

Here are some things I’m getting tired of seeing in the movies, which were on display a-plenty in Wolverine:

People just the right distance from explosions that it actually propels them through the air fairly unscathed;

The slo-mo scene where characters walk calmly and coolly away from explosions as if to say “I just blew all this stuff up, and it will totally ruin my swagger if I act natural” – it’s just so affected and tired;

The good guy and the bad guy seeing each other from some distance, exchanging sarcastic remarks and then running at each other full speed to the EPIC clash – I think I counted this three times during the movie. Besides, don’t they know that sarcastic exchange is supposed to happen during the EPIC battle?!

Shaky camera during the fight scenes to make it look more EXTREME. The best fight scenes are those that are clearly shown, and that actually slow things down. Fast doesn’t mean suspenseful or intense.

“Wire-Fu:” Ditch with wires! Watch any Bruce Lee movie or earlier Jackie Chan and marvel how cool it is. No wires.

CGI: Special effects are no longer special. We are so inundated by them in action movies that we are numb. Aldous Huxley’s “Feelies” in the book Brave New World is ever more prophetic.

Darkness does not equate with coolness. Nerds everywhere will say “That movie was so cool, it was so dark.” Nerds, c’mon. Hollywood seems to be listening and now everything has a dark, bleak tone, and it’s getting old.

And one thing these superhero movies have forgotten is how cool it is to see a superhero hunt down some random thug, and watching the thug get his due. Instead, superhero movies always focus on EPIC battles between other superheroes. When did Jimmy (Wolverine) change his name to Logan (not that the change is unwelcome, or anything)? Either I blinked and missed that part, but all of a sudden everyone is calling him Logan, or I don’t recall where he got the name, or why he decided to adopt it. And he was being called Logan before he lost his memory. Nonsense!

I always thought he lost his memory due to the adamantium infusion process not due to two adamantium bullets to the skull. How convenient it was that two bullets to the skull wouldn’t kill or cause any other brain damage other than memory loss. That is soap opera logic, and this nerd is not buying it! You’re better than that, Hollywood! No? You’re not? Oh.

Now, suspending some reality is fine, but more nonsense ensues when Stryker said “erase his memory” while he’s in the adamantium tank. That’s what caused him to freak out and kill a few rubber-suited techies? So just getting your skeleton laced with a metal that can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter isn't intrusive enough to cause mental instability? And how was Stryker going to just erase memory? I know, I know, I’m getting all worked up about that and not about how preposterous it is to get adamantium injections to his bones, but they had all this shiny equipment, wires, tubes, needles, buttons, lights, teams of doctors, and rubber suits around which makes me believe anything. Where was the shiny equipment that was going to erase his memory? Nada. At the very least, show some menacing probe moving close to the tank or into the water, or something.

So in essence nerd logic can be summed by this equation: shiny equipment with lots of wires and tubes = believable, sound medical science. No shiny equipment = bullpucky.

One thing that has always bugged me about the X-Movies is Cyclops’ red eye blasts. It’s constantly blasting through steel, concrete, trees, seatbelts, you name it. But when it hits a person, it just pushes them back, and they are able to continue the epic battle. One doesn’t have to see it do its damage, but it should certainly live up to the hype and off those perpetrators!

Deadpool came long after I stopped collecting comic books, so I had no background on the character. Apparently he is loved because he’s got such a witty, sarcastic dialogue. It was too bad that Stryker sealed his mouth shut. I guess it was done for creepy effect and to darken the movie even more, but that’s unfortunate. He was almost the only comic relief in the movie (Wolverine cracked a couple of amusing lines). The idea that Stryker can take mutants powers and combine them into the perfect fighting machine was lazily borrowed from every video game since the early '80s. How many times have we seen the good guy have to fight through all these lesser bad guys only to face the “boss mob” (as gamers call them) at the end? Another stale effect. And how in the world can Deadpool bend his arms when he’s got 3 foot retractable swords implanted in them? It’s beyond the acceptable norms of preposterous movie-making!

Finally, applying the nerd equation for sound believable medical science, there were very few shiny machines, tubes, and wires to tell us that mutant power extraction and implantation is possible. All we had was Stryker saying “release Mutant XI!” and a doctor standing next to a couple of wall-sized machines, and a holding a syringe saying “it’s too early, it hasn’t had time to take effect!” or some such nonsense. Frankenstein-like, Deadpool arises, looking like something from a horror movie (dark!) with all of the cool powers. But instead of it being cool, it was so far from the Nerd Preposterosity Threshold that the viewer is left wondering if any laws of reality apply. So the final 30 minutes were pretty messy.

Two Stars. Why did I spend $7.50 on this? Because it's Wolverine, watching claws come out of fists (I draw the line on 3-foot swords - hey you gotta have standards), and ceaseless mutant mayhem is worth $7.50. Feelies, yay!

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