It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is some claws.
With the entire franchise having been warped around Hugh Jackman’s break-out appeal and most if not all of the original characters killed off in the disappointing X-Men: The Last Stand, it was inevitable that when the franchise paused to find its way by deep-diving into one of its characters, Wolverine would be the obvious choice. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, despite its (clause-laden title (or should that be claws?) seemed prime to offer a fantastic foray into the mysterious past of James Logan, charting the missing years before we met him for the first time in the barroom fight cage. Unfortunately, instead it delivered a clumsy origin story that barely scratches the surface of what makes Wolverine such a fascinating character and despite Hugh Jackman’s best efforts to carry the film, it stumbles through a series of poor decisions, shoddy CGI, and some downright baffling character choices.
Having taken us back to 1845, the film introduces us to the tweenage James Logan (nee Howlett), just as his powers and claws manifest during a moment of family drama. Following this melodramatic preamble, the film proper kicks off with a montage of Logan (Hugh Jackman) and his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) battling through several wars, offering a glimpse of a complex relationship that should have anchored the story but doesn’t because it gets bogged down in underdeveloped subplots, new characters introduced only to be tossed aside moments later and the compulsive need to tick off the mandatory prequel continuity nods in between a barrage of barely justified action scenes.
Plot-wise, the film jumps between Logan’s relationship with his brother Victor, (Sabretooth but confusingly not the Sabretooth from X-Men), his time with Stryker’s Team X, and the infamous Weapon X program, but fails to go all-in on any of these threads. The emotional beats are rushed or entirely missing. What should have been a powerful, character-defining moment—Logan’s transformation into Weapon X—ends up being an all-too-brief sideline that only feels like it has weight and impact because it’s using the same set as X2 did when Logan fought Lady Deathstrike. The weapon X programme isn’t the revelation it should be because it’s already been revealed and the film spends most of the rest of its runtime trying to find a substitute emotional core without much success.
The closest it gets is immediately after Logan’s escape from the Alkali Lake installation, when he hides in the barn of a local farmer. It’s in this quiet moment and the unassuming kindness offered by Max Cullen’s and Julia Blake’s elderly Mr and Mrs Hudson. It’s a genuinely touching moment, an oasis in an orgy of superficial action and while its blighted by some of the most cartoony CGI ever mounted in a major motion picture, its testament to how well the moment lands that you’re genuinely sad when Logan’s geriatric benefactors are gunned down in cold blood a few minutes after appearing on screen.
As would become tiresomely typical of the X-men films, a whole grab-bag of comic book characters are thrown at the big screen to make brief, perfunctory and often inconsequential appearances but it’s in two of the most popular characters it has the temerity to involve that X-Men Origins: Wolverine shoots itself in the foot with a degree of accuracy that would impress even this movie’s version of Agent Zero (who bears little relation to his comic book counterpart). Take Gambit, for example. Fans had been waiting for years to see the Cajun mutant brought to the big screen but Taylor Kitsch’s version of Gambit is more of an afterthought than a significant part of the story. He appears for a brief, obligatory fight scene with our hero, showcasing a few card tricks before inevitably teaming up with Wolverine only to duck out of the fighting until the final reel. Kitsch does enough to show he’s probably got the chops to play a good Remy LeBeau but the film’ just not interested in giving him the chance.
But, like Central Air, there’s no greater sin than the way X-Men Origins: Wolverine mishandles Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds is introduced as the wisecracking Wade Wilson, but after a few scenes, he drops out of the movie altogether until he reappears at the end transformed into a mute Weapon XI, a Frankenstein’s monster of assembled mutant powers, a kind of omnibus edition of mistakes the writers made. Silencing Deadpool is akin to removing Spider-Man’s web-slinging—it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes the character work. The baffling decision to stitch Deadpool’s mouth shut remains a low point in superhero movie history, and one that even Reynolds couldn’t resist revisiting in Deadpool 2.
A troubled and hurried production, X-Men Origins: Wolverine may have a stinker of a script but it’s Oscar-worthy compared to the special effects. Wolverine’s iconic adamantium claws, look distractingly fake throughout the movie and often border on cartoony to the point they wouldn’t look out of place in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The CGI is subpar across the board, pulling viewers out of the action at every turn. Wolverine’s fights, especially his showdown with Gambit, are hampered by awkward wirework and effects that fail to convince so by the time Wolverine faces off against the CGI-“enhanced” monstrosity Weapon XI (Scott Adkins) the film has already lost any sense of coherence. This final battle, crammed with illogical twists and visual clutter, caps off a movie that never quite knows what it’s trying to say.
Director Gavin Hood’s vision for a darker, character-driven Wolverine story was disrupted by intense studio interference demanding for more spectacle, and the result is a film that does neither well. Hood’s vision would, of course, eventually be realised by James Mangold some eight years later.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine serves as a cautionary tale about what happens when a film tries to do too much with too little focus. For a character as rich as Logan, this shallow origin story doesn’t just miss the mark—it doesn’t even seem to know where the target is. Thankfully, Jackman would get another shot at exploring Wolverine’s past with The Wolverine and Logan, films that succeeded where Origins failed, proving that when handled properly, Wolverine’s story can be told with the depth and emotional punch the character deserves.
