Anyway, for our comeback special, we're looking at another much-maligned instalment in the X-Men film series, namely "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" The previous X-Men film 2006's "Last Stand" had originally been intended to largely wrap the series up with several characters essentially being written out after being killed off (Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey) or losing their powers (Magneto, Mystique, Rogue). However, it seems the lure of getting some cash from another instalment eventually proved too much to resist and Fox were left with the unenviable proposition of having to do a rewrite with most of the main characters gone. Their solution was to announce plans for a couple of origin films, one on Wolverine and one on Magneto. However, the Wolverine film was critically panned (even though it did decent enough numbers) and led to a change of plans with the Magneto film instead becoming "X-Men: First Class" which we'll deal with in a few weeks. First up though, let's take a look at Wolfy's back story...
The film begins in 1845 when a young James Howlett witnesses a violent altercation between his father John and the family groundskeeper Thomas Logan. John is shot by Thomas and James is so incensed that his mutation is activated and he impales Thomas using his bone claws. With his dying breath, Thomas tells James that he is his real father and James is forced to go on the run with his half-brother, Logan's son Victor (the future Sabre-Tooth, played by Liev Schrieber), another mutant who can also heal himself and extend claws from his fingers (albeit from the points rather than the knuckles). The pair become mercenaries, fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars and Vietnam.
Over time, Victor has become increasingly out of control and in Saigon he attempts to rape a Vietnamese woman and then shoots his commanding officer when he tries to stop him. Sentenced to death by firing squad, the pair survive the bullets and are banged up in a dungeon where they're given a way out by General Stryker (who you may remember as the baddie from X-Men 2 although in this film he's played by Danny Huston rather than Brian Cox) involving his covert mutant strike force, Team X.
The other members of Team X are Agent Zero (an expert sniper), Wraith (who can teleport, played by Will-i-am from the Black Eyed Peas), Wade Wilson (an expert swordsman...and yes, this is Deadpool and yes, it's Ryan Reynolds playing him here), Bradley (who can manipulate electricity) and Dukes (who has a layer of unbreakable skin). We join them a few years later on a mission in Nigeria where Zero, Bradley and Wilson help them infiltrate a diamond smuggling operation to help Stryker get access to a meteorite. However, when the team, led by Victor, start getting violent with an innocent group of villagers in the aftermath, Logan has had enough and walks out.
Six years later, Logan has settled down in the Canadian Rockies working as a logger with his Native American girlfriend Kayla Silverfox while Bradley has also quit the group and is now working the fairgrounds in Ohio. However, after he's finished work one night, Victor unexpectedly turns up and kills him. The next day, Logan gets an unexpected visit from Stryker and Zero at work who tell him that Victor has also offed Wade the previous week and are worried that he's working his way through the team one by one. Still angry at them, Logan tells them to go stick it.
However, Stryker's warning is prescient as the next day Victor ambushes Kayla and kills her. Enraged, Logan tracks him to a bar and fights him but loses. Stung, he decides to take Stryker up on his offer of an enhanced mutation which sees his skeleton injected with adamantium giving him the steel claws we all know him for. However, when Stryker attempts to then wipe his memory in order to turn him into the killing machine "Weapon X", Logan flees by jumping down the waterfall from Stryker's secret base (which he'll revisit post-amnesia in X-Men 2) and into the lake.
Running across the countryside, Logan is taken in by an elderly couple, the Hudsons, but the next day Zero turns up and uses his superhuman sniper skills to assassinate them. The two mutants engage in a battle involving jeeps and helicopters which ends with Logan blowing Zero's chopper up (fnar fnar) and eliminating him. Speaking to Stryker on the radio afterwards, he vows to come after him once he's done with Victor.
Logan takes the Hudsons' motorbike and drives to Vegas where he finds Wraith and Dukes at a gym. Wraith explains to him that Victor and Stryker are still working as a team - as this sequence is happening we see the pair apprehending a young Cyclops at his school and taking him away. As Wraith explains, Stryker is running a facility called the Island where mutants are being taken and having their powers extracted to feed a new super-mutant that Stryker is developing to eliminate any threats from the mutant population (sorry, I know this is probably making your head hurt by now but just bear with me, we're almost at the end I promise). Dukes meanwhile has piled on the pounds over the intervening decade to become "The Blob" and challenges Logan to a boxing match to get the info out of him. After initially taking a battering, Logan bounces back to win by using an adamantium headbutt. Blob explains that only one man has ever escaped from the Island, a mutant by the name of Remy Lagarde aka Gambit.
Travelling to New Orleans, Logan and Wraith track down Gambit in a casino - after Logan mentions that he knows about the Island, the two of them engage in a fight with Gambit turning his cards into bombs and blowing Logan through a wall. As he's recovering, Victor turns up and kills Wraith after a struggle before extracting his DNA, the same as we saw him do with Cyclops earlier. Logan and Victor fight again but this time, Gambit breaks it up by starting another fight with Logan. Eventually, the pair talk and Gambit agrees to take Logan to the Island where we see Stryker starting the process to convert Wade into the new super-mutant Weapon XI. When his superior, General Munson, threatens to shut him down, Stryker kills him.
Logan arrives at the Island where Stryker springs a surprise on him by informing him that Kayla is still alive and is a mutant with the power of persuasion who Stryker sent to spy on Logan after he left Team X. Angry, Logan simply turns around and leaves but it's then revealed that Stryker has double-crossed both Victor and Kayla by promising the former an adamantium skeleton (which it turns out his frame isn't properly suited for) and the latter that he'll release her diamond-skinned sister who's one of his prisoners. Hearing their cries for help, Logan returns to the facility and helps them escape and free the prisoners (including a young Cyclops, Storm and Nightcrawler) with Kayla being wounded by Stryker in the process.
As they're escaping though, Stryker summons the new Weapon XI, the former Wade Wilson now with his mouth sewn shut and named "the Deadpool" due to the fact that he has the powers of all of his brethren including Wolverine's extendable claws (which are swords, his preferred weapon), Cyclops' laser vision and Wraith's ability to teleport. I won't go into what a stupid idea this is...suffice to say it bears no relation to the actual Deadpool character and it was one of the main bugbears that Marvel die-hards had with this film. Logan and Victor fight him on top of a cooling tower, eventually winning by beheading Deadpool whose laser vision as he falls down the chimney causes it to collapse with him on the bottom.
Victor escapes from the Island after bidding Logan farewell while the mutant prisoners, led by Cyclops and Emma Silverfox, meet up with Professor X nearby and escape in his helicopter. Logan discovers a critically wounded Kayla as he leaves and attempts to help her off the island but is shot in the head with an adamantium bullet by Stryker which wipes his memory (thus explaining his amnesia in the first three X-Men films). With her dying breath, Kayla uses her persuasive power to tell Stryker to walk away until his feet start to bleed where he's eventually picked up by a group of soldiers who want to question him in relation to Munson's death. Logan eventually comes round after being revived by Gambit but doesn't remember anything including who Kayla is when he sees her body. The film ends with Logan walking off into the sunset and, eventually, his meeting with Rogue at the start of the first X-Men film while during the end credits we see a hand reaching out from under the wreckage of the cooling tower to retrieve Deadpool's severed head.
If all this plot description seems a bit meandering and all over the place with countless twists and turns that don't really add anything to the story...well, congratulations you've just identified the big problem with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" - this whole thing is just so stupidly convoluted that it just feels twice as complicated as it needs to be with characters zipping in and out of the story left, right and centre with no real room to develop them and it really brings this film down (just writing this review and trying to summarise the plot gave me a headache tbh). And as for the complete bastardisation of the Deadpool character...well, let's just see I can see why Ryan Reynolds takes the piss out of it so often in the modern Deadpool films where they actually re-wrote the character as it was meant to be.
From here, the X-Men series would move on to "First Class" which was a bit of a return to form and we'll review it on here in a few weeks. Jackman would next appear in 2012, "The Wolverine", another misfire before reuniting with the rest of the X-Men in the ultra-confusing "Days of Future Past". And Ryan Reynolds, after one more comic book tie-in misfire on the DC side, would eventually see his long-mooted Deadpool film project come to fruition in 2015 and would set things straight on which the correct version of Deadpool was in his own inimitable style (1:20 in the video below). Which probably sums up this misfire of a movie better than anything ever could...
FINAL RATING: 🐺🐺🐺🐺 (4/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Iron Man (2008) (10/10)
2. Spiderman 2 (2004) (9/10)
3. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
4. X-Men 2 (2002) (8/10)
5. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
6. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk (2008) (7/10)
8. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
9. Blade (1998) (7/10)
10. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
11. Spiderman 3 (2007) (6/10)
12. Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer (6/10)
13. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
14. The Punisher (2004) (6/10)
15. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
16. Elektra (2005) (6/10)
17. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
18. X-Men: Last Stand (2006) (6/10)
19. Blade Trinity (2004) (6/10)
20. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
21. The Incredible Hulk (1977) (5/10)
22. The Fantastic Four (2005) (5/10)
23. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
24. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
25. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
26. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
27. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
28. Punisher: War Zone (2008) (4/10)
29. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) (4/10)
30. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
31. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
32. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
33. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
34. Ghost Rider (2007) (3/10)
35. Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
36. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
37. Man-Thing (2005) (3/10)
38. Return of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
39. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
40. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
41. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
42. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
43. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
44. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
45. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)
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