my ironic mustache

so the big news this week was that a workprint of x-men origins: wolverine was leaked on tuesday.  and even though i had little to no interest in seeing this thing, i accquired it regardless.  and man, it’s pretty bad.  i’d even say it’s sub-ratner.

now let’s get this out of the way right now: i’m not a comic-book nerd.  i’m a movie nerd.  so i don’t have some huge attachment to the x-men property or wolverine or any of the characters in this thing per se.  even so, i can tell this movie is doing a disservice to the comic universe.

granted, it’s a workprint so there’s unfinished and/or placeholder effects, some of the adr is yet to be done, and i’d say about 25% to 35% of the color correction is missing.  but i don’t think any of these things could greatly improve the film to the point beyond mediocrity.  sidenote: it’s interesting from a filmmaking perspective to see the way color-correction can effect the tone and feeling of a scene and workprints are a good way to gauge that sort of thing.

in a nut-shell, before i get into spoilers, the writing is really cheesy and full of action movie one-liners, the acting itself feels stilted, and the action scenes are relatively boring.  most importantly though, just like x-men 3, there’s no real weight to the thing.  nothing feels like it actually has any important effect on any of the characters.  all of this happens and we say “so what?”  the problem with any prequel involving established characters is that there’s no tension.  we already know who’s gonna live, who’s gonna die, who’s gonna have their memory erased (more on that in spoiler land).

so unless the recent reshoots (which are reportedly not in this cut of the movie) are quite extensive, i think fox failed pretty miserably here.  continue reading for spoilers.

ok, so it starts out in canada in 1860 or something with logan (known as jimmy at this point) and victor (sabretooth) as kids.  logan’s got a fever, but before we can take this in, victor’s drunk dad shows up downstairs and kills logan’s father.  logan’s bone claws come out for the first time and instead of the natural reaction of an 8-year-old (“holy fucking shit, get me to a doctor, i have fucking bone claws!”), he rushes victor’s dad and kills him.  but wait!  turns out victor’s dad is also LOGAN’S DAD TOO!  NO!!!!!!!!!

now we get a montage of logan (jimmy?) and victor fighting in every major american war up through vietnam.  both guys apparently did with every good canadian does and moved to the us.  to escape court martial for killing their commanding officer, the guys are recruited to stryker’s secret team of mutants.  they go on some missions looking for adamantium, which brings them to an african village and logan walks away cause he’s apparently got something against killing innocent villagers for secret government organizations.  what a pussy.  oh, ryan reynolds is there for like 2 and half minutes as pre-deadpool.

6 years later, logan (jimmy?!) is working as a logger and banging a school teacher that tells him a stupid story that she literally starts with the line “do you know why the moon is lonely?”  she’s lucky she’s hot.  so anyway, someone is mysteriously killing off the other mutants from the old team.  it couldn’t possibly be sabretooth, in league with stryker?  naw, that’s be too obvious.  turns out, it was sabretooth! in league with styrker!  and he kills the teacher broad, who might also be a mutant but too bad cause she’s obviously dead and definitely doesn’t show up later not-dead.

so logan now knows it was sabretooth but still hasn’t connected the dots (or dot) that stryker is involved, so he joins up to become weapon x.  at the end of the adamantium process, for reasons that are not exactly explained, he flips out and escapes.  they try to hunt him down, he takes out a helicopter, and does the oh so awesome “i’m such a badass, i don’t need to turn around or react in anyway when something blows up behind me.”  quite original.

so blah blah blah, we meet the blob, who looks retarded.  we meet gambit, who acts retarded.  and then we end up at the final battle scene at three mile island.  it’s wolverine vs. deadpole, who looks like baraka from mortal kombat 2, sans mouth, plus cyclops’ eye lasers.  stryker rounded up a bunch of mutants, took their powers, and put them in deadpool.  somehow.  science!  also, deadpool is sort of a robot.  or something.  but wait, guess who’s still alive and was working with stryker the entire time?  logan’s lonely moon broad!  dun dun DUNNNN!  but she turns back to the good side to help logan free the captive mutants.

wolverine must now fight deadpool on top of one of those nuclear towers from the simpsons.  and sabretooth helps him, cause “no one gets to kill you but me!”  sounds like a good enough reason to me, said the writers.  the two obviously defeat deadpool (the effect wasn’t finished yet, but logan cuts his head off, which keeps shooting eye lasers and it falls into the tower, darth maul style).  the chick obviously dies.  and logan’s memory is obviously wiped.  wanna know how?  adamantium bullets ERASE YOUR MEMORY.  whatever you say, movie.  oh, and another de-aged patrick stewert shows up for a cameo to pick up the newly freed mutants.  also, there’s a false ending involving stryker getting arrested.  THEN there’s ANOTHER ending after the credits with logan in japan,  which apparently means something to the fans, which have probably dwindled considerably by the end of this stinker.

phew, i think that’s it.  afterwards, i watched crank to try and cleanse my mind of this travesty.

crank rules.

-srd