Movie Review – X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

In the highly successful X-Men films, one of the most popular characters is Wolverine.

We know that Logan has retractable metal claws, he can smell enemies approaching, and his body can regenerate his health and recover from injuries.  Not only is Wolverine deadly but he’s practically unstoppable.

But what is his origin?

How did a person become the Wolverine?

Those questions and more are answered in the 2009 Marvel action film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  This is an origin film that focuses on Wolverine, from how he became a mutant to his associations with Colonel Stryker and Sabretooth.

Directed by Gavin Hood, X-Men Origins: Wolverine stars Hugh Jackman in the title role of Logan / Wolverine.  Liev Schreiber co-stars in the film as Victor Creed / Sabretooth.  Supporting them are Danny Huston as William Stryker, Taylor Kitsch as Remy LeBeau / Gambit, will.i.am as John Wraith, and Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson / Deadpool.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine begins in 1845 in Canada.

James Howlett (Troye Sivan) is a young boy who is frequently ill.  One night he sees his drunken father killed by a groundskeeper named Thomas Logan.  This hostile action infuriates the boy and causes a freak mutation to occur.  We see a set of bone claws extend from his arms.  James rushes forward and uses his bone claws to kill Thomas Logan.  As he’s dying, Thomas tells James that he is his real father, and not the drunk man who was killed.

Fearing the response from everybody else, James flees from the house along with Victor Creed, his half-brother.  Victor has also mutated and grown a sharp set of claws in addition to a growth in strength.

The opening credits of X-Men Origins: Wolverine roll across the screen and we see James (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Liev Schreiber) as soldiers in the U.S. Army.  We see them fight as Federal soldiers in the American Civil War, fight in the trenches in World War 1, storm the beaches of Normandy in World War 2, and then continue their lifestyle as American soldiers in Vietnam.  Even though the men are “killed” in the battles, both James and Victor are able to regenerate and heal themselves, allowing them to continue living and fighting.  As the years pass, James notices that Victor becomes more and more violent towards people in general.

In Vietnam, Victor’s attitude causes both him and James to be placed in front of a firing squad and executed.  Of course, neither of them are actually killed.  After their “execution,” James and Victor are placed in a prison cell.  That’s when they meet Major William Stryker (Danny Huston), an officer who runs a black ops facility.  Stryker recruits James and Victor, and they join his team, Team X.

In addition to the new arrivals of James and Victor, Team X consists of Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), a sharpshooter, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), a swordsman, John Wraith (will.i.am), a teleport, Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), a fighting man with a nearly indestructible layer of skin, and Chris Bradley (Dominic Monaghan), a man who can manipulate energy.

Major Styrker takes Team X on a mission into Lagos, Nigeria.  The team uses their mutant powers to easily infiltrate and attack a facility.  Inside the facility, Stryker shows keen interest in a special mineral in a general’s office.  The general tells Stryker that he found the mineral in a remote camp.  When Team X goes to the camp, the camp’s elders claim that the mineral fell to the sky in the form of a meteorite.

Victor and his companions are aggressive to the innocent villagers, and this pushes James to the limit.  He’s tired of seeing the disregard of human life, and he quits Team X.

Six years later, James uses the alias Logan, and he’s now a lumberjack in a remote town in Canada.  Logan lives a peaceful life with his girlfriend, Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins), a local schoolteacher and expert in Native American folklore.

One day Logan is visited at work by Stryker and Agent Zero.  Stryker explains that Wade and Bradley have been killed, and he thinks that somebody is targeting the organization.  Logan wants nothing to do with it.  His attitude changes one day when he discovers Kayla’s dead and bloody body in the forest.  Her attack has Victor written all over it.  Logan quickly locates his step-brother in a local bar, and the two of them have a tremendous fight outside the bar.  Victor is too strong and Logan ends up losing the fight.

Afterward, Stryker explains that Victor has gone rogue.  If Logan really wants to kill Victor and get his revenge, then Stryker has the solution.  He wants to convert Logan’s body into that of an ultimate fighting machine.  The process might just kill him, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

At a secret facility at Alkali Lake, Logan undergoes the medical experiment that destroys his bones and replaces them with a nearly indestructible metal called adamantium.  It’s the same rare metal that Major Stryker was seeking in Africa.  The process begins and Logan experiences pain like never before as the adamantium is injected into his bones.  He nearly dies, but in the end the process is a success.  Logan has been transformed into the Wolverine.

After the experiment is successful, Stryker tries to betray Logan by ordering for his memory to be erased.  Logan hears that and escapes from the facility.  He ultimately finds his way to a remote farm house and the care of Heather (Julia Blake) and Travis Hudson (Max Cullen).  The Hudsons treat Logan like he’s their own son.  They clothe him, feed him, and give him a place to rest.  Travis even shares an interest in motorcycles with Logan.

The next day, Agent Zero finds and kills Heather and Travis Hudson.  He also tries to kill Logan, but Logan takes Travis’s motorcycle and escapes from the barn.  There’s a chase scene as Zero uses a helicopter to chase Logan, but he tries to lose it in a forest.  He also has to evade a Humvee.  Logan ultimately destroys both vehicles, and he kills Agent Zero after telling Major Stryker over the radio that he’s going to kill him as well.

But first he has to find Stryker.  All he knows is that the major operates on some sort of island.

Logan heads south and reaches Las Vegas, Nevada.  There he reunites with John Wraith and learns a darker secret about their true mission with Team X.  To get more information about the island, Logan has to go into the boxing ring and fight a few rounds with Fred Dukes, now a humongous but still incredibly strong blob.  Dukes is winning the fight until he tries to head-butt Logan, only to discover that Logan’s skeleton is made of metal.  This stuns Dukes and allows Logan to defeat him.

After the boxing match, Dukes tells Logan and John that he knows of a mutant who escaped from “The Island,” a research facility where Stryker experiments on mutants.  He’s a New Orleans gambler known as Remy LeBeau, a thief who has the power to control an item’s potential and kinetic energy.

Meanwhile, Stryker learns the location of a powerful mutant.  Victor is sent to capture Scott Summers (Tim Pocock), a teenager at a high school.  He’s able to capture and subdue the boy, but Scott’s optic blast destroys part of the school.  Scott is then taken away to the island.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, Logan and John find Remy LeBeau (Taylor Kitsch) at a casino.  John goes outside while Logan confronts Remy.  He tells Remy that he needs for him to take him to “The Island,” whether he wants to or not.  This upsets Remy and he uses his mutant powers of Gambit to attack Logan and knock him outside the casino.

Outside, Logan discovers that Victor is there and he has killed John Wraith.  Logan and Victor then have another battle, but this time the Wolverine’s claws give him an edge.  Just as he’s about to decapitate Victor, Gambit interferes, and Victor flees.  Wolverine and Gambit fight each other, and Wolverine wins.  He tells Gambit that he’s serious about killing Stryker, and Gambit agrees to take him to “The Island.”

It turns out that “The Island” is really Three Mile Island, an island housing a nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  It’s a perfect hiding place for a top secret research facility as the fear of nuclear radiation will keep most people away from the island.

Gambit flies a small aircraft and Wolverine is inserted on the island.  Logan easily enters the research facility and locates Stryker.  He’s shocked to discover that Kayla Silverfox is really alive.  It turns out that her death was a hoax and used to push Logan into volunteering for Styrker’s medical experiment.  Kayla insists that she was only helping Stryker so that he would free her sister, a mutant who can change her skin into an indestructible layer of diamonds.

Stryker betrays everybody.  He refuses to release Kayla’s sister, and he also refuses to allow Victor the adamantium to convert him into an ultimate warrior, just like his half-brother.  When Victor tries to attack Kayla, Wolverine jumps into action and fights Victor.  He stops just short of killing him.

While they are fighting, Stryker insists on activating a weapon called Weapon XI, also known as Deadpool.  Deadpool is the body of Wade Wilson and combined with mutant powers:  Logan’s healing power, John’s teleportation, Scott’s optic blast and Wade’s swordsmanship.  He has also been fused with Bradley’s electropathy as a way for Stryker to issue commands and control him.

Wolverine and Kayla go to the cells where Wolverine frees all of the mutants being held captive.  Kayla and her sister lead the mutants to freedom while Logan begins his fight with Deadpool.  The fight takes them outside of the facility and on top of one of the nuclear reactor’s cooling towers.  Victor joins the fight and he and Logan work together to defeat Deadpool.  The fight ends when Wolverine uses his claws to decapitate Deadpool, sending his head spinning down the cooling tower.  The cooling tower is heavily damaged from Deadpool’s optic blast, and it goes crashing down to the ground.  Before falling off the tower, Victor and Logan still have their differences, and Victor flees the nuclear power plant.

Inside the facility, Kayla is wounded by gunfire, forcing her sister and Scott Summers to lead the other mutants to safety.  They ultimately make it outside and are rescued by Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who takes them to his private school in upstate New York.

After the collapse of the cooling tower, Stryker shoots Logan in the head with adamantium bullets.  This knocks Logan unconscious, and Stryker shoots him again in the head.  He then goes over and tries to kill Kayla, but she grabs his ankle and uses her mutant power of hypnosis to make Stryker walk away until his feet bleed.  He leaves them and Kayla dies from her wounds.

Logan regains consciousness, but he does not remember anything.  Nor does he recognize Kayla’s body.  Gambit informs him that his name is Logan, just as it says on his dog tags.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine ends with Stryker being stopped by some MPs and questioned about the death of General Munson.  A scene after the credits shows that Deadpool is still alive.  His hand reaches out and grabs his decapitated head.

So is X-Men Origins: Wolverine a good film?

Not really.

Wolverine is a person who is virtually indestructible.  He’s a wrecking machine who frequently goes berserk and can kill everything in sight.  Should he receive any damage, his body can regenerate and heal itself rather quickly.

Is it really necessary to know the origin of a character so tough that it takes almost all the fun out of the fight scenes?

Apparently so, or this film would not have been created.  Fortunately, there are some cool mutants in this film such as Sabretooth, Gambit, Wade Wilson and Fred Dukes (when he is The Blob), and they help make this movie much more watchable.  While Sabretooth had plenty of screen time, it’s a shame that we didn’t see much of the other three.  Gambit by himself could almost star in his own film, he’s that awesome.

Otherwise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine has too many clichés, especially with Wolverine’s fight scenes.  It’s so repetitive that it’s boring.  What also drags down the film is the lack of a central enemy.  Is Sabretooth supposed to be the primary villain, or is it really Major Stryker, the person who is pulling the strings?

I don’t know.  Neither do I really care.  It’s not worth it losing any sleep while trying to find a deeper meaning in this film, if such a thing exists.

What is good is that both Hugh Jackmand and Liev Schreiber give strong performances in this film.  Those two actors make a great team as Logan and Victor, and it almost seems like Schreiber steals the show.  It’s too bad that it wasn’t Schreiber playing the role of Sabretooth in the first X-Men film.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) – movie trailer

Fans of the Wolverine character will enjoy X-Men Origins: Wolverine the most.  If you like the other characters, or just comic book films in general, then you may be disappointed with this film.  While this movie has its memorable moments, it also has its fair share of plot holes, clichés, and just an unexciting story as well.

William Stryker – “You were sentenced for decapitating a senior officer. The warden tells me that your sentence was carried out by a firing squad at 1000 hours. How’d that go?”
Logan – “It tickled.”

—————–

William Stryker – “Your country needs you.”
Logan – “I’m Canadian.”

—————–

Victor Creed – “Nobody gets to kill you but me!”