While the disappointment that was X-Men 3: The Last Stand suffered from an excessive amount of characters and plotlines, a brief timetable for filming, and the ill-suited director Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour fame), it really seemed like they would get their act together for the fourth installment in the movie franchise.
When it was announced that Gavin Hood, the director of the award-winning African film Tsotsi was going to be behind the helm, things looked promising. The fact that they were spending so much time on the film made it seem like things were going to be even better. At the time, it seemed that there was no weak link in the formula. A very focused and human look at the world's favorite mutant was potentially in the works, and there weren't any weak links that could be spotted.
Of course, I hadn't read the script at the time when I was forecasting. My mistake! While it seems like I had high hopes for the franchise, I knew that the law of superhero movie production was that unless Chris Nolan is behind the camera, there is no way to tell whether the project is going to be good. I walked in expecting nothing more than a decent film: some *snikt*ing here and there, some fun fights and some even cooler flashback sequences would have made my night.
Instead, we were given a real snoozer of a film. While the first two X-Men films did an excellent job (arguably an even better job than the comics at the time were doing) of developing the characters, showing anti-mutant tensions, and above all else, showing why the X-Men matter in their world, X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn't seem to have any heart at all. The severe lack of time they spent establishing the character and the conflicts in his world made for a plot structure without any foundation. Consequently, as the plot structure continues to build upon that vacuum, the pacing sputs and stalls, the dramatic moments are stale, and it builds to a conclusion that is almost laughable.
As if that wasn't enough, the cancer that infected the crux of the story seemed to have gone malignant through the scripting process, because various other aspects of the film seemed to be infected as well. Virtually all of the dialogue and plot structure are insultingly predictable, with a plot twist that is so transparent it makes you wonder why it was even there at all.
Like the other films, there are various unnamed references to the diverse array of mutants in the X-Men universe, and yet most of these references are completely contradictory to the canon of the comics. Silverfox, Wolverine's love interest of Native American descent, reveals toward the end of the film that she has a sister in captivity. That sister ends up being Emma Frost. Aside from the fact that there is no sibling relation of this kind in the comic book, tell me - How on Earth could a Native American woman be related directly to a blonde British woman? In this case, the writers consciously entered a lose-lose situation where the references pass over the mainstream audience's head and the devoted comic book fans who actually get the references are insulted by the lack of reverence for the source material. Why bother?
One of the primary functions of the movie was to cement the backstory of the character and lead into the continuity of the X-Men trilogy. However, this movie only seems to confuse and convolute the continuity of the story, not clarify it. One of the biggest, gaping plotholes of the whole construction is that the entire movie focuses on the relationship between Wolverine and big brother Sabretooth over the years, as Wolverine fights his animalistic nature and Sabretooth relishes it, teasing his brother over the denial of his true nature. Not only does Liev Schreiber's portrayal of a physically flexible, agile, short-haired, and conversant Sabretooth completely contradict the stiff in body and language take on the character in the first X-Men movie, but there is one very critical gap in the link between the two films: Wolverine loses his memory of his past at the end of the film, whereas Sabretooth does not.
See the resemblance?Now tell me, why does a character who says "You will always be my brother" as he departs at the end of this film suddenly become quiet and demure during their subsequent encounters later in the timeline? Wouldn't he make some passing reference to their relation? It makes you wonder why they bothered at...
Wait a second, did I already say that about something else in the movie? Maybe I'm getting it wrong by breaking the movie down and talking about how each component not needing to exist and missing the big picture: the whole movie doesn't need to exist. See it and your 90 minutes of boredom at the viewing experience will incline you to agree.
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