The last couple blockbuster action flicks I’ve seen — “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and “Watchmen” — have kind of been letdowns. Not that they were horrible, but I expected them to be much better than they were. That pattern continued this past weekend, though to a lesser degree, with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”.
The Bad
The movie was filled with clichés, from the plot to the dialogues. Yes, comic book movies have always had some cliché elements in them, just because of the nature of the genre, but the latest X-Men movie lacked much of the nuances that made its three predecessors terrific films. You could literally tell which characters were going to be killed off within a minute or two of their entrance into the movie. The dialogues also get to groaner level on the cliché meter at times.
The other problem that plagued the film was some bad CG effects, which is kind of a strange problem for the fourth movie in a comic book film franchise to have. There were shots where Wolverine’s claws seemed ridiculously fake, looking almost like plastic attachments. Again, this seems an odd problem for the movie to have as his claws looked very realistic in the previous films. The claws seem to be somewhat larger and bulkier than they were in the first three films, and perhaps that added to the unrealistic appearance. We are also treated to a disturbingly creepy CG Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier at one point. As one fellow moviegoer said on his way out the theater, they probably could’ve done better if they just took some shots of Patrick Stewart from his Jean-Luc Picard days and put it in the film.
The Good
The cliché-riddled plot and some poor CG effects notwithstanding, the movie does deliver pretty well on what people likely went to the theater for — Wolverine kicking butt. Hugh Jackman again does a terrific job in the character, which, because this is a prequel, is a bit less rough and ruthless as in the previous movies. The wry Wolverine sense of humor still comes through, as does his reckless abandon when pushed. The fight sequences lived up to expectations, with Wolverine slashing through jeeps, helicopters, cages, and just about everything in sight. The movie also introduces a host of new mutants, each of whom provides their own little action-sequence eye candy for the audience, and the movie climaxes with a pretty awesome fight on top of a nuclear cooling tower.
In the end, Jackman and the action scenes save the flick from its generic action-movie plot and cliché dialogues. If you are interested in this movie for the former two more than the latter two, then it’s still a film that you will get some enjoyment out of, but “Wolverine” comes up well short of its enormous potential.
So two of the movies I was looking forward to for this year — “Watchmen” and “Wolverine” — have fallen short of expectations. Next up: the Star Trek movie, which I’m already skeptical of after seeing the trailers. Here’s hoping I can avoid an 0-for-3.
Rating: 3 out of 5