5 Second Review: Wolverine


The X-Men movie franchise gets it's first spin off with, shock, horror, the team's most popular character. Can Hugh Jackman carry a superhero movie alone? Probably.

Pros

  • One thing that's always been blindingly obvious to fanboys and movie execs alike is that Wolverine is undeniably cool. He delivers what (lets face it) everyone wants from a superhero: one-liners & ultra-violence.
  • Whereas X-Men steered the fine line between action movie and social commentary, Wolverine wastes no time in setting out its stall as a popcorn flick trading primarily in explosions. Which is perfectly fine.
  • Jackman has by now proven himself more than capable of portraying the titular character. Thankfully the services of Tyler Mane, the pro-wrestler who played Sabretooth in the first X-Men movie, have not been retained, and instead Liev Schreiber joins the cast. Schreiber can certainly act, and despite there not being much required from his character, he does an fine job of 'being generally menacing'.
  • There's little-to-no messing around in the movie, and the few scenes that do require exposition are performed while beating the snot out of somebody.
  • Being a bit of a fanboy myself, it's nice to see Gambit finally make the big screen. Also great is the fact that they managed to include Deadpool, a bit-part character in Wolverine's back story, but one of Marvel's most off-kilter and entertaining creations.
  • The film doesn't shy on spectacle- the climactic battle, for example, is awesome on many levels.
Cons
  • In this day and age, dodgy CGI should really never be seen outside cheap straight-to-dvd crapfests. To have a marquee, effects laden, summer blockbuster littered with examples of blatant and inarguably bad CGI is not only lazy, but should be a cardinal sin. Who or what is responsible for this? Budget? Surely not. Rushing to meet release dates? Quite possibly. Either way, it's a disgrace.
  • When the decision was made to make the film a no-nonsense action affair, they should have gone straight to the script and put a big red line through all those little attempts at melodrama. Keeping them in leaves the audience no option other than to laugh heartily at the 'tragic' demise of wife/old person/innocent bystander.
  • Much as I don't want to bite the hand that feeds, and am appreciative that the makers elected to feature Deadpool prominently in the movie, I must allow myself some degree of fanboy (berserker, anyone?) rage. Deadpool is known as 'the merc with the mouth'. That's his tagline. While I'm sure someone is having a big laugh over what has been done with the character, I assure you that nerdlingers like myself do not find it funny, and in fact feel quite hard done by.

No one expected this to be a masterpiece, and all we wanted was for it to entertain. That it does, with plenty of slashing, punching, jumping, shooting, stabbing, kicking, exploding, morphing, flying, teleporting, and screaming angrily at the heavens. Which was worth my 10 euros.

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2 comments:

May 5, 2009 at 12:23 PM ctrl/alt/delete said...

i though the first hour and a bit was ok but after that it really went down hill. and i found the fight at the end laughable, the "magic bullets" didn't really make any sense. the way some of the minor character where treated like Deadpool was shocking, have they even read Deadpool comics? and what can be done with him now? if you didn't see the Deadpool ending he lives (ooh spoiler sorry)as a whole i found it unfulfilling as its a prequel you know that none of the main characters are going to die or anything and as such not that involving. 2 out 5 at best

May 5, 2009 at 3:00 PM Clockwork Rob said...

The last fight looked awesome to me, but yeh, the treatment of Deadpool was sacrilage.