X-Men Origins: Wolverine: A Review

I needed to give it a week on this one, and I’m glad I did. Walking out of Wolverine, I was less disappointed than just indifferent. Thinking back on 2008, when Iron Man was the second-best comic book movie of the summer, the bar was set pretty high for this year’s summer lineup. The idea of doing a reboot or an origin story is nothing new, and so Wolverine wasn’t exactly walking in new territory. Nevertheless, Wolverine was taking on a tough assignment, and unfortunately, didn’t really rise to the occasion. Star Trek greatly improved the outlook for the season, but Wolverine was a tough step out the door.

With this entry into the X-Men franchise, the direction for it gets that much more interesting. Bryan Singer did a progressively impressive job with the first two films in the series, and then came Brett Ratner. The Last Stand wasn’t exactly a failure, and for a light summer film was a reasonably good time. But Singer had proven that you could deliver summer explosions while still exploring interesting characters with some degree of depth. Ratner largerly walked away from that depth, and opted for broad and sweeping action. In doing so, he lived on our investment in the characters that Singer had provided.

Unfortunately, Wolverine wants to live in both of these worlds. The early moments provide promise, as we are introduced to Logan/Wolverine as he comes into his powers. The hero is born in tragedy, a tragedy that drives he and his brother Victor to spend their lives on the run. Born in the early 19th century, Logan, who will grow into adulthood then age no further, fights alongside he and his brother in America’s wars, delivered in a montage that probably should have been developed into the entire movie. After the music video ends, we join Logan in Vietnam, where he gets into deep trouble, only to be offered rescue by Stryker, a government operative who promises to help them both in exchange for their work on a secret government project.

It’s at this point in the story that the movie encounters its deepest problems, problems that it never figures out how to solve. If you’ve seen the first 3 films, and with $600 million combined domestic gross I’m thinking a few people have, than Stryker’s appearance is walking people down a road that we’ve already been. In fact a significant piece of X2 was Wolverine finding out a lot of this stuff. So we already know coming in that he’s going to get his adamantium skeleton from this government experiment, that he’s going to work on their behalf, that they will use him, and that ultimately something they do is going to take away his memories. Given all that, we have to wonder what else they have to tell us. Their answer: not much.

Let me be clear, I’m not opposed to prequels per se. I loved the Batman reboot. Star Trek was outstanding. Lost has even been sustaining our interest for two seasons by flashing forward in time then telling us how it’s going to get to that place. Where Wolverine stumbles is in its inability to expand our understanding of the character of James Logan. And that’s a shame. They’ve got a great actor in Jackman, and while he delivers as much as possible, they just don’t ask enough of him. A little brooding, a little anger, then a random fight with a rogues gallery of characters. Things look cool, but the plot just kind of wanders along.

The two banes of storytelling in the sci-fi/comic world are amnesia and time travel tales. Too often they show up as lazy devices that manufacture cheap drama. Over the course of two weeks, we see Star Trek find a way to rise above it, bringing us a great ride despite its time travel plotline, and Wolverine fail to figure out how to rise above its amnesia story.

Logan is an interesting character. In the opening reel, they touched on what was most interesting about him in the tragedy of his life and the decades he spent running from that tragedy. There’s a story there. By rehashing the government conspiracy from X2, they refuse to walk deeper into his life. They want to make him a hero (because that’s what a summer blockbuster needs), then take that away by removing his memories, because that’s what the storyline demands. This amnesia plot fails for the lack of accountability it produces. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, because anything they do with him they just get to reset at the end to get ready for his true heroic arc in the first two films.

The best film to make use of an amnesia arc in recent years in my mind is Memento, detailing a man who can form no new memories by telling his story backwards. For that film, the lack of accountability that forgetting produces was central to the theme of the film. These filmmakers probably needed to study that one. Wolverine had an opportunity to explore a character that moved through American history always running from a past. It was only when his memories were taken away that he was forced to confront that past. It was that confrontation that transformed his character and turned him into a hero. This ironic path had something to say, something that we needed to hear. Too bad they weren’t willing to walk that road.