X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
DVD and Blu ray.


There can never be another actor who plays Wolverine as well as Hugh Jackman. For decades people will identify him as this character. In fact, he helped redefine the whole comic to movie experience and legitimized actors playing (what some might consider) a role for children.

Hugh Jackman looks younger now and is in better shape than he was ten years ago for the original X-Men movie. His face has aged a little, but you can hardly tell he’s as old as he is.

As a reader of the comics, I already knew a lot about Wolverine's origins {read the “Wolverine: Origins,” graphic novel}. But like the X-men movie series it was its own creation. Basically the X-men movies made their own version of the mythos and that's where this movie ties in.

It is loosely based on the Wolverine Origin comic series, but altered to fit the movie series. Which is okay in the big picture, because the comics get more detailed and go into much greater depth than can be translated into a two-hour movie. Plus, it was a prequel to the trilogy already in place. The only really obvious thing changed from comic to movie was the fact that Victor and Logan are now brothers. In the comic Logan had a older brother (not Victor) that also has claws but was assumed dead. He comes back to find Logan years later.

This movie serves not only as a prequel to the X-men movie series but as a start of a new series of movies. Wolverine 2 is coming out in 2012, X-men Origins: The First Class in 2011 and Deadpool also in 2012.

We see Wolverine, or as he is called for most of the movie James, Jimmy or Logan, through the years in the early 1800's. We get to see the emergence of his powers when he was a child. We also see him with his brother Victor fighting every war in the past 150 years up until Vietnam. At this point both Logan and similarly powered Victor get arrested for treason and heal after being executed. They are the recruited into a special ops team full of other mutants. Logan has an ethical issue with their missions and leaves. Years later members of the team are being killed one by one which force Logan to become Wolverine.

A lot happened in this movie and more was explained, like why Logan has no memory past a certain point. There are even a few nods to history like the top secret base being under 3 mile island. This is a better movie then X-men 3: the Last Stand, well worth watching and owning.

It did leave me with one question: What was the deal with Deadpool? Did they just ignore the history of that character and change it for some unknown reason? There was seemingly no reason to drastically change his history. This is the only major thing I saw wrong with the story of this movie and the only hard core reason to not have given this movie a 10.

In the early 90's it was rumored that Wolverine would be played by Harvey Kietel. Scott Bakula was slated to play Cyclops. Lucy Lawless was in talks to be recruited. Rumors about Christian Slater abounded. Luckily that version never came to be. The story centered around Jubilee and Gambit joining the X-men and fighting Sentinals. The plot was based on a similar story to the X-men: Adventures animated tv show.

One Christmas I dressed in a Wolverine costume and put on a Santa hat and called myself Santa Claws. No one laughed. Maybe with the revived popularity this movie has produced. I'd try again this year, but the suit seems to have shrunk. I might need to lose some weight before trying on the spandex again though. Just a little weight.


71/2 out of 10
Taylor