Review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) by Thequietgamer — 13 Feb 2021

What do you get when you strip the X-Men trilogy of any depth or nuance? A big, dumb action movie. Turns out that's not always a bad thing. As much as it bugs me how centered around Wolverine this property became in Fox's hands despite pulling from a source material full of other rich characters that could have used some time in the spotlight, I can't deny that Hugh Jackman can carry a show. It's a blast watching him shred through anything foolish enough to get in his way. Sure, he and his fellow mutants are now more just sets of powers rather than fully realized beings, but they do their job of carrying the revenge plot forward and letting us know how Logan got all metal (which I actually thought X2 kind of dropped the ball on) while delivering plenty of thrills along the way.

It's definitely not perfect. This is where the convoluted timeline of these films first started to get messy after all. Like, if Sabretooth is Wolverine's half-brother why did that not come up when they fought in the first movie? Also, why did he and Logan only stop aging when they reached their thirties? The plot holes really began to accumulate here and only grew in the subsequent releases.

When viewed as its own standalone thing though it's kind of easy to just turn your brain off and go with it. The action, while prone to some ludicrous and goofy moments, is a heck of a lot of fun and we get to watch Liev Schreiber clearly having a blast hamming it up in his villainous role. Plus, its simplistic nature and emphasis on spectacle over subtext makes Origins easily the most accessible for multiple rewatches in the entire franchise. Not least of all because it's on the shorter end of the running times in this series. Honestly, for all the hate this receives the only thing terribly wrong here is what they did to Deadpool. Which was a crime against humanity someone needs to be punished for.