Sometimes I just flat out love the internets. Sure, you have to worry about SPAM and stv's (socially transmitted viruses) and whether that Swedish bikini model you've been sending pictures of your genitalia to is secretly Chris Hansen, but sometimes the world wide wasteland coughs up some of the sweetest, juiciest, vitamin enriched tumors you could ever hope to sink your teeth into. Such is the case with this: the workprint copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine a full month before the cleaned up theatrical version kicks off the 2009 box office season.
This is the part where most would expect me to pieface them, hockey punch them, then laugh maniacally (or as Joe Pesci says, "maniac-ully") about how this review is some kind of belated April
Fools gag. Well, it's not. A friend of a friend of an associate of a peer to a sister of a former co-worker's second cousin directed me to this little beauty and I thought it prudent to view and review
before somebody in Hollywood caught wind and sent their team of commando squad strike force lawyers into cyberspace to sodomize everybody with lawsuits.
Everything begins in 1840s Canada. That's right kids, there was a Canada in the 1840s. Who would've thought!? Fragile young upper class fop James Howlett is suffering from his umpteenth case of cholera or scarlet fever or whatever it was that kept kids sick in bed back then. The closest thing he has to a friend is an older boy named Victor who's a negative influence on James what with his "bad seed" tendencies like whittling his fingernails... and... well, all we see him do is whittle his fingernails. In the interest of keeping everything spoiler free (or at least spoiler lite... with half the calories of regular spoilers!), I won't go into detail on the opening moments beyond saying that the fecal matter hits the fan like it was slung by the monkey equivalent of Nolan Ryan in his prime. Suffice to say that Vic and Jimmy wind up on the run, eventually making their way to America where James grows into Hugh Jackman and Victor grows into Liev Schreiber. The two take up arms to fight in the US Civil War (North side), take a bite out of the Krauts in World War I, sink their claws into the Nazis at Normandy during WW2, and wipe out come VC in 'Nam Land. In case you're curious, yes, Jim and Vic are mutants with retard strong healing powers that keep them from significantly aging... at least past their 30s. It's during their tour of duty in the latter that Vic causes some trouble in a Viet Cong village and winds up getting both his ass and Jimmy's tossed into military prison. From here the pair are picked up by a particularly slimy character whose name fans of the previous X-Men movies will recognize, and the boys are placed into a special government covert ops group. What's so special about these special ops? No, they're not "special" like the Special Olympics (or Obama's bowling game), they're all mutants.
We already know that James and Victor have crazy healing powers and pointy claws (yeah, in case you haven't figured it out yet, they're soon-to-be Wolverine and Sabretooth respectively), but as for the rest of the Good Time Gang, you've got Fred Dukes, who can change his mass to be utterly impenetrable and immovable; Wade Wilson, who has a healing factor almost on par with our main heroes' along with cracked-out ninja skills (we're talkin' "cutting bullets in half" here) and a wisecracking streak that makes Spider-Man look like Robert Frost; Agent Zero, who can jump really high and whose accuracy with firearms is "can't miss" and would put my House of the Dead save files to shame even if you gouged out both of his eyes and cut off his fingers; John Wraith, who knows the fastest way from Point 'A' to Point 'B' isn't via straight line, but through personal teleportation; and Bradley Bohusk who has the mightiest of pimp hands when it comes to making machines do what he tells them.
When Jimmy finds out that he's not quite morally cut-out (*rimshot*) for the cold-blooded killing that comes with special ops work, he cuts his losses (*rimshot*x2) and quits the team. The life of a civilian lumberjack in the Great White North ain't all it's cracked up to be though, especially since you know that no secret organization in the history of secret organizations ever really lets a member "quit"...
First and foremost, remember that this is a workprint copy, so I can't really comment on the quality of the production values as most of the spit and polish on the special effects hasn't happened in this version. As such, without the big booms and fancy computer generated mayhem, can Wolverine stand by virtue of its story and acting alone? Unless there's some substantial re-tooling of the movie's final reel, I'm not so sure. The last 20 minutes or so turn into a needlessly muddled cacophony of chaos with all kinds of shit being thrown at the wall and the producers just letting whatever stuck survive. Some of it works and even surprises and some of it almost works but could've been sacrificed to streamline some of the fat on what feels like a longer movie than what the runtime reads. Then there's the crap that reminds us this is a prequel and therefore needs to realign characters before the finale so they at least gel in some way with what will/has come about in X-Men. Unfortunately, some of it sets up events for the first mutant flick like they were pulled straight out of a bad soap opera, while other continuity contrivances are left "unfixed" and put new spots of tarnish into the first X-Men simply because Wolverine is meant to be canon for the mutant series and through no fault of Bryan Singer or the others that crafted said mutant epic. I hold nothing against director Gavin Hood for the problems at hand, but I do have to wonder if the majority of the clusterfuck is the fault of writer Dave Benioff personally or largely due to meddling on Fox's part. Either way, my head hurts.
Oh how there was so much potential here. Fan service characters like Deadpool and Gambit finally making it into an X-Men movie? Awesome. Long time fans of Gambit might not be so impressed with young Remy LeBeau's part. Having never been a big stickler for the ragin' cajun though, I wasn't really disappointed. Wade Wilson I liked. At first I didn't take to Ryan Reynolds in the role, but my skepticism quickly turned into acceptance. As for the "Deadpool" part of the character... well... let's just say that his movie persona is "different" from his four color one and leave it at that. Be prepared for a storm of enraged geeks on the message boards next month. Agent Zero is pretty one-dimensional, but he makes a decent bad-ass for what it's worth. Dominic Monaghan does his usual "lovable loser" thing once again with Bradley, who couldn't be further from his comic book version of "Beak". Hugh Jackman, well, the guy is his usual Wolverine self. He's been the character for four movies now and as long as there are still people interested in producing movies about the crazy canuck, he seems more than happy to keep signing the contracts and I'm more than happy to keep watching. Though I enjoyed Tyler Mane's original turn as Sabretooth, that was the larger-than-life "comic booky" version. The one involved here is more the deviant, cruel, straight up sociopath scumbag version and in my mind Schreiber pulled it off with gusto. That's right, I said "gusto". Only something this good could make me say "gusto". The big surprises in the cast for me though had to be Will i Am as Wraith and Kevin Durand as Dukes. The Blob wasn't really on my Top Ten of comic characters I ever wanted to see brought to life, but now I'm glad they did. Yeah, I'm as surprised as you. His boxing/interrogation match with Wolverine was near the top of my highlight reel.
Also amidst the merry mutants, keep your eyes peeled for another X-Men mainstay who shows up to have his own part in the tale, albeit in a younger form. You can hold your breath and be surprised or you can ruin it for yourself and check out the movie's imdb listing. Provided that what I've seen goes mostly unchanged, there's also a brief post-credits scene that may or may not be a "fan-boys/girls
only" moment. Then again, it's more than likely just some random piece of filler material that no one will care about, so if you're expecting Robert Downey Jr. or Samuel L. Jackson to show up, you're better off heading to the bathrooms and beating the people who do stay behind. Speaking of the credits, on an odd note, this workprint actually has the credits from X-Men: the Last Stand tossed on as a sort of cinematic seat filler. Weird.
So, having "been there, done that", will I still go out to the cineplex and plop down my $12 when the time comes to see Wolverine on the big screen? Given that it'll be my birthday weekend and I haven't missed a May Marvel premiere since ever, I'd say yes. I'm hoping that some necessary edits are tossed in at the last minute along with the updated special effects, but even if not I guess I'm still getting 80 or so minutes of decent entertainment out of it, so why the fuck not.
Moral of the Story: You never know whether or not you're afraid of dying until you try it!
Prequel to: X-Men ; X2: X-Men United ; X-Men: the Last Stand
