X-Men Origens: Wolverine

Forget tedious expose and pointless set up, the movie delivers a crisp story and exactly the Wolverine I wanted to see. This is a pure meat and potatoes movie. Stick with me on the food analogy. I've seen some complain about subsidiary characters but when the main course is this good and this filling, who cares? Whining about Gambit, Wade Wilson and company is like whining that the mushrooms aren't as good as they should be when the steak is juicy and remarkably tasty. Great kick-ass action, remarkable visuals, a coherent plot, this is definitely the highlight of the year so far. As I like to note, a must see event film if there ever was one. Anyone that says otherwise isn't telling the truth. I can't think of a truly weak moment in the film because the pace is near perfect. It's strong from start to finish. The powerful moments resonate throughout the film, both the tremendous action and the heartfelt moments. The confrontations are simply incredible, best of the series.

Wonderful film for fan and non-fan alike. Highly Recommended.

The first real blockbuster of 2009 and deservingly so. It's exciting and an all-around entertaining comic book adaptation and I doubt anything will be better this year. Everyone involved in the production should be proud to know that their movie can stand toe-to-toe with the likes of anything else that summer 2009 has and can throw at them. Star power, sex appeal, a powerful and emotional script, and a great plot make this one memorable flick.

Real fans (not those whinny online imposters who can't let go of their own warped preconceptions) can breath a sigh of relief because X-Men Origins: Wolverine takes the X-Men franchise films to the next level. There are plenty of action scenes that you have to see to believe! This movie was just shear fun. I love it. What are you waiting for?

The first X-Men film was fun and well-made though with a beginning-of-the-franchise-not-yet-properly-finding-its-feet feel; X-Men 2 was very, very good indeed and an example of a bigger and darker sequel better than the original(even if it wasn't quite perfect either) and X-Men 3 The Last Stand while nowhere near as bad as its reputation was disappointing(after being so impressed by the previous two) and a step-back in the franchise. X-Men Origins: Wolverine had much going for it but while it is nowhere near a bad film it could have delivered more, considering that this was an origins prequel story. X-Men Origins: Wolverine does have good things, it's well shot and edited(if a little rapid in a couple of the fighting sequences), the special effects are nicely executed and not used too much and the dark, gritty style of the previous three films is wisely maintained, nothing overblown or static here. The opening sequence is robust and exciting and gives you the sense of "looks like we're in for a treat here", most of the action sequences have tension and thrills especially at the end(which also makes a real effort to tie up loose ends), Sabretooth/Victor and Stryker are well-realised and there are a few good performances. Wolverine may be too ambivalent character-development-wise but Hugh Jackman's charisma and grizzled demeanour is pitched perfectly, Liev Schreiber brings real meat, toughness and menace to Victor/Sabretooth and Danny Huston as the villain Stryker is both classy and ruthless and does them very effectively, Stryker avoids being too one-dimensional. Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Kitsch do what they can and are quite good.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine does suffer however from a lot of the same things that X-Men The Last Stand had. The script is very contrived and in a worse way than X-Men The Last Stand, emotional moments are forced, exposition and any explanations are underdeveloped and any bits of humour are on the broad side(X-Men 2 especially avoided this and had a much more even balance). The story has some good atmosphere and good scenes and has some tension, but it does try to cram in too much and things feel rushed and not as developed as they ought. Gavin Hood does reasonably admirably in the action but very like Brett Ratner he is surprisingly not as comfortable in the non-action scenes, in a way that the writing and story, that should give the film depth, are sacrificed by the action(again mostly very good, apart from ones that did lag and you couldn't always tell who was who). Apart from Sabretooth and Stryker (Wolverine was written much better in the first two films but Jackman's presence did make up for things), the characters are disappointingly written, especially Deadpool who had a lot of potential but disappears just like that and appears even more abruptly much later at a stage where you think they've forgotten all about him. Gambit was also treated fairly insignificantly, and other characters like Blob and Kayla(Lynn Collins' acting is wooden in this part) are pretty useless. It doesn't have the too many characters problem like The Last Stand did but it like that film doesn't develop or write the characters well but not as insultingly. On a side note one positive review said that they couldn't understand why The Last Stand and this got criticised for the characters and the first two get a free pass; actually the first two films have been criticised for under-utilising characters and bad acting in them, namely Cyclops and Storm, but at least they tried to respect the characters and not distort them or deprive them of personality like this and Last Stand did(and this is NOT coming from a comic-book purist, far from it, you don't even need to have read an X-Men comic to have this criticism). Harry Gregson-Williams' score has some excitement and induces some suspense but at other points it's too over-bearing and strident, of the X-Men films this film had the least effective score in my opinion. Will.i.Am being cast in an X-Men film would cause alarm bells and his performance is not any better, it felt out of place.

To conclude, could have been better but it's not that bad. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I'll state my credentials up front: I'm a chick. I have read X-Men comics in my past, but it's been years. I don't remember every detail of every relationship and back story, so I'm not a huge X-men expert. I LOVED the original X-Men movie and X2.

I was so excited when I heard they were making a Wolverine movie. He and Gambit were my two favorite characters from the comics, and Wolverine was by far the best written and one of the best acted characters in the X-Men franchise. I thought, "This should be good!" I counted down the days until it came out. And I went to the theatre, and came out not disappointed, but not excited either. It was a middle-of-the-road movie, which seemed to not know what it wanted to be. But I would say go see it if you're an X-Men or Hugh Jackman fan.

The main crime committed in Wolverine is in the writing. I always say writers don't get enough credit on a good movie. But no amount of good acting (pretty much everyone in Wolverine does well with what they're given) and okay directing can cover up crappy writing like this. The script was all over the place. It didn't have any of the jaunty yet edgy feel of the first two X-Men movies. Wolverine's wisecracks and smart wit were all but forgotten. That would've maybe been okay if they had chosen to make Wolverine the dark, nearly evil character that he was supposed to have been before he lost his memory. But they didn't. He was neither good nor evil. This was ambivalent Wolverine. Kind of Emo Wolverine. Not above doing bad, but not really into it because it made him Feel Bad. No really interesting lines or plot points either way. The writers didn't seem to even know how to develop the relationship between Wolverine and Sabertooth. And was the love story put in by the studio just to satisfy us chicks who wouldn't go a see a comic-book movie without it? If so, the studio did us a great disservice, because if you wanted to make a story about Wolverine the lover (which, hey, I would go see), this movie wasn't that either.

And when I saw in the trailer that Gambit was in the movie, too, I was thrilled! Gambit in a movie, at last! But here he is, the underdeveloped and kind of confusing Gambit. Couldn't he at least have had his New Orleans accent? The cards were cool, but he was mostly underutilized and didn't feel like Gambit that much.

The movie does have some good moments in it where you actually say, "Yes!" I'm not putting spoilers, so I won't tell you what they are, but for me, they made the movie worth seeing. While I wouldn't put it anywhere on my worst-movie list, I wouldn't rank it with X-Men and X2 on my favorites list, either.

It has a very good storyline, the non-stop forward-moving pace works well and gives it a tone that works better then other, longer movies. It's very well directed and the acting (small, medium, and large roles) is PERFECT. I would have loved to have seen more of Gambit and Wilson even though that might have screwed with the pace that I just mentioned. The very best movie of 2009 regardless of genera. This is so gritty, real, and heartfelt that it even craps on the last film (Last Stand) and I actually enjoyed that film. Overall this movie was the best that I've seen this year.

There is not one wasted line, visual, camera angle or development in this entire movie. Everything serves to advance the plot. It was tight and lean and superbly done. I truly think that this is the best prequel movie of all-time. How could you not like it? From the new mutants to all of the special effects to the crisp pace… I loved it. I loved the ending. You can obviously see the attempt to tie this film to events from the trilogy but it all works neatly and tightly. Wolverine is the first movie this year that I want to see again. It's one heck of an entertaining movie.

10/10 superb!!! I can't wait for the DVD... I hope there's also a director's cut but I can't imagine what they could've possibly left out of this fabulous film.