X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The Count’s Spoiler Filled Account

X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The Count’s Spoiler Filled Account.

All the pieces are in place for an amazing theater experience. The return of a near billion-dollar film franchise that focuses on the origin of its most popular character, directed by an Academy Award winning director. Add to that a budget of $150 Million and what you get is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. While it’s a fun enough popcorn flick, it ain’t exactly breaking new ground. But that’s pretty hard to do when you’re lead character appears in no less than TEN monthly comic books, half of which bear his name.


Not to mention the guest appearances he makes. For the character, there is not really much new ground to cover. But the audience doesn’t care about that, they want to know what makes this guy such a badass. To be fair the film addresses that question, but leaves the answers a bit inconclusive.

The film opens with a scene from Wolverine’s childhood. He’s a privileged boy, who lives in a nice cottage in Canada in the mid 1800s. Yeah, that’s all pretty badass, living in a cottage in Canada and all. Don’t worry though, when he first shows his claws he destroys his family and goes on the run with his half brother Victor Creed. They run from Canada in the 1800s to Vietnam in the 1960s all in the space of a title sequence that lasts about 3 minutes. That’s pretty hardcore for a couple of rich Nancy boys from Canada. Though it shows them fighting in every major American conflict and war from the Civil War to the Vietnam War, it leaves out Wolverine’s time as a singing cowboy.

If it’s good enough for Dirty Harry…
After ‘Nam, Wolverine and Sabretooth get enlisted in a top secret all mutant Special Forces team. While on the way to their destination we find that the Badass of Badasses, Wolverine, gets sick when flying in aircrafts. I’m getting the feeling he’s a little squeamish at this point. And that feeling continues for the duration of the film. After they finally land and continue the mission we see how effectively violent the rest of the team is. One guy shoots the hell out of a small army with only two handguns, while running and jumping around. Another guy blocks a tank’s turret with his fist. Then we have Wade Wilson, played by Ryan Reynolds, use two katana to deflect bullets and chop people up while he cracks jokes. And what’s our boy Wolverine doing when all this action is going on? He’s just standing there, watching. Yeah, that’s pretty badass.
So after all of his doing nothing at all, he gets fed up with the team when he feels like they’ve gone to far, and quits, throwing his dog tags on the muddy ground. This is the most aggressive thing he’s done since the opening credits.

Now the film jumps to a few years later after Logan/Wolverine leaves his secret military team. He’s now a singing lumberjack. Well ok, he’s not singing. But he’s in love with a schoolteacher who is Native American. She’s a fount of Native American folklore at the very least, and she tells Logan a story that later inspires his soon to be new code name. He’s living the life, cutting down trees, having his woman chauffer him to work, having nightmares that almost kill his lady while she sleeps. All that good stuff is ruined when his former field leader, William Stryker, shows up at his new job. He tries to “warn” Logan that the team is being hunted down one by one, and he wants Logan to join up again. Logan declines and the next day his hot girlfriend is “killed” by his brother.
And now. It. Is. On.

Wolverine and Sabretooth have a little brawl. We see now why he’s such a badass. He gets his badass handed to him by Liev Shcreiber. The next day comes and we see old Stryker again. This time he tells Logan he can give him the tools he needs to get revenge on Sabretooth. So with vengeance on his mind he gets an experimental metal fused with his skeleton. Stryker opens his big mouth and that sets Wolverine on a rampage. Well he escaped the facility, naked, without killing or hurting one person. He’s a real maniac I tells ya. So he runs away and hides out in this old couple’s barn. They give him clothes and feed him, and what does he do? He destroys their bathroom. What an A-hole. But it doesn’t matter because the mutant with guns as a special power kills those old fools the next morning. Wolverine then goes on to leap from an air bound military car and chop the hell out of a helicopter, making it an icopter I suppose. And those can’t stay in the air.

Now he’s on the run again, this time fully clothed (sorry ladies.) He meets up with one of his old teammates and looks for a way to find Stryker and Sabretooth so he can get his revenge. So this teleporting mutant John Wraith, played by Will I Am of the Black Eyed Peas, helps him out. How does he help him? Why he helps him by having him fight the guy that can stop tank shells with his fists, in the comics he’s known as the Blob. So the badass is manifesting, because Wolverine manages to beat the guy that can beat up a tank. The Blob, tells him where to find somebody that escaped from Stryker’s main laboratory/base. So he’s on the road again, this time with Will I Am, maybe because he needs his own soundtrack. Their destination, New Orleans, where they meet a man that can make cards float in the air. Now he’s a card shark, a hustler if you will. I don’t know about you, but I’m not betting against a man that can make cards hover at will. Wolverine starts inquiring about floating card man’s past to discover he can also make cards explode. (Guess he’s playing with a loaded deck[…sorry.]) Gambit is his name and he fights with a stick. A wooden stick. Wolverine has razor sharp metal claws and can heal from being incinerated. Now this is a bet I’d take against the card shark.


Gambit loses and has to fly Wolverine to the secret base. The base is a nuclear power plant. Volcanoes are only good enough for Bond Villains I guess. Wolverine is coming or his Vinte sized cup o’ vengeance and nothing can stop him. Nothing except for the fact that his girlfriend is still alive and working for Stryker. She was working with Stryker the whole time they were together. Oh. Snap. But I guess Wolverine could be mad at being manipulated and living a lie. Not so much. But old Wade Wilson is back, so at least he has something to punch, on top of a nuclear reactor. That’s a pretty badass place for a fight. Wade Wilson has a slight advantage here though, he has all of Wolverines powers and a few extra. He can teleport, shoot beams from his eyes and have a really jarring appearance.

This fight is too much for Wolverine to handle alone, so who comes to help him? Not John Wraith, he’s dead, that’s why Deadpool can teleport. Not Gambit, who flew him there and has ranged attacks. You know who helps him, Sabretooth, the guy he came to the nuclear power plant to kill in the first place. Somehow Wolverine manages to sneak up on a teleporter and chop through his unbreakable metal neck. After this he thanks his brother by telling him he’ll kill him the next time he sees him. After which, he jumps off
A collapsing nuclear tower. Where he is later shot in the head with an unbreakable metal bullet. Made from the same stuff his unbreakable metal head is made from. The bullet wins, and erases his memories.

The way the ending of this movie worked out, I could really use one of those unbreakable metal bullets.