If you love Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of Wolverine, I would recommend seeing this spin off. If not, stay away, as his performance is the only consistently good thing as the movie checks off box after box on its long list of what it thinks people want answered. Stryker at one point warns Logan not to follow this path as he won't like what he finds at the end. I say the exact same thing to you now.
Yes, questions are answered, but you will not like these answers. They range from bizarre to stupidly simplistic to ham fisted revisions but none will give you that tingle of satisfaction when the pieces fall into place. More often than that, you'll find yourself saying 'Really? THAT'S what you're going with?'
Heading into spoiler territory here. I'm a fanboy, I admit. But it wasn't my inner Comic Book Guy voice that had the issues. Wolvie and Victor are bros? OK. It was the fact the movie seemed to have been plotted by bullet points. Each scene ended with a black check mark on some piece of backstory then they dutifully moved onto the next. No narrative flow or momentum. I'd say its like a video game, but I'm playing the game and its better than the movie.
The movie starts badly. Of course the movie would begin with an adaption of Origin. Thing is, this miniseries is generally regarded and tepid and even dull by most fans, at least the ones I have heard from. And the big dramatic moment, the first use of the claws, was so awful I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I was holding my head down to stifle the giggles. Not an auspicious beginning. From there, things get better. The title sequence was very well done. Showing the claw brothers fighting for AMERICA! in various wars through history was cool, but the trouble is I would rather see a movie based on any of these battles than what we actually got. Wolverine & Sabertooth killing Nazis? Yes please! Their military career over, the brothers get to meet the team 'o freaks. Enjoy this, because it's the highlight of the movie. It's all down hill from here. The characters are interesting, funny in Wade's case, and we get to see them strut their stuff in a big attack sequence. Once Logan leaves the group though, the movie starts to sputter.
Skipping to the end, it all comes down to a fight between Wolverine, Victor and Deadpool on the top of a nuclear cooling tower. I'd throw a spoiler alert in front of that if it wasn't in ALL OF THE PREVIEWS! But midway threw the fight I realized I didn't really care about it. Why? No stakes. All three of them are immortal healers. Any wound, short of decapitation, would be healed including a fall from the top of a nuclear cooling tower. Why have the fight up high when it doesn't matter if they fall? This was cemented when at the end as the structure is collapsing, Logan and Victor have a calm discussion before Victor jumps to the ground.
And then the gun. Seems like late in the process, the creatives realized they had to scramble Logan's memories. Their solution? A gun with Adamantium bullets, a Deus Ex Magnum if you will. Stryker explain that shooting him in the head with it will scramble his memories. First off, how does he know? Its a first generation solution for a first generation problem, how the hell could he predict what it would do? And how would he know what memories would be affected? Blam! No more 6th birthday party. Blam! Now you can no longer ride a bike. Blam! What is your favorite color? YOU DON'T KNOW! MWA HA HA! No nanobots to erase memories. No use of Stryker's psychic son. No mind wave bomb. Nope, big gun, shiny bullets. Lazy writing, folks.
If I had to give one piece of advice to filmmakers doing these movies from here on out, it would be this: USE SOMEONE ELSE. When you are writing a movie like this and you want to take a popular character and vastly change his history, powers and personality, then use a different character. Yes, I am a Deadpool fan and was annoyed about the lame alterations they made to him at the end. What's worse is that there are so many characters in the X-universe that would have worked for this. What about Omega Red? Hell, use Fantomex. Nobody'd blink if you tore that dude to pieces and you get points for obscurity. Now if they want to do a spinoff, they have to do the saran wrapped face, ginsu armed x-bot version with bizarre shushing action.
I didn't hate the movie, I was just massively disappointed. In the large buffet of X-stories, why do they keep going for the bad shrimp and avoiding the sirloin. Hugh emerges from all this pretty much unscathed. His Logan is great all the way through, especially when he keeps it simple. His 'crap' and 'damn' moments are highlights. Speeches? Not so Wolverine. The acting is pretty top notch all around, esp. Ryan Reynolds and surprisingly Will.I.am. It is the laundry list feeling of the rest of the movie that hurts the most. Next time, how about letting the filmmakers make the film rather than the beancounters.
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