X-Men Origins: Wolverine — Will It Suck?
Posted on | April 29, 2009 | No Comments
I have a prediction. If X-Men Origins: Wolverine sucks, it’s because of two factors:
- a crappy screenplay,
- a director who doesn’t understand the source material enough to recognize that he got a crappy script handed to him.
On paper, screenwriters David Benioff and Skip Woods and director Gavin Hood look good together. I’m a fan of Benioff thanks to his work on Spike Lee’s 25th Hour and Hood did wonders on Tsotsi. (I’m not as crazy about Woods, who wrote Swordfish and Hitman.) Both of them are capable of amazingly intelligent yet heart-pounding thrillers. Will they bring that same “thinking man’s” action aesthetic to the most popular Marvel Comics character and the best thing to come out of Canada since hockey and maple syrup?
As a Canadian-born comic lover, I haven’t been impressed by the trailers. They look horribly cheesy. I’m talking besides the ridiculously fake CGI- and stuntwire-aided sequences. I’m thinking about the story (as every scribe should). Let’s look at the things that irk me or raise my eyebrow:
- A teenage Cyclops makes an appearance: When did Wolverine’s origin ever have anything to do with Cyclops??
- A buttload of minor Marvel characters seem to have supporting roles, including Deadpool, Gambit, and the Blob: Why pack in a bunch of characters that should be saved for an X-Men sequel into a solo origin story? To me, too many characters always spells “warning!” Plus, in the comics, those three have little or nothing to do with Wolvie’s origin.
- Sabretooth charges at Wolvie on all fours: He is a mutant whose handle is Sabretooth; that doesn’t make him an actual four-legged feline!
Wolverine is one of my favorite comic characters. What makes him so special to me (aside from him also being Canadian) is that he’s the ultimate anti-hero, who could be 200 years old and has a mysterious, convulted past. He is just one hair-trigger away from being like the very evil-doers he stabs and slashes without remorse. He and this movie should be portrayed as extremely dark (I’m talking beyond Dark Knight dark) and as a real tragic figure who is more afraid of what’s inside of his head than the villains he has to slay.
So far the trailers don’t lead me to believe that X-Men Origins: Wolverine will do that, that the action won’t be as campy and the character development so off the mark as, say, Daredevil.
I am hoping and praying that I’m totally wrong and that this won’t be the case.
Tags: David Benioff > Gavin Hood > Hugh Jackman > screenplay > Wolverine > X-Men