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-Men Origins claws on to screen e bad: Cameos kill concept la Borge hckamas Print Ken Origins: Wolverine,” what the ■ble hockey sticks? It’s a phrase that K fits the movie. Watching this movie ■hat being sent to a time out They M us Gambit, they promised us Emma ■ey promised us Dead Pool... well, we K.. for a whole 15 minutes each. Med, “X-Men Origins” starts out good. He beginning, we are thrown into the Ml of Victor Creed (later known as Mh) and James (A.K.A. Logan or Ke). Here the viewer watches James ■his father figures and run off into the Mh his older brother Victor... right into Hare series of wars. Little by little we Kior become more of an “animal” and Making him back. MkI learned more about their past in ■ minute blip than I did in the rest of la little luck, they catch a plane ride I future, meeting up with some new les: Wade Wilson and his quick wit; faith, die man Nightcrawler wishes he Hon the big screen; Frederick J. Dukes, Bielies a tank and it explodes; Chris L who plays with electricity; and David ■gent Zero), the man with the guns, p not going to put this team down, ¡irk well together filled with delightful 9y and each have a kick-ass fight scene te our first introduction to the terrible Jts) that lets the jaw drop. | this isn’t enough for a guy with a Bnscience. Logan walks away from his Bnd the rest ofthe team. rears later, the movie finally starts. b Silverfox, while sitting on Logan’s piadows the rest of the movie with [the moon, her lover and the trickster, ¡lakes an off-comment joke referenc- Beatles and Kayla reveals the English in of the moon’s lover’s name as I this relationship is going to last about bs I can fly. Of course, she’s got to die lor is the one to do it In sets off a path to find and kill Bier in the name of revenge with fits nil macho acts from Hugh Jackman K a bit of a skirmish after being infused Kmantium metal, he runs off and meets ■uple on a farm who are way too under- B Perhaps they are old Superman’s K It would explain why they didn’t Hit when Logan brings out their sliced Mi sink offering to pay for the damage, ■just as Victor had to take away Kayla, I got to kill the knock-ofls of Clark Hdoptive parents. After the well placed ■of the helicopter scene, Logan discov- Me human John McKaine (a Bruce Hharacter), he can’t take a helicopter Kith a land vehicle. He can, however, ■propeller blades to ribbons. Macks down John and Fredrick (now M) who are perhaps the only morally Embers left alive. Logan and the Blob do a dance of manliness before Logan can get his answers. Fredrick tells him to go find some Cajun boy who had escaped from the island. Enter the card-playing hunk of a man named Remy LeBeau (Gambit) that fan girls have been waiting for. Exit: the fan girls’ dreams and hopes. Someone must have forgotten to tell Taylor Kitsch to go and visit New Orleans and study their accent. Instead, the audience is left with a barely noticeable and somewhat strained south- em-boy accent At least, Kitsch is still pretty to look at and shows off his quite promising fighting skills in a pointless fight with Logan. At least Kitsch’s* character is add ing to the plot J in a small con- ■ tribution sort of ™ way. At this point we’re left ^^B wondering ^^H who let Scott Summers j^^H (Cyclops) into ^^H the picture? Was it just for some pissed off fan BH boy who wanted jM to see Cyclops M knocked around a 1 few times? Victor randomly hunts down Cyclops like some highschool bully in what seems a totally / unneeded / and rather , poor ■B^r placed clip. Finally, the plot Mr picks up again. We are introduced to a series of plot twist after plot twist after plot ¡¡sgir twist This is the point where the viewer stares at the screen, leans JE forward, and says, “What the flick just ar happened?” The last pointless character to appease the audience is introduced: Emma Frost Her only real useful quality in the movie is to turn into a glittering-diamond-shaped human and help Cyclops get the rest of the teens out alive. Now if you’ve been waiting this whole time to see Wade Wilson again, you’ll be even more disappointed than Gambit’s fan girl club. Wade is now the product of William Stryker’s “Weapon XI” project... with his mouth sewn shut, so much for his witty dialogue. Eventually, 20 minutes after it should have," the movie ends when Victor shows one of his only redeeming qualities. In the end, I suggest conning someone into paying your ticket to watch the slaughter of this potentially good film. The good: Wolverine’s worth $7 Kayla Calloway beginning of the movie, you could easily tell that the CG was off, but they picked up the ball quickly, making the rest of the movie a stunningly interesting piece of work. We all know that when you go see a When Logan and Victor join a special movie, there’s .good chance it won’t be ops team of sorts, we discover that each worth the 10 bucks you shelled out for the team member has a unique ability, much ridiculously expensive ticket. But, every like the brothers. The director and the spe once and a while, you see a movie that was cial effects guys took great care to make worth the money. “Death at a Funeral” was each member’s introductory scene amazing one for me. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and intricate. David North (Agent Zero) was worth about seven of the $10 I had displays his insane gun work as he takes spent. down nearly every security guard in a man Now, I don’t like to ner of seconds. The Blob punches a tank and dwell on blows it up. Wade Wilson slices and dices the bad his way through a bombardment of bullets. and the This last bit was the best out of the bunch. ugly of You can tell that a lot of work was put into. movies. it. The camera focused on the sword as it Instead, cuts a bullet in half in a very Matrix-like I tend to fashion. The whole scene is well done and |H focus on looks like it would fit in any blockbuster what was action flick. actually The whole Africa scene seemed to me H good. Call a little ridiculous. Everyone but Hugh K me overly Jackman (Wolverine) and Liev Schreiber ■1/ optimis- (Victor) were under acting. The aforemen tic, but I tioned pair were doing the exact opposite. S' don’t like My guess was that Jackman wanted to V to have show off his muscles and Schreiber was ■ my hopes just responding. Either way, I found myself F and dreams waiting for the moment when Wolverine left crushed and the screen in a huff. then salt poured Jump to six years later. Logan is try into, the wounds. ing his best to lead a normal life with Ins HT Plus, you girlfriend, Kayla Silverfox. (Both myself k don’t need to be and another writer at 7/re Print found this r reminded of the to be amusing.) This relationship seemed immediately strained with no real chemistry not-so-good parts; you’ll remember but that is easily explained by Wolverine’s those quite clearly reluctance to let go of his past. What I found to be particularly strange yourself. . A11 h o u gh, was the way Kayla reacted to Logan’s night \ some of the terror: with a calm smile and a comment B el acting was about needing new sheets. Now, if I had ■Kk . sub-par, been in her situation, I sure as hell wouldn’t be so calm. Therefore this tranquility led me to believe that these nightmares were a I the writing regular occurrence. Still, why would Kayla I wasn’t all that hor- have stayed after the first time Logan’s B rible. Yes, at times, claw-shaped bones shot out and cut her? [ the powers of author- That gets explained later in the movie I ity relied a little too much ^^Hk when everything comes together after a I on the dialogue to tell the ^M& series of plot twists that I won’t bother bor I story, but it was not overdone. ing you with. Let it suffice that it is actually j I do wish that those powers had a surprise. I seen fit to expand on the beginning Something else that was actually enter I sequence for those of us that had missed v taining was the character of Gambit. I, along ’ the first 20 seconds because we were with who knows how many others, couldn’t wait .to see what Hollywood hottie would spending more money getting popcorn. Undoubtedly, the war-to-war opening play my favorite from the old cartoons. was well done, if not one of the best scenes And although the actor who landed the roll in the movie. As a friend of mine pointed was quite attractive, the small amount of out to my ignorant self, the guns they used screen time irked me. Yes, Gambit did get were era-appropriate. So, it seemed that the an- amazing, although ultimately pointless, movie was off to a good start. Then the char fight scene with Wolverine. Yes, his card acter William Stryker came into the picture. tricks were well-done. Yes, his accent was But, I won’t say more on the subject other horrible, but it would’ve been worth it to than this: anyone else could’ve played the have him in for just a few more minutes. All in all, if you want a good action flick, part better. The visuals were- pretty well done. The look no further. Bqt if you happen to be a scenes were interesting to watch, even if die hard X-Men fan, you might be a tad the content wasn’t all that great. At the disappointed. Tte Clackamas Print e Ugly: Logan’s origin story mutilates fan hopes with innaccuracies Hurlburt Bn ■l(id'«»ms Print Klverine is the quintessential badass ■comic book world, and his origin Kvas for more than 20 years one of Egest untold mysteries in the Marvel ■ Ken Marvel handed over the rights E icon to Fox, they should have told ■handle with care . . . or else!” Karing about X-men Origins: ■rine was kind of like finding out Kot a date with the girl of your Ks< Eching the movie, however, was ■like going on a date with her and Kg out in the end that she wasn’t a girl at all. The movie strays so far from the true origin story of Wolverine and especially his days in Weapon-X, that I started wondering if I had gotten a few mind-wipes myself. _ From here on out, I’m issuing a spoiler alert. I want to clear up a few of the ugly lies that this movie has told. Deadpool was not the culmination of every mutant’s genes being spliced togeth er to create the perfect anti-mutant; he is an aborted attempt1 at cloning Wolverine and can’t teleport or shoot lasers out of his eyes. Sabretooth- was never mentioned as being Wolverine’s brother. It has been hinted that he is both his father and half brother but neither have ever been stated clearly. Stryker is not a general anywhere in Wolverine’s past. There is one men tion of Stryker in X-force and in that he is a fanatical priest bent on destroying mutants. Romulus is a veiled but essential figure in Wolverine’s past that the movie completely ignored. He is the figure who is always in the shadows and pulling the strings that decide what Logan’s fate will be. He is the one that all throughout Wolverine’s life has bent him into being a killer by killing anyone Logan gets too close to. Leaving Romulus out of a Wolverine origins movie is like writing the Bible but forgetting to put God in there somewhere. The Magic bullets: Two adamantium bullets lodged themselves in Wolverine’s brain blocking his entire past from mem ory in the movie. Yet again, Fox swayed away from the story like a drunk driv er frying to make it through S-curves. Wolverine’s memories were erased by weapon-X, and before that, he had been trying to block out his childhood since he was working at a mine around the time of the Alaskan gold rush. Adamantium bul lets just knock him out, but like anything else, he recovers. These are among a few of the prob lems I had with the movie and are to be taken only as the rants of a crazed comic fan, who loved the true Wolverine Origins story because it was the true Wolverine Origins story. Fox should stick to what it does well, like right-wing news, instead of ruining Marvel’s characters.
