-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.