X-Men Origins: Wolverine

A bunch of us caught a Saturday matinee of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I was actually looking forward to this movie more than I thought I would. The trailers looked good and even though I grew out of my Wolverine fanboy stage a long time ago, I still have much love for the scrappy little Canadian.

Like all comic book adaptations of late (minus maybe Watchmen,) the movie does not follow the comic very closely. However, the movie did maintain many of the broad strokes as well as tying in with the other X-Men movies. Leading up the cast, as he should be, was Hugh Jackman. Jackman surprised me in the first X-Men movie as Wolverine, but ever since then I'd be hard pressed to imagine anyone else playing the runt in a live-action movie. However, because I think it'd be funny to see the difference between the live-action characters and their four-color counterparts, I'm going to give you a before/after of each one.


Liev Schreiber plays Wolvie's brother, Victor (the future Sabretooth.) This is one of those partings from the comics that the broad strokes don't cover. It's fine, though. I suppose if I were more of an anal-retentive nerd, I could be offended by the departure from the comics. However, what is true in the comics one day will most likely be ret-conned the next. So, who cares?

As different as these two are, I kinda enjoyed Schreiber's Sabretooth

William Stryker was recast, just as Sabretooth. This time, he's played by Danny Huston. Huston does a fine job. Stryker's not a hard character to understand. Sure, he's tormented a little bit, but other than that, he's your standard devious genocidal maniac.

Stryker the priest, meet Stryker the military man

The Blob has always been a favorite villain of mine. He's never really struck me as all that threatening. Sure, nothing can move the Blob, but he always seems to be taken out quickly by the good guys. It doesn't take Wolverine much time to take out the Blob in the movie either, but Kevin Durand is pretty durn entertaining to watch through the whole thing.

I think they gave the movie version bigger man-tits. Classy.

To the contrary, I have never been fond of Gambit. One of Wolverine's most famous lines is, "I'm the best at what I do, and what I do ain't pretty." Wolvie even gets to feed that line to his girl in the movie. What they don't explain is exactly what that is. Jon often jokes, and I agree with him, that what Wolverine does best is get his butt handed to him by Gambit. And it ain't pretty. Throughout the comics, Wolverine gets thoroughly trounced by the limber-wristed cajun, often while Gambit is vomiting forth "creole wisdom" about why Wolverine keeps losing. Gambit is one of those characters that we're supposed to think is a bad ass simply because we're told he's a bad ass. Gambit is the perfect example of The Wesley for me. Thankfully, he only kicks Wolvie's butt for a little while in the movie and has a relatively small part. Even so, I will probably never like Taylor Kitsch in light of his involvement with the character.

D-bag 1, meet D-bag 2

Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, a.k.a. Deadpool in the comics. In the movie? Well, I'll just let you watch it yourself and tell me. Reynolds is the perfect choice for W.W. The comic book Deadpool spouts off more quips and one-liners than Spider-man and Reynolds excels at such work. Unfortunately, he has relatively few lines in the movie. There is some confusion as to whether the climactic battle involves Reynold's character or not. You may find the answer to it by watching the short scene in the middle of the credits when you see the movie. You may not, though, since there are two such scenes and only one will play at any showing. Anyone here going to see it more than once to catch the other scene, if you're lucky? Marvel sure hopes so. I'm willing to bet you'll just do like I did and google it.

Ah Wade, we barely knew ye.

Baby Cyclops and Baby Emma Frost had short, but vital roles in the movie. They never meet in such a way in the comics, but like I said, who cares? I dug Tim Pocock Scott Summers. He did a good job and the character was used well. Tahyna Tozzi playing Emma Frost, not so much. She had weird lips and a weirder power. While in the comics, her main mutation is telepathy, her secondary mutation (discovered much later in continuity, again, who cares?) is diamond skin. We get to see that here, but it was an odd choice of implementation. Her skin transforms into a layer of faceted diamonds. Why faceted diamonds? It doesn't make much sense. Uncut diamonds, maybe. I believe in the comic, her entire body transforms into a diamond crystal, which is pretty badass. The faceted diamond look is pretty lame.

Yeah, I would rather have seen the one on the left, too, but that just wasn't in the cards this time.

That did it for the characters I recognized. The rest of the cast was rounded out with lesser known (to me) characters from the books. Some fell in line relatively close with their comic book counterparts, others not so much. John Wraith, played by Will i Am (of Moto Moto fame, natch,) was one such character. Apparently they got the power right, even his history. Ethnicity? Nah. Still, there'd be very little ethnic diversity in this movie if they had stuck with the originals.

Then we have Dominic Monaghan as Bolt. Bolt? Bolt. I never knew the character. After reading up on him online, I don't really care. I'm just glad they didn't go with Beak like I had originally heard. Beak sucks. Bolt was a'ight.

Agent Zero, played by David North, I am a little more familiar with. I never really got into the character, though. I certainly didn't have a problem with North's portrayal. I guess he had the power of shooting really good? I don't know.

Lastly, there was Silver Fox. Oops! I mean, Kayla Silverfox, played by Lynn Collins. I hadn't realized as I watched the movie that Silver Fox in the comics was romantically linked to Wolverine, as Kayla Silverfox is in the movie. She's even involved with him in the same misleading way we see in the movie. It was a nice touch, even if they got her powers and family relationships completely mixed up. I'll say it one last time, though, who cares?

Apparently, Silver Fox joined Hydra. Kayla Silverfox? Not so much.

Now that I've spent the last hour or so whipping up those side-by-sides, I'm going to dutifully gloss over the rest of the movie. The storyline was good. Better than I thought it would be. It had some great doses of clever misdirection and revelations. There was some poignancy, humor, pathos, and excellent action (Wolvie vs. Helicopter, FTW). The why's of Stryker's missions lead into the climactic battle on 3 Mile Island in NY. It was a good touch tying together the historical catastrophe and the events of the movie. Some of the dialog was a bit overly dramatic and forced, such as when Wolverine wedges in his "Best at what I do" speech with his girl.

Worst yet was the special effects gaffs. Sabretooth's wall-crawling and Emma's transformation being among the worst. The other being every character's unexplained acrobatic prowess. Some of the leaps and jumps characters performed, which are wholly unexplained by their powers, were just super-human in an unbelievable way. This is especially bad considering the real-world controversy surrounding this movie. For those of you that don't know (which should be very few, if any, reading this site, so I'll make this quick,) the movie was leaked online a month before release, sans most of the special effects. Many people saw it in its unfinished form. The movie studio freaked out, engaging the FBI to track down the culprit and crying about how much their profits would be hurt. I'm of the opinion that the profits were not affected much, but I won't get into that here. However, in order to entice those early viewers into the theater, the powers-that-be tacked on two different scenes at the end of the movie. The tricky thing was that only one ending would be shown per viewing. I'm not sure how well that worked. I would have rather them spent the budget on better special effects than bringing talent back out, setting up locations, and shooting new scenes. Ah well, the effects weren't all bad. Summer's eye blasts, Wolverine's fights, ::sigh:: even Gambit's telekinetic tricks were pretty.

While I dwelt a little bit on my complaints of the movie, they were minor compared to my enjoyment of the movie. I liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine and I think that if you enjoy superhero action movies, you'll like it, too.

I give X-Men Origins: Wolverine twenty-seven out of thirty-two snikts on a scale I just made up that doesn't mean anything.

P.S. Why you gotta take out the Hudsons like chumps, tho?

The Prestige Smash TupperWare!

I’m not a fan of TupperWare parties. Actually, I’m not a fan of any party where girls get together to “ooh” and “ahh” over household products, whether they’re candles, cooking utensils, or plastic containers that need to be burped. Don’t get me wrong, I love that Stacy is in to that kind of thing, because our house usually benefits, but I would rather not be in the room when they happen.

That’s why Vince and I went to see The Prestige last night. We went to the Manassas Cinemas Café, a fourplex with one theater converted to a cinema eatery. It’s a cheap place and the ability to order food in front of the big screen is a fun novelty. Vince and I had eaten dinner earlier at the behest of Stacy, so we weren’t too hungry. I ordered the nacho plate, a medium popcorn to share and some twizzlers. Vince ordered the appetizer combo and a pitcher of root beer. If you did the math and came up with the answer that this was way too much food for two fed men, you win the booby prize (I said booby) which is much like Marvel’s No Prize in that I don’t give you anything, thanks for playing. As a result, we had a lot of food left over by the end of the movie. Sorry, starving kids in Africa.

The Prestige stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, but is not Wolverine Versus Batman, which is the only unfortunate thing about the movie. The supporting cast wasn’t half bad either with Michael Caine, Andy Serkis (of Gollum fame), David Bowie (as Tesla, natch) and the always gorgeous Scarlett Johansson. The plot revolves around Jackman and Bale’s characters as competing magicians with very personal grudges. The action takes place in a convolution of present-day and flashback scenes that can be very confusing if you aren’t paying attention. This elaborate timeline allowed the creators to weave in some excellent plot twists ending with the best plot twist I’ve seen since The Sixth Sense (What a tweest!) I will say this, you will find it difficult to sympathize with either of the main characters. There really is not a hero as the two magicians struggle in a back-and-forth game of obsessions. You will find yourself feeling for each of the supporting cast as their lives are either ruined or ended from the tumultuous fallout of the feuding magicians. It is a riveting story and worth the admission price (though maybe not all the extra food.)

Something that Pains and Something that Rocks My Ass

Originally posted June 3, 2006

Its been too long since Ive written here and Ive got a lot of things to say. So pull up a chair and relax.

Item 1: Life is a Pain in My Ass

I have suffered from pilonidal abscesses since 1998 or 1999. If you want detail on the condition, check out the link over here. Heres the nitty gritty, some people have a cavity just under their tailbone that can become infected and very painful. Sitting is uncomfortable and can move to excruciating in a matter of minutes. I have had a recent flare-up as the result of extended bouts of improper posture throughout my Red Hat training days and work weekends. As a person that spends an inordinate amount of time on his ass, this condition fills me with various emotions, all of them negative and most I would not describe in polite company (which is what were in now, right? The Internet is all about manners, right? No? Well, lets pretend just this once.) After a couple of weeks of pain, I could no longer pretend that I just bruised my tailbone. I sought medical attention. My doctor examined the area (Ill spare you the gruesome details of that examination) and decided it was not suitable for lancing (and definitely will spare you of details about that procedure.) The good news is that since this is my fourth flare-up, my doctor refers me to surgery to have the cavity permanently removed. Before you ask, I dont know what goes in the place of the cavity, if you remove something, doesnt it leave a cavity? In the meantime, on to antibiotics I go. A week and a half later and I am still in pain. My pre-op appointment comes in about another week and a half. Ill see what they have to say about my tender tailbone then. A couple of days ago Stacy clued me in on what I have to look forward to for the surgery. They will give me a spinal block. Awhuh? I say in consternation. Thats right, a spinal block. That means a needle. A needle in my back. A big needle in my back while Im awake. ::shudder:: Whether they give me anesthesia or not, I may be passing out. I dont do well with needles and the idea of having one squirming around in my spine fills me with a sense of dread akin to waking up at 3:00 AM and thinking about Emily Rose. DAMN THAT MOVIE!

Item 2: X-Men 3: Last Stand Rocked My Ass

I am a comic book nerd and I liked X-Men 3. Do I need a support group? The creators of the movie took such massive amounts of artistic license with the characters I grew up with that I should have hated it. Perhaps their various and sundry licenses combined in a pleasing chunky stew of awesomeness and potatoes, I dont know. Dont get me wrong, there were parts that upset me, but they were eclipsed by the parts that made me want to curl up into a ball, wrap myself up in the warm embrace of the cellulose, and snuggle my back issues of X-Men as I fell asleep. Does that make me weird? Jon wrote a good review here that echoes many of my sentiments. I warn you now that if you havent seen the movie and are planning to remedy that woeful state, you may encounter spoilers below.

First, the bad:

Jons sentiment about the Dark Phoenix aspect is spot on. Varicose veins and funky eyes do not a Dark Phoenix make. Scarlet spandex with golden phoenix emblem and golden sash? Now youre talkin!

Glen Angus Painting

Was Angel lame or what? Okay, hes always been lame, except for that stint with the Blue Man Group and his knives-for-feathers make-over. Imagine the spectator on the street. Oh wow! That guy can shoot beams of pure force from his eyes! That guy has claws and can heal super fast! That chick can fly, pick up cars, and drain lifeforce! That chick can fly, call down lightning, and control the weather! That guy can...fly. Oh, hes got a bazooka, I guess thats cool. Hey! That guy can turn into ice, make ice slides, and freeze anything! You get the idea. However, in all my days of reading the comic, I never questioned Angels ability to fly. Hes got a huge set of wings, of course he can fly! Seeing him up on the screen for the first time made me wonder. How does he steer? Hes got no tail feathers! What does he do, wiggle his legs? For the No-Prize one of my brothers (sorry, conversation was fast and loose, I forget which) said that it must be that his mutation was that he could fly, the wings are just for show. Regardless, Angels onscreen appearance was not as awe-inspiring as his namesake should be. Maybe I never had a problem in the comics because all we ever got were still shots of him flying. Meh.

Juggernaut was a mutant. In the comics, Juggernaut (Marko Cane, Xaviers half brother) obtained invincibility and super strength from absorbing the Ruby Gem of Cytorrak. His powers being of a mystic origin, Leech would not have had much of an affect on him. However, this irritation is overrun as if by a juggernaut by a) Juggernauts now classic line, Im the Juggernaut, bitch!

and 2) aforementioned Leechs affect on Juggernaut as he comically bashes his head into the wall with the requisite CLANG sound effect.

Wolverine talked down Dark Phoenix. Alright, it made for a powerful cinematic moment, but that was a complete departure from the original story. Rather than sacrificing herself in front of the man she loves (Cyclops, not Wolvie,) in a moment of clarity and supreme tragedy. Our favorite adamantine-infected hirsute talks her out of her homicidal rage with a passionate speech about his love for her, ending in the now cheapened sacrifice for the greater good. I know that presenting the Dark Phoenix Saga as it was written would have been entirely too much for a Hollywood movie, but including more elements of the original rather than giving Wolverine yet another stretch in the limelight would have won my support.

It looks like a lot, but the above problems did not detract so much from my enjoyment of the movie. What rocked? Im glad you (didnt) ask.

Old comic book favorites transferred flawlessly to the silver screen. First, we get a post-apocalyptic scene with the X-Men fighting an out-of-sight sentinel. My first thought was of the Days of Future Past Storyline wherein the beleaguered X-Men had been reduced to just a few members by the sentinels and were forced to hide from the murderous sentinels. And what was the crowning moment of the sentinel battle? The good old Fastball Special! For the uninitiated (shame on you!) that is when Colossus in all his organic metal glory swings and tosses Gimli, oops, I mean Wolverine discus style. We get treated to this spectacle not once, but twice in the course of the movie. How awesome is that?

Not as awesome as Kelsey Grammar knocking the role of Beast out of the park! When I first heard he would play Beast I thought, That wont work, it will just be Frasier with blue skin and fur. I was so deliciously wrong. Our introduction to the warrior-thinker of the X-Men was his classic hanging-from-the-ceiling-while-reading-intellectual-type-stuff. Beast proceeds to show us his upper-crust diplomatic side as a cabinet member of the President of the United States. Frasier, oops, I mean Grammar shines as the intellectual, but what about the acrobatic furball of rage that is the Beast in action? Through the space-age wonder of science, the special effects guys deliver as if rolling Silly Putty across the pages of the classic comic books and magically transferring the action onto the film. Beast begins battle with a blood-curdling roar before crushing, leaping, spinning, and generally maiming everybody with which he comes in contact. It was marvelous!

Speaking of marvelous, how about seeing Bobby Drake transform into Iceman for the first time in three movies? Out of the furnace of hell that was punk-ass Pyros conflagration shoots the crystal-clear, ice-cold fists of Iceman. First, he freezes Pyros jets, and then the rest of him emerges from the steam. He stayed icy long enough to deliver a scathing one-liner, which eludes me at the moment, to Pyro, before reverting to flesh and blood, but it was long enough.

Magneto lifts the friggin Golden Gate Bridge (I think) to walk five feet onto Alcatraz Island. How badass is he? Ill tell you how badass. A black car, a black SUV, a black truck towing Mystique, two more black SUVs. What would you do if you were the Master of Magnetism? If you said, Crumple the first car like spent Kleenex, then do the same to the second and toss both aside before flipping the other two SUVs off the road like Hot Wheels and then pitching the truck end over end over my frickin head while I stop the trailer two feet away from smearing me into well-dressed jelly, then youd be spot on. If you also would do the above with the aloof air of someone idly cremating a hopelessly inferior chess player in the world championships, then give yourself two hundred fifty points out of ten for style and start monogramming all of your stuff with a big fat M. The badassery (I smell a new word!) does not end there. Oh no. Magneto, rid of his mutation by the Leech-derived cure still has enough power to move a metal chess piece. Have we heard the last of Eric Lensher? No, hes to badass.

Finally, all of the neat plot threads tied up. Magneto already explains how all of the cured mutants will get their powers back, wanted or not (Im talking to you, Rogue. Now get off your swamprat behind and drain Marvel Girl of her powers already!) In my mind, the various deaths caused by Dark Phoenix are already taken care of. Do we know what happened to the people and things that were apparently disintegrated? Cheesier things have happened in the comics to bring back dead people. Characters don't die in comic books. They go to that great waiting room in the sky until their dramatic resurrection. When Phoenix rises again, and she always does, she can simply tap into wherever she sent them and reconstitute Cyclops (in all his whiny glory,) Prof. X., and all the no-names she wiped during the climax. No biggie. Would Patrick Stewart come back for a sequel or claim that resurrection cheapens his death? He will if he knows whats good for him. Dont think I wont sent Juggie after you, Stewart. Hes unstoppable, you know.

I had a couple of more items, but its really late and I just wrote way more about X-Men 3 than I thought I would. If this were the school paper I have due this week, I would be waaaaay over my requirements. Im going to spare those of you that made it this far in the entry (you gluttons) and say goodnight.

Goodnight.