X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2009 Superhero Film
Hugh Jackman Returns to Delve Deeply into Logan's Violent Past
Sep 14, 2009
James Logan and his brother Victor Creed are both are mutants and possess the ability to regenerate virtually any injury. Their bodies’ ability to heal themselves means that the two age at a slower rate and could potentially be immortal.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine's Plot and Characters
In 1845 in Canada the young James Howlett witnesses his father being murdered by a groundskeeper named Thomas Logan. Seeing his father die triggers a mutation in the boy. Claws push through his skin and he kills Logan. With his dying breath, Logan tells the boy that he is his real father. The confused James runs into the night with his friend Victor Creed, the abused son of Thomas Logan and (he now realises) his brother.
Over the next century the two are inseparable and work as soldiers. Both have violent urges and being soldiers allows them to express those feelings in the American Civil War, both World Wars, as well as the Vietnam War. However during Vietnam Victor (as an adult played by Liev Schreiber) kills his superior officer after his superior attempts to rape a woman. His actions are defended by his brother James (Hugh Jackman) and the pair are executed by a firing squad before being imprisoned.
They are found by William Stryker (played by Brian Cox in X-Men 2 but here is much younger and is played by Danny Huston) who offers them the chance to join Team X, a group of mutants. The pair do join but due to the team’s disregard for life James ultimately decides to leave them and Victor behind.
Six years later James using the name Logan is happy with his girlfriend Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins), then Victor re-enters his life and without provocation murders her just to get at him.
The rest of the film follows Logan as he sets off to get revenge.
Unnecessary Origin Film
X-Men Origins: Wolverine basically tells the back story of how Wolverine came to have the indestructible metal adamantium grafted to his skeleton, his relationship to Sabertooth and how he came to lose his memory.
The X-Men films focused primary on Wolverine and so this origin story does just seem to be retreading old ground. Victor Creed and Sabertooth are the same, although, Victor is not called Sabertooth during the film. Tyler Mane played the part in X-Men and was apparently interested in returning but has been replaced by the less physically imposing Liev Schreiber. A young Scott Summers (who would become Cyclops in the X-Men films) is one of several captured mutants that are being used to create the ultimate weapon. However, his eyes are covered and so he doesn't see Wolverine which explains why he didn't recognise him in X-Men.
Other mutants Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) and Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) also appear.
Regrettably, Reynolds seems to only be there to establish his character in the Marvel Universe so he can have a spin-off (which is said to be in the works) Gambit features more prominently but again his presence in Wolverine seems to only be so a future film can look more deeply into his character.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an action packed film that gives the audience further insights into the past of gruff character of Wolverine. However, like a lot of prequels Wolverine doesn’t tell the audience anything they really needed to know. Hugh Jackman is obviously at home playing Wolverine, and whilst this film has its flaws it is a solid action film that will most likely result in other origin stories.
7/10
Not as good as the first two X-Men films but an improvement on X-Men: The Last Stand
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