Wolverine: Origins

[dreiser]

My brother is in town visiting us for a month while his law school is on summer break. We went to go see Wolverine: Origins tonight and I was a little surprised by my reaction to it.



I liked it. I mean, it's not as good as Star Trek but it's way better than X3 and honestly, from the way a lot of my comic book friends were acting I was expecting it to be just horrible. Like as horrible as the second Transformers Michael Bay live action movie is going to be. Instead I got a pretty decent comic book movie and yeah, they altered a lot of things from the comic book canon unnecessarily but I wasn't as bothered by it as I expected myself to be which is something I'm still puzzling about. Maybe it was the Hugh and Liev pretty that pacified me? I dunno. I will say I appreciated all the shots of Hugh looking hunky and dreamy as he walks away from things blowing up or crumbling from his destruction. Plus the sequence of them fighting in all the wars.

Emma Frost and The Blob were added in there for no reason. I mean, why did they have to turn out to be the one character's sister and the person who was in his super secret group? Wade... well, what the hell with Wade. I mean, on one hand they fucking made him into a grab bag of mutant powers and sewed his mouth shut on the other hand, if you took away that weird ass tattoo thing they had on him and the stupid freaky grab bag powers he looked all burnt weird like Deadpool should and that inexplicably pleased me. But why sew his mouth shut? Freaky.

My question, and I haven't bothered to research this yet, how the fuck can they make a Deadpool sequel when Wolvie cut his fucking head off? That is just totally weird. Is it a prequel pre-freak show mutant grab bag movie? Huh? His HEAD IS GONE! He can't regrow a head!

Liev Schreiber is my favorite thing in the movie. He is utterly perfect and fantastic as Sabretooth and I loooooove him in the role. I wish we could magically put him into the first two X-Men movies in that role. Also, I'm not a fan of Gambit at all, I sort of hate the character and his lame ass throwing cards as a weapon and I want Rogue with Magneto in the comics or Storm but yeah, that will never happen, anyway, despite my dislike of Gambit in the comics I liked him so much in the movie. Even the throwing cards were cool as a weapon. Also the pimp cane attacks were pretty sweet. I need to make some Gambit pimp cane icons now.

So that's that. I actually liked it quite a bit and despite being a comic book nerd I wasn't nearly as dismayed as I thought I would be with all the unnecessary alterations to comic book canon. I'm baffled by Deadpool/Wade changes the most because... well, he wasn't a very entertaining bad guy to fight against at the end. He was sort of a let down. The fight was cool but honestly, the drama was there way more involving Sabretooth as a villain who was also more scary and just made of awesome.

ETA: Hee! I made a Gambit pimp cane icon. It pleases me.

Comments

[madame-diggory.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it's worth paying good money to see, or at least scaming passes from my friend who works at the theater. I loved Gambit it the comics and especially in that cartoon from the 90's, same with Rogue. Anna Paquin did a horrible job in the movie, IMO. But it's funny I hated Jean in the comics and the cartoon show but Famke made me love Jean in the movie, go figure?

BTW, your Gambit icon is awesome!!

[dreiser.livejournal.com]

I think it's worth seeing, especially if you can get in for free. I didn't think Anna did a bad job, however what they did with Rogue getting her powers removed in X3? Sucked soooo hard and they didn't do anything cool with her powers really which sucked. Jean has always been my X-Men fangirl crush, I love her to death in comics/cartoon/movie. I think Famke was perfect in the role, she and Hugh made the huge pile of poo that is X3 tolerable. Plus Ellen Page as Kitty made me squee because she's perfect as Kitty and I love Kitty almost as much as Jean.

How you feel about Jean in the movie is how I feel about Gambit! lol. He's not in the movie a lot but when he's there it's really good and he's an entertaining character. Makes me wish he had been in the good X-Men movies. Ah well.

[indigo-veil.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it yet. Emma is lame in the movie? NooOOoOoOOOOOOOooooOoOOOoo!

;_;

[dreiser.livejournal.com]

She's barely in the movie. It doesn't matter actually. I just think putting in there served no purpose. You blink or go to pee and you miss her.

[harper-m.livejournal.com]

I didn't stick around for the very end of the credits, but I hear that you see Deadpool's body crawling over to his head. Maybe that's the way they get the sequel. He's just so crazy supermutant that his head just kind of glues itself back on. I don't know.

When I was a kid, I was totes in love with two of the X-men from the Saturday morning cartoon - Gambit and Jean Grey. I also have a strange fascination with Tim Riggins. Given these two things, it makes sense that movie Gambit would somehow fail for me. I think he's maybe just not Cajun enough? Again, I don't know.

(Also, I totally didn't understand Emma's inclusion. First of all, I've never imagined teen-Emma as a ponytailed, tank top wearing, less than bad-ass. Also, that chick was supposed to be her sister?)

[dreiser.livejournal.com]

We left and didn't watch all the credits. That would explain it. I don't think I'll go see Deadpool movie in theaters. That is just stupid.

My thing is, I always felt Gambit was a stereotype Cajun in the comics/cartoon and thus he annoyed me. He was just too over the top in the con artist charming ladies man vibe and thus he bugged me. The movie toned that down so I liked him a lot as a result. Plus his powers were done in a way that was actually pretty cool, something that I've never gotten from comics/cartoon.

Yeahhhh, Emma was pointless. I dunno why they made that Emma. Also, her diamond hard mutant ability didn't emerge until she was an adult and had that weird power swap thing with Bobby. And her sister was apparently Silverfox which is totally weird to me since Silverfox doesn't have touch mutant powers as far as I'm aware. I thought she was just an assassin.

The issue I agree with that should have bothered me more but it didn't for some reason is the movie's habit of like... giving an established character name to someone in the movie and that's the only thing they have in common with the character established in the comic. The powers, the origin, the personality sometimes, it's all different. Just the name is the same. I don't see the point of changing a character so drastically the only thing they have in common with who they were originally is the name. Why not just create a brand new character?

I liked the movie though. It was way better than X3. Maybe not X2 level but Jean saving everyone and going all Phoenix at the end just made that movie made of pure win, imho.

[juwl.livejournal.com]

Quick note: Haven't seen the movie myself. That's all.
So, the movie starts out in the 1840's, in Canada's Northern Territory. Which is pretty impressive, since Canada wasn't founded until the 1860's, and the Northern Territory not until the 1870's.
Also, Anna Paquin was NOT Rogue! No! BAD! Rogue is supposed to be a hot, adult Southern Belle.
Of course, she's also supposed to have siphoned Marvel Girl's power... poor Jean...

[dreiser.livejournal.com]

Anna was good as movie Rogue, imho, and she was Southern. She just didn't have a crazy exaggerated accent. The accent was there though.

Rogue's powers of strength, invulnerability, flight, etc, from the comics came from siphoning the powers of Ms. Marvel until she almost died while she was still a bad guy working with her mother Mystique in the League of Evil Mutants. Ms. Marvel was Carol Danvers who was a member of The Avengers. As far as I know Rogue never siphoned powers from Jean when she was Marvel Girl, Just Jean, or Phoenix.

ETA: I really just comic geeked out right there, didn't I? lol. Oh noes.

[deglorath.livejournal.com]

Heh, Deadpool has gotten his head cut off before in his comic series, he has some pretty crazy regeneration ability, equal in level to Wolvies' if not better. But what really annoyed me was that he apparently doesn't use guns at all.. the grab bag powers thing is dumb too, he is a personality, not a power set, that's why people love him, he's a comedy character, but at the same time, really cool.