X-Men Origins: Wolverine

This is sort of a review on the recently shown X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie. It will take quite a long time for me to get to it.

I've been a Wolverine fan ever since I read my first X-Men comic book. It was Uncanny X-Men and featured the first appearance of Kierok the Damned. In that issue, Wolverine clearly showed his adored attitude - just like a wolverine, so to speak. He was careless yet effective. Come to think of it, there has got to be something about those claws that just makes him stand out from the rest of the mutants. The claws itself has created a whole new group of Wolverine wannabes. Now (or maybe back then), a superhero team wouldn't be complete without the requisite character with the sharp (and sometimes indestructible) claws.

Aside from the (first) comic book, I got to see a Wolverine toy with "clip-on" claws. I told my Mom that she should have bought it. I don't know what came to me that I said such words. Needless to say, I got a nice reprimand from an uncle who overheard.

Anyway, I kept some close tabs on Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men despite the lack of Internet connection in my elementary school days and no regular comic books to read. A story arc that I remember is the X-Men adventure in Japan. Most of the story actually happened in Wolverine's own on-going series and I got to read that years after it was actually released in a trade paperback. As usual, once threatened, always relentless in the pursuit of taking down the enemy. Oh yeah, all those martial arts and black ops training that he's had is never bad.

Collectible cards somehow featured a lot of him. The X-Men card series always had a special portion dedicated to him. Wolverine even had his own set of cards released. Wolverine Comic Images featured spiffy and glossy color to already existing artwork.

There's a whole lot of Wolverine-related comic book products out. If he's not the most overexposed character in Marvel Comics, it would have to be Spider-man. Wizard Magazine even dedicated a special magazine release just for him. The 3 X-Men movies made sure to put a lot of emphasis on Wolverine and his dark past (which incidentally coincides with the new Wolverine movie). And as what Joe Quesada and his Marvel brain thrust claimed, they came out with Wolverine's "true" origin story before the movie came out so they'd be the first to tell it (rather than the movie messing it up).

This is where the review comes in. As one big fan who digested much of the Wolverine Origins, I am somewhat disappointed over how the movie came out. It's understandable that movies don't entirely follow the original stories but the Wolverine movie is a pure sell-out of sorts - trying to connect itself to the whole X-Men franchise when in fact Wolverine goes "older" than that. That Wolverine is supposed to be a killing machine because of his military (and other martial arts) training, it doesn't show in the movie. There is more to Wolverine that makes him the killing machine that he is and that is the whole essential thing. It's just too bad that the movie makers decided to resort to what they just did.

The movie makers probably figured out that they couldn't explain the memory erasing clearly so they opted for the adamantium bullets. To me, it's all crap shoot. How is possible to accurately predict that shooting Wolverine on the head would erase his memory? And then there's the theory of adamantium against adamantium. Even Wolverine's claws can't penetrate Captain America's shield which, as fanboys know, is made up of adamantium also.

Anyway, moviegoer review time. 4 out of 5 stars. The movie makers tried their best. Not good enough. The story was great. Some of the characters were illogically included. But that's Hollywood. Sometimes, it just doesn't have to make sense.

And hey, I like Deadpool also. Ryan Reynolds portrayal was great in my opinion. But Deadpool becoming that killing machine that they showed in the last part is just too much. He is not supposed to be like that!