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Release by: Fox
Released on: 9/15/2009
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Hugh Jackman
Year: 2008
The Movie:
The prospect of a Wolverine movie, what with he being the most popular of the X-Men, should have been a no-brainer. Hugh Jackman has proven himself a good choice for the role in the three X-Men films that preceded this, the first in the line of X-Men Origins movies, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how action packed this film may be, it's really pretty dumb.
A quick intro shows us how Logan's family problems lead to his running off with his brother, Victor - the two mutants live a life on the move together and become quite close. Over the years the get involved in various wars and eventually wind up on a Special Forces team lead by a sneaky guy named Stryker (Danny Huston). After a while, Victor (Liev Schreiber) and Logan (Hugh Jackman) start to see things differently and as a few years pass, they're no longer the close brothers they were in their younger days. Victor is really into killing things while Logan is more into playing lumberjack and making goo-goo eyes at his cute Indian girlfriend, Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Well, mean and nasty Victor kills the girlfriend, setting into motion Logan's quest for revenge which brings him to Stryker's attention. He offers him an experimental procedure where they'll infuse his bones with an indestructible metal called adamantium which will make his already sharp bone claws into extra super sharp metal claws and make his skeleton nigh-invulnerable.
Logan, now calling himself Wolverine, starts chasing down some of the former members of the team he was on hoping to get information that'll lead him to Victor and Stryker. He meets a goofy Cajun guy named Remy LeBeaux (Taylor Kitsch), better known as Gambit, who tells Logan where the bad guys are hiding which results in a lot of explosions and fighting and CGI effects work but very little story or character development.
There are a few cool touches here - throwing in an early appearance from Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) who would later become Deadpool was a nice idea and seeing a young Scott Summers (Tim Pocock) who would later become Cyclops is also kind of cool - but for an origin story, well, there's not much here. Wolverine, as a young lad, sprouts claws, gets older, and fights with his half brother - that's really about it. The whole Weapon X subplot that made the comics so interesting is just barely touched on here and seems to be more of a convenient plot device than anything else. Hugh Jackman is perpetually cool as Wolverine and Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed aka Sabretooth is just as good at playing tough and looking intimidating but there's no meat on the bones of this script, it's really just a collection of CGI enhanced set pieces and explosions strung together by a bunch of clichés and action movie stereotypes.
The movie is entertaining enough in its rampant stupidity, but it could and should have been a whole lot more than it turned out to be. There are so many ways they could have gone with this storyline and so many interesting characters that could have been exploited that you can't help but be disappointed that the movie caters to none but the lowest common denominator.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Wolverine hits Blu-ray in a 2.35.1 1080p AVC encoded high definition anamorphic widescreen transfer. Despite the abundance of CGI giving the film a somewhat cartoonish look in certain scenes, there's a lot of detail here, particularly in close up shots. Color reproduction is nice and natural looking while black levels are strong and deep. A few shots lean towards the soft side of things but overall this is a really well authored disc of some great looking source material. Don't expect any problems with edge enhancement or compression artifacts, you won't see any, while textures and skin tones all look very realistic. All in all, a very nice job on Fox's part here, even if sometimes the CGI and effects work look overly fake.
The primary audio track is an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track though standard definition DTS 5.1 mixes are offered up in French and Spanish. Subtitles are supplied in all three languages as well. This is a very aggressive mix that'll put your home theater set up to the test. There's loads of surround activity throughout the film, some subtle (such as the scene with the elderly couple in the barn) and some rather bombastic (more or less everything else!) and it always sounds really tight and well mixed. The levels are properly balanced, there are no issues with hiss or distortion at all, and dialogue is always clean and clear even if it gets just a little bit buried in a few of the really over the top action sequences.
Fox loads up this release with oodles and oodles of extra features starting with a pair of commentary tracks. In the first track director Gavin Hood flies solo and talks about putting this picture together and more or less just gives us a top down view of the production and its history. The talk is dry in spots but it's packed with information. The second commentary, which puts producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winters behind the microphone, is a bit more animated and has a bit more of a relaxed atmosphere to it. The pair talks about spinning Wolverine off into his own film for the first time, fan expectations, effects, casting, and more. It would have been nice to see Hugh Jackman pop up in either one of the commentary tracks, but for whatever reason that doesn't happen. Complimenting the commentary tracks quite nicely is Fox's Ultimate X-Mode Bonus View feature, which lets you choose from four different picture in picture tracks that play out as you watch the film. The X-Connect option lets Hood and Shuler Donner offer input, The Director's Chair lets Hood do his thing without anyone else, X-Facts plays as a simple but fun trivia track while Pre-Visualization is essentially a collection storyboard and pre-production artwork.
From there we move on to the featurettes starting with the sixteen minute The Roots Of Wolverine which is a discussion with Marvel Comics head honcho and former X-Men writer/Wolverine co-creator Len Wein. This isn't a particularly in depth track but it will give the unfamiliar a very brief overview of how Wolverine came to be in the comics. Wolverine Unleashed: The Complete Origins is a twelve minute bit where Shuler Donner talks about how they wanted to tell the story of Wolverine's time in Japan but got coerced into doing his origin first. From there we get interviews with stunt coordinators as well as bits with Jackman and Hood in addition to a look at how some of the design work was created. Weapon X Mutant Files is a fifty four minute piece that covers all nine members of Wolverine's special missions team as well as its leader, Stryker. We get some character intros, interviews with the actors and behind the scenes footage here in addition to plenty of clips of the stunt teams, effects crew and director at work. The Thrill Of The Chase is a five minute look at the film's helicopter chase scene while the Deleted And Alternate Scenes section offers up ten minutes of excised material including an interesting scene with Storm. Gavin Hood offers up optional commentary for this material and explains why the scenes weren't used. All of these featurettes are presented in HD.
Rounding out the extras are some trailers for other Fox properties, a six minute standard definition clip from the film's premiere in Arizona, menus, chapter stops, and Blu-ray live connectivity. The second disc in the set contains a digital copy of the film so that you can enjoy its remarkable mediocrity on a portable device of your choosing.
The Final Word:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is entertaining enough if you don't mind shutting off your brain, but that's really pretty faint praise. Hugh Jackman is good in the lead but he can't save a movie plagued by bad clichés and a goofy script. Fox's Blu-ray release, however, is just as good as you'd expect it to be as it not only looks and sounds excellent, it's loaded with extras too.
