Movie Review: Wolverine

When I first heard they were doing a movie about the origins of Wolverine I was excited. Then I started seeing trailers and became much less excited. In fact, I began to doubt whether I'd bother to see it. But Yummy and I went to see it Saturday and liked it.

Now, I should say right off that while I am a comic book fan I've never really gotten in to the X-Men. I know the core characters, their roles, and their personalities. I knew enough to see all the ways that X-Men 3 was all screwed up. I've got some comics with Deadpool in them but I don't know the guy well. I keep getting him mixed up with some other characters. Which, in the case of this movie, is a good thing. And if you look at the cast listing on IMDB.com you could even argue that Deadpool and Weapon XI are different characters.

What I'm saying is that you have to either not demand absolute adherence to the comics or not know enough to have nailed down the character in your mind.

I'm not sure what to say about the movie. Either you're already interested or you never plan to see the movie ever.

Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine. He'd done lots of stage work and some unknown roles on TV, but he was made to play Wolverine and it's the role that launched him to the level of fame he has now.

This movie takes you back before any of the X-men movies to tell you where the most popular mutant came from. How old is he really? How did all that metal get in his body? What happened to his memory?

And, there's something after the credits. Nothing great. Certainly no tie-in to the eventual Avengers movie.

I liked the movie. I'm glad I saw it. I may even get it on DVD. This is all more than I could say for X-Men 3.

You may have already heard that Professor X has a cameo. That's true. It's still Patrick Stewart. But, like in X-Men 3, they used a computer to shave off some years. I'm afraid they didn't do a good job, either. They're supposed to apply the technology to make the back story of Magneto work. I hope they put a bit more effort in the whole movie. I don't think I can take 2 hours of Professor X and Magneto digitally scraped back down to 25 year olds if they do that bad a job on them.