Koo-koo Ka-choo

Watched this film yesterday after playing badminton with my friends in Greenhills.

*****

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!


The spoiler...
Logan and his brother Victor served the American army formidably and this is mainly because of their innate mutant abilities. Along the way, they met Colonel Stryker, an ambitious officer who assembled a team of mutants (and conscripting the brothers in it) that acted as a Special Force for the military. After a while, the team's differences took toll and they separated to live their own civilian lives.

Logan went a simple living on the mountains of Canada with his wife. One day, Victor returned and claimed the life of his beloved. Wanting to kill Victor for revenge, he agreed to Colonel Stryker's experiment to infuse adamantium to his bones rendering him almost indestructible. Tagged as Weapon X by Stryker's experiment, Logan opted to rather be called as Wolverine (taken from one of his wife's tales). He learned that Stryker wanted something else out of the experiment and tried to erase his memories. Wolverine escaped the facility and along the way learned that Stryker himself is in league with Victor.

The two are involved in kidnapping mutants and conducting experiements with them on a secluded facility called the "Island".

Wolverine went out to search for this facility and after arriving on it, new revelations has been revealed - his wife is not dead and is only blackmailed to cooperate with Stryker to save the life of her sister who is under the Colonel's captivity. Freeing the captive mutants, Wolverine (with Victor helping out) eventually has to battle with Weapon XI, the last and best mutant warrior Stryker's experiments have produced.

They are able to defeat Weapon XI and destroy the facility. The captive mutants are saved by a cameo appearance of Professor X. Wolverine however was shot by Stryker in the head with an adamantium bullet. The wounds healed but the damage in his brain made him forgot everything. Stryker was arrested by the military and rest is... well... X-Men history.

The verdict...
I've always liked Wolverine and I have to agree that Hugh Jackman (though out of scale to the original Wolverine who should only be 5'3 feet in height) is one of the best choice to grab the role. He looks like Logan and acts the role well.

It's cool that I'm familiar with most of the mutants on the film and like a fanboy I go "Oooh, I know him/her!" in my mind when a mutant appeared along the story. Some are not outright recognizable but there are enough hints to know who's who. Some of the most prominent characters are the Blob, Sabretooth (Victor), a young Cyclops, Deadpool (one of my favorites in Marvel), Emma Frost, and Gambit. It's disappointing that Gambit has been shown a lot of times in the movie's preview but doesn't play that much role in the movie itself.

There are obvious deviance from the canon story as read in the Marvel comicbooks but I believe that they are made in good spirit of TRYING to come up with an interesting story. This made the film also fairly acceptable to people who don't know crap about Wolverine and the rest of the Marvel mutants in print. The storyline is typical of comicbook adaptations where lose ends fly aplenty and impossibilities are only limited by the scriptwriters' ingenuity to make things happen. It's a leave-brain-at-home screenplay.

Actually, the movie can be boring, really, if you'll not be dazzled by the more-than-enough action scenes it packs. Some time along the movie you'll realize that mutant characters come and go like they just want to throw in as much mutants as possible even if they don't really help much on progressing the story. I can go as far as saying that there's not enough "flash" on the film (which should be expected on sci-fi flicks like this). Computer effects is horrible as some of the green screen scenes and digital edits are obvious. They've provided subtle fan services to the really hardcore Wolverine fans but it won't change the impact to people who would look for value for what they paid.

In all, it's your generic superhero flick. Nothing innovative is introduced in it except the fact that you'll learn that Wolverine's name actually originated from a who-knows-what-language word that sounds like "koo-koo kachoo!" Haha... laughtrip!

4 out of 10.

Koo-koo Ka-choo

Watched this film yesterday after playing badminton with my friends in Greenhills.

*****

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!


The spoiler...
Logan and his brother Victor served the American army formidably and this is mainly because of their innate mutant abilities. Along the way, they met Colonel Stryker, an ambitious officer who assembled a team of mutants (and conscripting the brothers in it) that acted as a Special Force for the military. After a while, the team's differences took toll and they separated to live their own civilian lives.

Logan went a simple living on the mountains of Canada with his wife. One day, Victor returned and claimed the life of his beloved. Wanting to kill Victor for revenge, he agreed to Colonel Stryker's experiment to infuse adamantium to his bones rendering him almost indestructible. Tagged as Weapon X by Stryker's experiment, Logan opted to rather be called as Wolverine (taken from one of his wife's tales). He learned that Stryker wanted something else out of the experiment and tried to erase his memories. Wolverine escaped the facility and along the way learned that Stryker himself is in league with Victor.

The two are involved in kidnapping mutants and conducting experiements with them on a secluded facility called the "Island".

Wolverine went out to search for this facility and after arriving on it, new revelations has been revealed - his wife is not dead and is only blackmailed to cooperate with Stryker to save the life of her sister who is under the Colonel's captivity. Freeing the captive mutants, Wolverine (with Victor helping out) eventually has to battle with Weapon XI, the last and best mutant warrior Stryker's experiments have produced.

They are able to defeat Weapon XI and destroy the facility. The captive mutants are saved by a cameo appearance of Professor X. Wolverine however was shot by Stryker in the head with an adamantium bullet. The wounds healed but the damage in his brain made him forgot everything. Stryker was arrested by the military and rest is... well... X-Men history.

The verdict...
I've always liked Wolverine and I have to agree that Hugh Jackman (though out of scale to the original Wolverine who should only be 5'3 feet in height) is one of the best choice to grab the role. He looks like Logan and acts the role well.

It's cool that I'm familiar with most of the mutants on the film and like a fanboy I go "Oooh, I know him/her!" in my mind when a mutant appeared along the story. Some are not outright recognizable but there are enough hints to know who's who. Some of the most prominent characters are the Blob, Sabretooth (Victor), a young Cyclops, Deadpool (one of my favorites in Marvel), Emma Frost, and Gambit. It's disappointing that Gambit has been shown a lot of times in the movie's preview but doesn't play that much role in the movie itself.

There are obvious deviance from the canon story as read in the Marvel comicbooks but I believe that they are made in good spirit of TRYING to come up with an interesting story. This made the film also fairly acceptable to people who don't know crap about Wolverine and the rest of the Marvel mutants in print. The storyline is typical of comicbook adaptations where lose ends fly aplenty and impossibilities are only limited by the scriptwriters' ingenuity to make things happen. It's a leave-brain-at-home screenplay.

Actually, the movie can be boring, really, if you'll not be dazzled by the more-than-enough action scenes it packs. Some time along the movie you'll realize that mutant characters come and go like they just want to throw in as much mutants as possible even if they don't really help much on progressing the story. I can go as far as saying that there's not enough "flash" on the film (which should be expected on sci-fi flicks like this). Computer effects is horrible as some of the green screen scenes and digital edits are obvious. They've provided subtle fan services to the really hardcore Wolverine fans but it won't change the impact to people who would look for value for what they paid.

In all, it's your generic superhero flick. Nothing innovative is introduced in it except the fact that you'll learn that Wolverine's name actually originated from a who-knows-what-language word that sounds like "koo-koo kachoo!" Haha... laughtrip!

4 out of 10.