X-Men Origins: Wolverine

RATING: C

After the controversial Last Stand, the X-Men franchise was kind of in a state of limbo. It would've been nice to see them go in a different direction from what they did--and follow-up from the Last Stand storyline instead of going with Days of Future Past--but then again, I am in the minority who really enjoyed The Last Stand. 

Unfortunately X-Men Origins: Wolverine was an even more infamous step, which *really* sent the series into limbo. And ultimately led to First Class. And Days of Future Past. So fans of those films can thank this film's failure with just about everyone for that. 

This film, as the title suggests, focuses on Wolverine's origin story. The first three films didn't give us very much about his past, save for the fact that that he was fitted with an adamanatium skeleton by William Stryker. And we do get just that, and the material certainly is very interesting as we find out about Stryker's experimentation on mutants, which includes Wolverine's transformation from normal mutant... to ultimate mutant. 

In some ways, what you expect is what you get. You get to see a lot of Wolverine destroying stuff and he admittedly gets into a couple of really cool fights with various characters and villains, and there's a couple of other really cool scenes as well. 

There is, however, a huge major canonical problem with the movie that results in it being virtually non-canonical with even the first three movies--and it centers around Sabretooth. Sabretooth is a welcome character here, but there's a problem: he and Wolverine are brothers. Problem? This is never even mentioned in the first film (the only one where Sabretooth is present). You can argue that Wolverine didn't remember anything all you want, but Sabretooth doesn't acknowledge anything either--and his memory's just fine. 

So yeah. Ultimately that invalidates just about this entire movie. And there are some other things that make no sense as well (occasionally the rules of regeneration that apply to Wolverine, Sabretooth and newcomer Deadpool are forgotten somewhat). 

There are some enjoyable things for sure. We are introduced to some new mutants--most notably Gambit (severely underused), Deadpool, and Kestrel (though the latter's mutant name is not used). Stryker is still a very good villain. Wolverine is still Wolverine, and is still played by Hugh Jackman who gives his all. 

It's really not that bad. But it's not very good either, and that huge canonical error with the rest of the movies sure does hang over it. Ultimately, it's passable entertainment, and probably is worth watching once if you're a huge Wolverine fan. You still have to think this at times though: "What were they thinking?"