X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Work Cut) review

Note

There are a lot of people who refuse to review the work cut of Wolverine because they don’t want to encourage piracy and hurt the entertainment industry. I do not think that piracy is a bad word and as for hurting ticket sales; I’m actually more excited for the theatrical release than I was before I saw this rough cut.

 

In context this is not a replacement for the movie. It’s lacking a lot of special effects and was made before all of the extensive re-shoots. If anything this is like a behind the scenes documentary without the narrative audio track. You see the wires and the filler CG. And all the while you know that there’s a plot that was created after this was put together so it’s not the whole story.

 

It’s also an action movie and you already know who survives into the first X-Men movie. No one that I know of has ever skipped a great action franchise movie because they knew that the main character was going to survive. It’s a given anyway.

 

Me? I watched this with the idea that if I thought it was better than X3 I would see it in theatres like I originally intended. If it was as bad or worse (is that possible) I’d save my ticket money. I’m still buying a ticket.

 

Review

Something like a work cut is hard to review. I can’t judge it by how well it integrates special effects. I can’t review the editing because that’s not finished. I can do the acting and characterization but even that may be revised before this hits theatres. But what I can do is review the experience of watching Wolverine. And it was a pretty good experience.

 

First off I will tell you that one of the weakest aspects of Wolverine was Deadpool. That said, it’s reported that Deadpool was as the centre of the major re-shoots so that’s not a permanent strike against this movie. Deadpool has only a small amount of lines and the ones he has are smart-ass but not very snarky or sharp.

 

The actual Wolverine origin is lifted nearly 100% from the Wolverine: Origin comic by Bill Jemas and that works out well. The credits are done over a montage of James (Wolverine) and Victor (Sabertooth) fighting through various wars and not dying. A lot. The credits end with them in Vietnam. Victor is about to rape a local and is stopped by his own troops. Wolverine comes to his aid and they are both set to be executed. The end. Actually, Striker comes by and drafts them into the American military’s Weapon X program.

 

This does set up the dynamic between James and Victor well, though it’s never really made clear why James keeps signing up for war. Is it to keep an eye on his older brother? Because he certainly doesn’t have the cruel streak or bloodlust of Victor. He also doesn’t snap and go into his “Wolvie Berserker” mode so it’s not a rage thing either. Is it loneliness? Simply devotion to his only surviving family? That aspect feels unexplained.

 

And apparently James realizes this because on the second mission with the Weapon X team he walks off, sickened by the violence for the first time in… 4 or 5 wars. A little inconsistent, I know. It looks good while watching it but when you stop to think it seems pretty fickle. After leaving for his own life he’s inevitable drawn back into Striker’s machinations and we start to see cameos.

 

There’s a completely unnecessary part written for Cyclops that’s actually laughable in its execution, especially in the later parts to ensure that he never sees Wolverine.

 

There’s also a smaller than expected role for Gambit. They get him half right. He’s handsome but not rugged. He’s southern but not Cajun. He’s a gambler but not very self-serving. That said I was very pleased with how they expand and display his powers. But he’s certainly not perfect and deserved a little bit more of an edge to keep him true to form.

 

Emma Frost shows up but doesn’t even hint at having any sort of psychic abilities at all. It’s just her in and out of her diamond form. And to anyone not familiar with her diamond form they will probably be a bit confused as to what she’s doing when she uses her power. And to anyone familiar with her character they will be confused by her tan.

 

I’ve already covered the issue with Deadpool and the fact that it might be fixed by now. The last thing that does strike an off note is Striker and his many insidious medical ideas. The big one we know and love is James/Wolverine. But the main villain in this is Deadpool, augmented with all the captured mutants’ powers. Combine that with his secondary Cerebro from X2 and he seems more like a Dr. Frankenstein than a military mind. I know that the Striker of the films was created as a “new” character, an amalgam of various villains. But in the first 2 movies we know that he’s a clear-cut military man. Wolverine was years ago and Cerebro 2 was obviously a military project, as he didn’t actually construct it himself. So why does he act as a mad scientist in Wolverine Origins? He captures mutants but his main interest isn’t imprisoning them. His main interest is in extracting their DNA. I think this could be taken care of with a few simple changes like making sure he never wears a lab coat and converting the lab from simply a science lab with human cages to more of a prison like instillation.

 

All that said I found this early cut entertaining. Combined with the knowledge that some of my complaints have probably been addressed already it comes across as very promising. I actually buy Liev Schreiber as victor Creed despite the fact he doesn’t tower over James/Wolverine. There are a lot of liberties taken with Marvel’s X-Men canon so be warned of that. People who probably never met in the comics are now family. Ages and timelines changed around. All I can say about that is if you’re a big comic fan (as I am) keep in mind that this movie is not an Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, Young X-Men or X-Men: First Class movie. It is in line with X-Men 1, X2 and X3. Those movies have established their own universe and this fits into that and none of the comics. When people aren’t made out to be exactly as you expect it’s because these are different versions of those characters.

 

Rating

On my scale of –5 to 5 X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a 3, with strong expectations for the final release.

Q and A

Q and A by bulletproofheeb

I'll get right on that.

Carma

I have not been sleeping well of late.  The other night I laid awake in bed for the same amount of time I lay there sleeping (3 hours for each, in case you're wondering).  Last night I managed to get a full 7 hours of sleep, which is actually a bit more than average for me.  However, I've still been floating through the day with my head somewhere else.

After lunch I get out of my car and realize that I'm forgetting something.  So I search my pockets and come up empty of headphones.  I look into my car and it dawns on me that my regular headphone are in my messenger bag.  Which I left at my apartment when I was there for lunch.  Crap.  Well, maybe I have another set laying about on the back seat or something.  So I fumble for my keys.  And that's when I realize that those keys are what I was trying to find when I patted down my pockets.

My father ends up rushing over, from not too far away, with my spare set to get my keys back from the ignition.  I told him he didn't need to rush since I'd be at work for hours but he wanted to get it over with.  As he walks out of the office a co-worker comes in asking if anyone can spare a few minutes to help jump his car.  And I leap at the chance.  I don't buy into fate or karma or anything like that but just the fact that I suddenly have the ability to get into my car and he needs help to start his- It had a nice symmetry.  I think it's more of a pay it forward feeling or possibly the greedy concept of hoping someone will snap up the chance to help me again some day, but I instantly got up without any hesitation and jumped his car.  I was happy to be able to get into my car to start up his and I hope down the road I'll get help when I need it.  And it wasn't that hard to do.

It wasn't a life changing moment.  It wasn't any kind of epiphany or awakening or gnostic breakthrough.  It just felt really nice that mere seconds after my father rushed to help me after I simply asked I could do the same for someone else.

And that was my moment of carma for the day.

Watchmen review

Watchmen is a mixed bag in terms of quality.  After seeing it it's not really possible to flat out say it's a good or bad movie.  It's a movie made of polarizing aspects that don't mesh very well.  There are good parts and there are bad parts.  I'd go so far as to say that there are great parts and god awful parts.  In the end it is worth watching but it certainly is not as good as it could or should have been.

I'll start on the good parts so as not to sound like a complete malcontent.  There are some really great performances in Watchmen.  Jeffery Morgan delivers exactly what you'd expect from the Comedian.  He's cruel and abrasive and never hateful.  He comes across as a psychopathic Taoist; always acknowledging the worst in humanity and himself without judging it.  Jackie Haley is a fine Rorschach despite being a bit too old for the role.  I've heard it mentioned that he sounds a bit like Bale's Batman at the end of Dark Knight but has anyone read Watchmen since it was published decades earlier and not heard that voice?  Patrick Wilson's Night Owl (II) is the human thread that holds this whole soup of a movie together.  The scene where he fails to perform sexually and then stands naked in front of his old costume is the single moment when this movie starts to feel like it has something to offer viewers that they can't get elsewhere.  That feeling wavers and at times vanishes, but I'll get into that later.  On the opposite side of the human equation is Doctor Manhattan.  His looks are spot on but Billy Crudup's voice is much higher than I would have expected Manhattan to be cast with.  It turns out to be stroke of brilliance.  While his actions still keep him increasingly aloof and withdrawn from the human race his voice keeps him grounded and believable.  Since his is a cosmic force with knowledge of both the future and the past unless drawn out it seems hard to swallow but Crudup has a softness that makes it work.

Who doesn't?  Malin Akerman has less range in her acting than an amateur David Duchovney.  In scenes when she's supposed to be disgusted and shocked she stretches her craft and reaches a blandly annoyed place.  At best she's forgettable scene dressing and at worst she is a walking mood killer in a tight latex suit.  Matthew Good's Adrien Viedt is also a terrible addition to the cast.  He starts out with a light southern lilt that is a bit reminiscent of Brad Pitt.  As the film goes on he begins to whisper his lines as if he's trying to seduce the sound editors.  Then he gets bored with that and cycles through various vague European accents.  I realize that he's British and might suck at accents but why does that make him sound like a Die Hard villain by the end of Watchmen.  That odd "is he German" accent that inevitable looses against Bruce Willis: he has it and it makes no sense.  Not only that, but between his hair and choice in clothing he comes across as the brilliant third of the Night at the Roxbury dancers.

Visually the design of Watchmen is great.  If you sit down with the book right after the movie and compare scenes you will find that there are probably details you saw on screen that escaped your notice when reading the book.  An example I can give is that when Dan Dreiberg (Night Owl II) and Laurie Jupiter (Silk Specter II) get into an alleyway brawl I was thrown when Dreiberg snaps one of the gang member's arms.  Well, upon rereading the book he does indeed break a man's arm in that scene.  The details and background characters are absolutely stunning.  And that's part of the problem as well.  If one has not read the book it is hard to imagine that they will get the full payoff that Snyder expects them to when focusing on seeming random details at points.  There is a part where the camera lingers on a young comic book reader and a newspaper vendor that will seem out of place unless you know how big a role they play in the book.  There's also a scene at the end involving a small copy shop called The New Frontiersman that is not set up or explained, leading to a possibly hazy moment that is crucial to understanding the end of the story.  Another visual weak spot is the aging makeup.  Judging by how Nixon ages it seems that his nose simply gets longer and more cartoonish.  The Comedian barely gets older while his contemporary The Silk Specter ages at an alarming pace.  The moral of this story seems to be the harder you live the younger you look.

So now I come to the part where I can freely discuss what fails miserably.  Let me start with the music selection.  Many scenes open with or are punctuated with an incredibly obvious song while all on screen sounds drops away.  There's a muted funeral with "The Sound of Silence" played over it.  When shown a character who wants to control the world you might hear Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World".  The opening credits show snapshots that illustrate how the Watchmen time line differs from ours while Dylan croons "The Times They Are A'Changing".  Nearly every song played is too obvious a choice and played in too obvious a manner.  The one that really bothers my is the "Ride of the Valkyries" played as Doctor Manhattan and The Comedian torch Vietnamese troops.  While I understand that this is a heavy-handed nod to Apocalypse Now it completely bastardizes that same song as used in the book, where it takes on a depressing connotation rather than an invigorating one.

Zach Snyder's slow motion fetish also interferes with the film in many parts.  While he has stated that he does it to emulate the framing of moments in comic book panels it gets beyond distracting.  Nearly every fight scene seems to be half slow motion, leading me to believe that had he kept those shots in real time his 3 and a half hour directors cut could have clocked in under 2 hours.  Instead of feeling like a comic frame it seems that Snyder simply wants to show how pretty his movie is.  There's no subtlety or restraint in any of his directorial choices.  Every bit of blood that appears it the book is highlighted and some new ones are cooked up just to compensate for the fact that he has absolutely failed at capturing a gritty 1985 NYC.  That's right, there's absolutely no sense of time this (technically) period piece.  1960s music and TV play overhead and on screen and while a lot of this movie is in historical flashback this rule holds just as true for the 1980s scenes.  How can an 80s movie have the same soundtrack as Forrest Gump?

The end result is that this movie is still enjoyable, despite its flaws and director.  The artistic design, Moore's story and characters, and most of the performances carry the whole film.  It could have been better.  It could have been worse.  Was Zach Snyder a good choice?  It's hard to know.  Most directors would have tried to put a much more personal touch on the project rather than defaulting to the source material for almost every single frame.  If the director makes good choices then it improves the film version.  Bad choices and, well, you get it.  I suppose all we know is that Snyder is a bad director who's smart enough not to try too hard creatively.  If that sounds like a back-handed complement... that's because it is.  But on the bright side Watchmen is not a bad movie and Snyder can still take credit for that.

Rating:
On a scale from -5 to 5 Watchmen ranks +2.

An open letter to Hulu

I'd just like to say that I eat lunch at home during the work day and loved that I could sit down and stream a show with no wait.  I have been telling my friends about Hulu since it went beta and then public.  People came up to me and said how funny it was that it took this long to get ads for Hulu on TV when we've been using it as per my recommendation for a long time already.  And when Boxee came out and I got in on that beta I was thrilled to watch Hulu, commercials and all, on my TV.

And now I hear that you pulled support for Boxee.  The point of Hulu is to get TV on demand, through the internet and with advertising so the network providers still prosper.  How does insuring that it not show up on a TV screen and only small monitors help your network partners?  How does limiting the convenience of a good product help anyone?

I would really like to know what the issue is.  People who use Boxee are probably tech savvy and will probably find some other way of watching their shows on their TVs.  Since networks are legally obligated to NOT put locked flags on their  broadcasts bittorrent looks like a viable and even legal (as of this moment) alternative.  And of course, the networks won't get numbers or advertising revenue from that.

If you can actually tell me the thought that went into this then let me know because me and a lot of people I know are completely baffled by an internet TV provider's fear of televisions.

Quick New York Comic Con 2009 Post

Movies

·      Watchmen - (14 minutes) The production looks a lot better than I expected or hoped for.  The sets are amazing, the details telling.  However, in the 13 minutes we were shown the film went into Snyder-Slow-Mo about 15,000,230,230,324 bajillion times.  It's distracting and insulting.  The entire time it felt like Snyder wanted to show off how great the details of the film are so he slows it down to show you, assuming the audience doesn't know how to watch a movie without help.  The beauty of the book is that it's not really about superheroes.  It's a thriller that's more political that caped.  The movie didn't seem to get that and I think Snyder is only making a pretty looking version of the Watchmen basics without touching on Alan Moore's deeper themes.  It might be a good superhero movie but it doesn't look like it will try to accomplish anything more.

·      Terminator 4 - (7 minutes) Everything McG said made me trust him more and more.  I went into the panel wincing that his name was on this and left with hope.  He discussed everything from his douche-bag name to Bale's freakout to how he regards the Charlie's Angels movies as well as how this movie fits in continuity.  As far as continuity goes it follows the spirit of 1 and 2 while acknowledging the shift in time line from 3.  It has nothing to do with the show so those are now in branching time lines.

·      Friday the 13th - It's got that super white guy who's on Supernatural and was in Gilmore Girls as Dean.  He was there.  It made me want to watch Gilmore Girls.  It's a Bay produced slasher remake.  Not to be racist but they all look alike to me.

·      Wonder Woman - (whole damn thing) The new DC animated movie with Kerrie Russel and Nathan Fillion. Every time I see a DC animated movie I wonder why they aren't big news. They should be.  This movie is really really really really good.  Lot of hilarious lines and it actually makes her story not seem weird and dated and odd with its pantheon history.

·      Up - (48 minutes) They announced limited seating to the first half of Pixar's Up.  It was held in a room that seats 3,000 and they let in around 300.  It was amazing and it's not even done.  in the first 10 minutes they touch on topics I wouldn't think Pixar would approach for another 5 years.  The look is bright, the textures mindblowing and the design is specially constructed to make you like the characters in a second.  I wanted to see this movie before the showing.  Now I want everyone to see it.

·      Dead Like Me movie - Just saw a trailer which was more of a teaser.  No Fuller on this one but it follows directly from the show with the same cast and some of the writers so I'm happy.

Television

·      Dollhouse - (8-10 minutes) Complicated show so it's hard to get a feel from such a short clip. It's Whedon so I'm sold for the first half-season.  He spoke about how he wasn't sure of the thread to follow and it didn't sound like he was comfortable with the material yet.  Between that and the "eh" reviews I've heard I'm a little wary but we'll see.

·      Fringe – (10 minutes) The cast sounds like they're having fun.  The production seems a lot more laid back than Lost and I don't know if it's the lack of obtuse plotting, the fact it doesn't make the cast and crew movie to a distant island or just goofier people.  Noble is adorable.  He sat there denied that there's anything odd or disturbing about the show at all.  Jackson sounds a bit like his character if his character wasn't an ass.  He had comments on everything and stories about everyone.  And he seemed to appreciate the Mighty Ducks shout-outs.  Someone from the audience spent a lot of time asking for Torv's phone number and, while I can't really blame them, she's married so that was awkward.  Oh, and as for the show: there is more back story than what's been spelled out.  The symbols that appear during the credits and that bumper commercial breaks are a code that reveals information about the large conspiracy.  There are also clues to next weeks episode in every show.  And, of course, there's the “find the observer” game because he's supposedly in every episode.

Games

·      Ghost Busters  - This looks amazing.  The Wii version is cute and cartoony, though I was told the graphics have been improved since that revision.  What really made my jaw drop was the 360 version.  If you want realistic then this is the version for you.  The shadows, movements and modeling is the best I've seen.  The closest thing I can compare it to is Dead Space but with more attention to details on the characters and locations.  And yes, you can cross the streams.

·      House of the Dead:  - It looks like a grindehouse game.  There are all the scratches and dust you'd expect in the picture and the colour is slightly yellowed and 70s looking.  The graphics are in line with how House of the Dead has progressed.  They've never been the most realisitc games on the market but they have been getting steadily better with each one.  This definitely looks like it was produced after HOTD 4.  This goes on my short list of Wii games I must own.