Jack on the Moan
 X is for X-Men Origins: Wolverine The idea of a prequel has never much interested me. Any good movie should have a beginning, middle and end. Of course, that’s not to say a movie can’t leave the door open to a sequel and still be good, but it must offer some kind of satisfying conclusion. A prequel, though, by its very nature, is a movie without an ending. Instead, a prequel is a movie with only a beginning, a novel with only an opening a chapter, a story with only a backstory. ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ is all of these things, but it’s also another thing: really stupid. The first two X-Men films (directed by Bryan Singer, who made his name with ‘The Usual Suspects’) were movies that explored the trouble of being different via the metaphor of its mutant characters, as well as treating the audience to plenty of inventive action sequences. When Brett Ratner replaced Singer to direct ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, the themes of the original two movies were largely drowned out by more noisy action and blustering men in tights. ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, however, jettisons the last vestiges of the mutants-as-outcasts theme for a half-baked story of revenge and betrayal involving Hugh Jackman tensing his muscles a lot and generally looking pissed off. ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ borrows almost every tired action movie trope there is (there’s even the slo-mo shot of our hero, in the foreground, walking away from a helicopter just before it explodes!). On top of that, the execution is poor; Hugh Jackman and Liev Scheiber, as Logan’s cutthroat brother Victor, cut suitably brooding and intense figures, but some of the acting is dreadful, as are the special effects, which sometimes almost make you feel like you’re watching a video game. Apparently they’re now working on another X-Men prequel, in which we’ll all get to see just exactly how Magneto and Professor X fell out. Do we really need all these prequels? Did J.K. Rowling feel it necessary to write a prequel detailing how Harry got that scar on his forehead? Did Ridley Scott shoot a sequel to Alien showing life on the alien planet before Ripley and her crew arrived? You want to know why I’m not going to see the next X-Men movie? Because I already know how it ends.

 X is for X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The idea of a prequel has never much interested me. Any good movie should have a beginning, middle and end. Of course, that’s not to say a movie can’t leave the door open to a sequel and still be good, but it must offer some kind of satisfying conclusion. A prequel, though, by its very nature, is a movie without an ending. Instead, a prequel is a movie with only a beginning, a novel with only an opening a chapter, a story with only a backstory. ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ is all of these things, but it’s also another thing: really stupid.

The first two X-Men films (directed by Bryan Singer, who made his name with ‘The Usual Suspects’) were movies that explored the trouble of being different via the metaphor of its mutant characters, as well as treating the audience to plenty of inventive action sequences. When Brett Ratner replaced Singer to direct ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, the themes of the original two movies were largely drowned out by more noisy action and blustering men in tights. ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, however, jettisons the last vestiges of the mutants-as-outcasts theme for a half-baked story of revenge and betrayal involving Hugh Jackman tensing his muscles a lot and generally looking pissed off.

‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ borrows almost every tired action movie trope there is (there’s even the slo-mo shot of our hero, in the foreground, walking away from a helicopter just before it explodes!). On top of that, the execution is poor; Hugh Jackman and Liev Scheiber, as Logan’s cutthroat brother Victor, cut suitably brooding and intense figures, but some of the acting is dreadful, as are the special effects, which sometimes almost make you feel like you’re watching a video game.

Apparently they’re now working on another X-Men prequel, in which we’ll all get to see just exactly how Magneto and Professor X fell out. Do we really need all these prequels? Did J.K. Rowling feel it necessary to write a prequel detailing how Harry got that scar on his forehead? Did Ridley Scott shoot a sequel to Alien showing life on the alien planet before Ripley and her crew arrived? You want to know why I’m not going to see the next X-Men movie? Because I already know how it ends.

Posted 1 year ago