Sins Against Cinema movies that hate humanity (and the people that love them)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Today's installment, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is as strong an argument against comic-book movies as anyone could hope to make.

Which is not to say that watching this almost unbelievably ill-conceived grunt-a-thon is totally devoid of yuks. There's lots to laugh at, really. But it's mostly painful. Sure, it's depressing to see decent actors like Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber fuck around like this; but it's even more dispiriting to realize they, individually, made as much off this one film alone as I'm likely to net in my lifetime.

Anything positive to say? Well, there's lots of explosions, and awful dialog... so far, no. Hmm. That one guy from the Black Eyed Peas or something is in this... still no. He gets killed... nope. Not doin' it for me. Oh! I know. There's a lot of scenes, shot from above, where Wolvie looks up to the heavens and shouts "NOOOOOO" for a really long time. Er... yeah, this blew.

What is it about comic book movies that pisses me off so much? In this case, it's several things.

In the opening sequence, Wolverine is a child in the 1840s. His father is killed by some guy. (Here, incidentally, 1:30 into the film, is the first of many 'NOOOO' shots.) You never find out why. Kiddie Wolverine grows claws, stabs his father's killer. Killer grunts, says he (killer) is Wolverine's father, dies. Everyone present appears to buy this, including Wolverine. Wolverine, and some kid (Victor) whom he now knows to be his brother, flee into the woods because... well, actually, I don't know why. It's perfunctory and silly and has no place in the film. None of this should be in here. It's crap; it should have been cut out. But it wasn't.

Then comes the films' credit sequence, where Wolverine and his brother Victor are shown fighting in a series of (iconic American) wars. There they are, decked out in Union blue, knocking Johnny Cracker on the head. And faaaaade, and they're doughboys, giving Jerry the solid drubbing he'd so roundly deserved after the Somme. Guess what comes next? Correct! Storming the beach at Normandy! Next? If you said Korea, you fail, because that's too obscure for this film's target audience. Nope, it's 'Nam, baby. Where, as we find out, Victor's bloodlust has become too much for Wolverine to bear. Victor's out of control, as evidenced by his killing an American soldier. Wolverine intervenes, preventing Victor from killing any more white people, but it's too late. Both he and Victor are sentenced to die by firing squad.

Why do I hate this sequence so much?  Because, for starters, why are two apparently ageless Canadians fighting in the U.S. Army in one easily-recognized war after another? What, they just like killing?  There's plenty of opportunity all around the world to kill people. If killing's your thing, you don't need a war to do it. You certainly don't need to be part of a highly regimented, poorly-paid outfit like the U.S. Army. I highly doubt that whoever wrote this screenplay has ever been anywhere near an actual military unit, let alone a war. Life in the military is crashingly dull most of the time; there's no way these guys would be career soldiers. And during wartime, it's immeasurably worse. It's boredom and privation and shitty food and no women and farting, smelly, horny, desperate, terrified men everywhere. It sucks balls. If these two just like killing that much, why aren't they with the Belgians in the Congo, or the French in Algeria, or, dare I say it, with the Einsatzgruppen on the eastern front?

Well, because Wolverine at least is supposed to be a good guy, deep down inside, and hence American. Also, because contemporary illiterates don't know jack shit about fronts Americans didn't fight on.

Anyhoo, it gets worse, because in saunters a slimy Army officer named Stryker (these names, sigh) who offers the brothers positions in an all-mutant unit, wherein they go about killing the shit out of all kinds of people again. This causes Wolverine to once again have a crisis of conscience, this time precipitating his leaving the unit for the wilds of Canada. This, too, bothers me. In one sequence, we're treated to mutant killing-porn, as our squad makes mincemeat out of a bunch of guys guarding some building in Lagos, Nigeria. Who they are, who they work for, what they are doing with their lives is never mentioned. Remember that, because it will be important in a minute. For now, just remember that Wolverine doesn't blink at the carnage. In the next sequence, the squad is holding an African village hostage, demanding to obtain the location of some chunk of rock that you know what fuck it, it doesn't matter. Stryker and Victor are all about to go medieval on the villagers when Wolverine has his moral crisis.

So what's wrong with this? It's in the subtext. The men guarding the building, those poor dopes, well, their deaths obviously aren't worth bothering oneself over. They're the bad guys, duh. They must be. They're henchmen. They had guns and shot at our heroes when attacked. They worked for a gangster or something. Never mind that maybe they'd just signed up for a bit of standing around to collect a paycheck. Maybe they're providing for fourteen siblings and an AIDS-stricken mother. Hell, maybe they're just some poor illiterate sod yanked out of the village from the next scene, an AK-47 shoved roughly into their trembling teenaged hands. You know, like what actually happens in Africa. Fuck all that, we have to show that the mutants are badasses, and that means lots of people are gonna die. Now, the villagers, that's a different story. There are they to demonstrate Wolverine's innate goodness, therefore, they must be spared. So much the better if they are weak and cowering, as that just makes them more pathetic.

God I hate this movie. Moving on.

We next encounter Wolverine living in Canada, in the sufficiently salt-of-the-Earth profession of logging. More easy-schmeasy, lazy character notes follow as his collar is shown to be as blue as his true-blue love for an oddly attractive schoolteacher in Nowhereville, Canada. Then... DUM DUM DUMM... the bad guys from his past resurface, including Victor, who is apparently on some kind of revenge-bender for some imagined slight. Hijinks ensue, Wolverine is betrayed over and over, lots and lots of people die. Wolverine is tricked by Stryker into undergoing "the most painful imaginable" operation to bond his skeleton with the ultra-strong metal Adamantium (don't ask) in order to make him into an unstoppable killing machine. Upon discovering he's been set up yet again Wolverine flees.

Actually, I just realized something. Almost everyone in this movie that demonstrates even the beginnings of human decency gets offed. No spoiler alert here.  I'm just saying.

It gets shitty and stays that way for a remarkably long time, until the final sequence, when, unbelievably, it gets worse. Let me set the stage for you here. This movie has a villain. There's another character, a mutant with mind-control capabilities, who has been dicked over by the villian for years. Our mind-control-mutant (MCM) is lying on the ground, dying. Villain stands over MCM, about to deliver the coup de grâce, when MCM makes a final mind-control push on the villain. Now: MCM could have villain shoot himself, but no. Instead we get a vapid speech about how doing so "would make us no better than him", leaving villain alive to be villainous another day. It's pointless and awful in every respect and oh-so-comic-booky that it makes me want to puke. If you'll excuse me now I'll be off to get some pepto.