by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright May 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine continues the decade-long Hollywood movie tradition of mixing better and better special effects, with cheesier and cheesier story lines. The stunts are fun to watch, but these days I grind my teeth every time a character opens his or her mouth to explain why they are doing something.
Hugh Jackman is fun to watch, and the rest of the cast did their part well. But... man! Is revenge the only thing that can motivate a comic book hero?
In this case, not just Wolverine, but very other major and secondary character was either acting in revenge, or backing off from executing a well-deserved decapitation because they were thinking about taking revenge, but weren't going to do it.
Hey! Hollywood! There are other motivators! There are patriotism, greed, altruism, religion, politics... a whole slew of other ways to decide what to do, and not to do. You can even invoke the "angry villager rule" once in a while, and let the community say, "Enough is enough!" as they did in the old Frankenstien movies.
Two things are getting really, really old in summer blockbuster action movies: revenge as a motivation, and watching a hero go up against a bigger, better version of himself being the villan. From the last couple years, Iron Man, Hulk, Spiderman... now Wolverine... sigh, no more, no more, please! The spectacular exception to this formula was Dark Knight, where Batman faced off against a Joker who was nothing like him. I'm so happy that that movie has done well.
Beyond motivation, there where some physics and tactics problems, too.
o The worst one came at the end, when Logan gets blasted with Adamantite Bullets and loses his memory. What? Those bullets didn't even penetrate! We see them sitting on the outside of his skull. What did they do that lead bullets wouldn't do? Even worse, Stryker is no mutant, and shooting a pistol, not a rifle, how did he even manage to hit Logan?
o The old motorcycle was fun to look at, but it was no dirt bike, even in its heyday.
o Logan and his brother are always soldiers? After ten decades of living, they don't get older and wiser? They don't even get to be officers? Now there is a memory problem!
o The bridge argument scene was so contrived. In a lonely part of the world like that, people cooperate first, then fight after they've had a couple beers together. Just as bad, for the same reason, Logan didn't know these two? As I was watching, I felt sure this was a situation Stryker had cooked up to get some kind of jump on Logan. That's how strange it looked to me.
o Logan jumping on the chopper and ripping it up stole my thunder: I wrote a power armor story about ten years ago where the power armor people do that. I'm actually happy to see that special effects can now make that a filmable scene.
o The story heartily endorses the old Hollywood cleche of paying no attention to space and time. Logan flits from city to city, and Charles Xavier shows up on Three Mile Island just in time to rescue the mutant kids running out of the basement, but not a moment too soon, and not while they were still locked up. Worse, he says... "You're safe now." Arrrgh!! Beat me down with another cleche, Drill Sergent!
o Stryker gutting the general to solve his funding problems. What? There's no other review for what's happening here? The next guy up the chain isn't going to wonder why this program isn't shut down yet, and why the general he sent to shut it down is now cold and stiff?
o Back to memories one last time. Take the classic SF scenario which this Woolverine scene was based on: the villian straps the hero to the operating table and says, "I'm going to wipe out your memories." then laughs like the maniac he is. This is pure writer plot device, and it's one that gets more and more silly as we understand brain working better. Why is this scene so attractive to Hollywood? Because writers love creating a character with lost memories. It's a quick and easy way to explain why the character will go out exploring, which they can then write about. The problem is: 99% of our memories are things such as, "when you walk, put one foot in front of you and lean forward..." -- they are lessons learned at the subconcious level. So, if you're going to rip out memories at random, you're going to rip out a lot more "how to move when I do this activity" memories than you are "what happened at my sixth birthday party" memories. Second, memories are stored in diffuse patterns spread over large parts of the brain, not in compact "library areas" that can be easily identified and cut out. In sum, this whole concept of messing with specific memories using physical force is pure plot device.
And in sum for the whole movie, the effects were nice, I liked the rather open scenery they used for much of the movie, and the actors did their parts in an entertaining fashion. But... the story... the story. Please Hollywood, make a movie with a story!
-- The End --