How cheesed off am I about the producers of X-Men Origins: Wolverine giving Cyclops heat vision? It’s totally infested my incentive sketch! Vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics and see how distracted I’ve become by this.
Before I get to far into things, I need you to know up front that this review is spoiler-heavy. “Spoiler-dependent” might be a better term for me to use. It’s the only way I can justify breaking the 4th wall the way I did in today’s comic.
So, for those of you who haven’t seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine yet (and judging by the film’s $87 million box office take this weekend, that leaves very few of you), here is my spoiler-FREE review.
As a standard action/revenge flick, X-Men Origins: Wolverine does quite well. It establishes Wolverine’s past as compelling and easy to follow. Hugh Jackman continues to earn his paycheck by infusing Logan with the kind of grit usually reserved for characters played by Clint Eastwood. Liev Schreiber is also effective as Wolverine’s brother Sabretooth. In fact, all the performances are pretty good. Save for Danny Huston as William Stryker, spitting lines like “What’s your plan, Captain?! You can’t beat him, Logan! You know you can’t!” with the kind of forced emphasis that made me think more of a user car salesman than an evil scientific genius. Brian Cox did much more with much less in X2 from a few years back.
Where the movie falls down is in the details. And yesssss these are fanboy gripes. BUT! I have some very good reasons for making these complaints worth more than the average poly-bagging comic nerd. So stick with me and I’ll make my case.
To whit… SPOILERS AHEAD!
As I was saying, where X-Men Origins: Wolverine is in the execution of the details. None more egregious than replacing Cyclops’s signature optic blasts with heat vision of some sort.
In a scene where Sabretooth is hunting down Cyclops inside his school, the clawed mutant catches up with the mono-ocular one who performs some kind of spin move, unleashes his power and slices his school nearly in half.
After being subdued, one can see in the aftermath that where the blast cut through the walls, there is fire and burning embers.
Later, in Wolverine’s confrontation with Deadpool/Weapon XI – who has been given a combination of different powers, including Cyclops’s optic blasts – gives Logan an eyeful which he blocks with his adamantium claws. After Sabretooth flanks him and breaks Deadpool’s deadly gaze, we see Wolverine’s claws are glowing white hot.
Here’s the thing. Any nerd worth his salt can tell you that Cyclops’s optic blasts are not heat-based. They’re not lasers. They produce concussive force.
Now, if the movies want to define Cyclops’s powers differently than they do in the comics, that’s fine. Certainly not everything that is cannon in print needs to be translated on screen. Nearly EVERY comic book movie takes liberties in this regard. I’m fine with there being changes if it makes sense in context and serves the overall plot.
HOWEVER! There are THREE. PREVIOUS. MOVIES. that have established Cyclops’s power as intended – a concussive blast. Not heat vision. Think about Cyclops blowing the roof off the train station in the original X-Men, the showdown between him and Jean Grey in X2 or when he fired a blast into the lake in X-Men: The Last Stand. To me, it demonstrates willful ignorance on behalf of 20th Century Fox to change his powers in this way. Did they forget the audience they were dealing with?
It’s very possible that I am focusing too much on this. Cyclops’s appearance in the movie is a cameo. His contribution to the plot is minimal. I’m sure there are those of you who are probably more upset with what they did to Deadpool. And while I agree that it’s unfortunate they chose to make Deadpool the mutant equivalent to DC’s Amazo, at least those changes made sense within the context of the movie. This business with Cyclops is just plain insulting.
I mean, you’d think at some point someone would ask “Hey, did Cyclops’s blast heat things up in the other movies?” Like, maybe someone working in the special effects shop. Anyone!
They probably got shut down. “We need the blasts to catch things on fire because, later in the movie, we’ll use ’em to heat up Wolverine’s claws and that looks really cool.”
Beyond that, there were other aspects of the script that I thought were just plain lazy. Gambit felt tacked on because he’s a fan-favorite, Silver Fox and Emma Frost being sisters feels about as authentic as me and Wil.I.Am being brothers and adamantium bullets to “put Wolverine down?” C’mon, guys. He’s not the Wolfman.
I know there are some of you that will say that I should judge the film on its own merits. As I admitted to earlier, as an action/revenge film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers.
The problem is, X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn’t a standard action/revenge movie. It’s not like Dirty Harry where we’re meeting the character for the first time. I didn’t watch a trailer for John McStabbyhands and say “Hmm! That’s new! I might have to check that out!” The movie is based on characters that have existed for more than 30 years. And even if I was only a fan of the movies and not the comics, it’s my affinity for and prior knowledge of these characters that is bringing me to the theater in the first place.
Like it or not, this movie is a part of a series and should abide by the “rules” established in that universe. You can’t take a character who has been on screen for the last 10 years, prop up a film that says “Here is his secret origin!” and not have it line up with the other movies. To say the film should be judged on it’s own merit is wrong.
I wanted to like X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It certainly has its moments and was, at times, genuinely thrilling. But the film pisses away most of it’s credibility over small, easily managed details. Things they should have paid attention to, but didn’t. Either 20th Century Fox cares about catering to the fanboys, or they don’t.
I’m not saying ANY studio should bend over backwards to meet the demands of this notoriously fickle audience. But the inclusion of so many cameos makes me think that they were trying to score points here. If that was their goal, then they should have made absolutely certain that what they were doing made sense. Otherwise, it’s completely distracting if not a little insulting.
I know most of you who have seen the movie left your thoughts in the comments section of Friday’s blog, but if you have anything you’d like to add, feel free.
HEAT? VISION?!
Quick complaint about X-Men Origins: Wolvering. Cyclops's optic blasts ARE NOT heat based! They emit pure concussive force!
There have been THREE X-Men movies that have established how Cyclops's power works. Do the producers not watch their own movies?
Of course not. This is 20th Century Fox we're talking about.
No one watches their movies.
McStabbyhands! Hahahaha, loved it. Cracked me up.
I totally agree. While I did enjoy the film, it’s things like this that were really annoying. I’m okay with the studios changing things and adapting them, but they have to make sense. There’s no sensible reason to make Emma Frost the sister of Silver Fox except as a plot device for Fox’s motivation — so why did the sister have to be Emma at all? Gambit DID feel tacked on, and he wasn’t nearly Cajun enough; I wanted to see more of him, but I wanted what I saw to be better.
Anyway, well put review. I’ve been reading your comic for years (since I met you at a convention in Minnesota); good stuff. Keep it up.
I thought the movie was fairly terrible. There were some good action scenes and the performances (with the exception of Will.I.Am – /eyeroll), but they spliced so many unnecessary characters in there they had to cut all the stuff that makes Wolverine interesting. And the last third of the film is unbelievably chock full of cliche.
And Wolvie struck me as something of a Mary Sue in this film. Nothing bad really happens to him – every time things start to go against him, someone (even people who hated his guts five minutes ago) shows up to save the day. When he needs more power, someone gives it to him. When the girl he loves dies, it turns out she’s not really dead, etc.
I went in with pretty low expectations, but it was worse that I thought it would be.
Actually, Alex – as much as I can’t stand Wil.I.Am, I thought he did an okay job. True, he wasn’t given much to do, but he didn’t embarrass himself.
I’m more against the idea of having Wil.I.Am in the movie like this because it’s stunt casting. It’d be like casting Gwen Stefani as Emma Frost.
I know where you’re coming from about them making Logan a Mary Sue. I told me friend they should have sub-sub titled this movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Looking up and screaming into the sky.
I’m glad I waited for reviews from people that know this source material, because Fox always manages to screw up the “little stuff” in big ways. I’m pretty sure I’m done with any comic book film they release.
Honeslty, I was so distracted by all the other screwups Fox did, I didn’t even notice the Cyclops thing.
I guess being dissapointed was my own fault because I went into the movie with actual expectations (sham on me!). I just felt like most of the story was lacking and characters were thrown in there just so Fox could say “Look who’s in our movie!!”
Between this, cancelling T:TSCC, screwing over Dollhouse, and my old Firefly wound acting up, I’m very “unhappy’ with Fox; although what else should I expect from them, right?
Tom,
“We need the blasts to catch things on fire because, later in the movie, we’ll use ‘em to heat up Wolverine’s claws and that looks really cool.” I think that was the mantra of the entire film. Think about what they did to freakin’ Deadpool. Sure, we had never seen DP in another movie so it wasn’t as egregious to change him up. However, the changes they made to DP seemed like the exact same thing as above. “What would look cool? OH, OH, I KNOW! What if we gave him adamantium katanas that come out of his hands like Wolverine’s claws? He wouldn’t even need to carry his signature weapon anymore! Nevermind the fact that the katanas are longer than his forearms and couldn’t actually fully fit in his arm!” I mean, SERIOUSLY, retractable katanas? Ugh.
Stryker covering up Deadpool’s mouth made sense given his comment earlier in the movie about Wade being the perfect soldier if he would just shut up. It still sucked, but at least it made sense. Rectractable katanas? Please.
Finally, Ryan Reynolds was definitely the bright spot of the movie. After Wade left the screen and then Sabertooth said he was gone, I almost left the theater. I probably should have.
You know what I didn’t understand about giving Deadpool swords in his forearms? Everything. You’re completely right about him not being able to bend his arms when they’re retracted.
Also, did anyone else think the operating table they were working on him when Logan showed up seemed awfully stripped down considering the (what one assumes) highly complex surgeries, grafting and genetic manipulation going on there?
Yeah, I think it’s hilarious that Silver Fox and Emma Frost are sisters. You introduce Silver Fox as Wolvie’s love interest he’ll love which sets up a revenge plot (in much the same way Claremont did back in Wolverine #10), then there’s the twist that her death was faked, then there’s the twist that she did it to save her sister who is locked up, and then she gets killed by a stray bullet, and then all of this gets wiped from Wolvie’s memory with deux ex machina supper bullets. So aside from getting Logan to participate in the weapon X project, what the hell is the point of any of it? It’s just a time waster that got in the way of the final fight sequence, and it strips all the motivation Wolverine even had to be in said final fight.
The movie spends so much time in the beginning setting up Wolverine’s disillusionment with brother Sabertooth, who is really sort of evil. Then the second half of the movie concentrates on making him out to be not that bad of a guy. It’s just manipulative writing getting the characters to do what makes the plot unexpected instead of having them act like themselves.
Oh and while I’m nitpicking, I also thought it was funny that Deadpool burned the design of his mask onto his own face with Cyclops’ stolen optic blasts. It’s also funny that Logan insistently threatens to behead everyone in the movie. It was funny in the trailer when he says it to Sabertooth (especially with the nudge nudge wink wink aspect to Creed’s demise in the comics), but c’mon, it isn’t Highlander.
The humor was kind of distracting as well. The slapstick antics in the bathroom scene are way over the top, not to mention the goofy boxing match with the Blob. I mean the dude just had the love of his live “murdered” by his brother and he almost died getting molten adamantium bonded to his bones. It was a horrible place to put clumsey pratfall type comedy into the flick…
MY feeling of Wolverine was that the story was written by a 10 year old. They were more concerned with “how can Logan take out people in this scene?” than “So, does this make sense…?” Entertaining, sure, but sloppy in it’s execution. Lot’s of plot items don’t carry over from the comics – or the other movies – and there’s a lot of parts where I had to ask myself, “Just how stupid is Wolverine, anyway?”
The adamantium bullets and Weapon XI felt very b-rated sci-fi to me, like something you would put in a Sci-Fi Channel original movie edition of Wolverine. After a while, I got very sick of all of the cameos (Gambit being by far the worst), and the writers just kept beating us over the head with the fact that Wolverine is a good guy…. I get it, you don’t have to have him save a bunch of kids at the end of the movie just to throw in more cameos to drive home a point that you keep beating me over the head with.
In summary, Wolverine was good, but could’ve been so much better.
Hiya! I’m not normally a pedant, but pounding on something does usually produce heat, as does friction. I suppose it could be extrapolated that force beams make for a whole lot of friction and pounding.
(But yeah. Laser heat vision. WTF.)
I was waiting until someone came in with the “heat from friction” justification! 😀
Yes, yes. That’s possible. But if Deadpool’s blast were truly concussive like Cyclops’s are in the comics, he should have been able to pick Wolverine off the lip of that cooling tower and launch him 200 feet into the Susquehanna River.
I’m surprised more people aren’t complaining about the CGI for the movie. Most of the time, Wolverine’s claws looked like they should be in a cartoon, and they rarely seemed to stick to his hands well. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was more believable than his claws.
Alex, I’m with you on the claws. I thought they looked better in the previous X-Men movies than this one.
That scene in the farmhouse where he inspects his new claws for the first time? No way is that gonna hold up on Blu-ray.
I just get the feeling that they did not put any thought into the nature of Cyclops’ beams. They probably are neither heat nor concussion, but instead are just plain cool, man. “What if…what if his eye beam laser things could destroy a reactor, man!? Wouldn’t that be cool? Yeah, let’s do that right after he super heats Wolverine’s claws!”
Also, deus ex machina much there, movie? Wolverine’s in trouble; Sabertooth is there to save him, though! Wolverine’s in trouble; Gambit flies into the rescue! The kids are in trouble; Professor X to the rescue! Sigh.
Alex, I complained about it elsewhere and just hadn’t gotten around to it here. I have said that they looked like they were spray-painted onto the screen. The CGI was pretty terrible. I watched part of X-2 and X-3 last night and the effects were phenomenal. This movie looked like a college intern’s attempt at special effects.
Haha, I’m glad someone mentioned the retractable katanas… I thought, “wow, that’s sweet… but there’s NO friggin way it would work! Stupid…”
One thing I took away most from this movie is that, as always, Liev Schreiber was awesome. He made a GREAT Victor Creed, and it made me hate the cheesy 2-dimensional sabertooth in the first X-men movie all the more. I mean when you think about this being a prequel, so you go to watch them in order when it comes out on DVD… you think “man, Victor Creed is an awesome character…” then you pop in X-men… seriously. That fuzzball is ridiculous.
Couldn’t agree more, and I’ve not even seen the movie. It sounds like this was a case of “Less is more” that was totally ignored by Fox. Messing with established comic canon is in and of itself a stupid idea (there’s a reason they’re popular enough to be made into a movie, they probably did something right), but to be totally ignorant of your own previous movies? Basic principles of physics (really?? Katanas in his arms?? WHY?!?)??
Fox has ruined everything, and I demand a new movie. One that they bankroll but is controlled entirely by the Marvel team that did Iron Man and Hulk.
I want this comic strip on a t-shirt.
I think that the explanation of friction would work, if when DP was shooting Wolverine with the force beams, Wolvie had been pointing his claws in the other direction, mitigating the force of the impact using the edges of his claws to disperse the energy of the impact in multiple directions. Of course this would have taken forethought on the part of the writers which was lacking throughout the whole movie.
The movie seams as though they thought up a series of plot points they wanted to use, then tried to string them together. So you hit a bunch of well thought out areas where everything in between seams as though it is just filler.
Another question to ask about Wolverine deflecting Deadpools optic blasts, why didn’t some of the beam filter through the gaps in between Wolverine’s claws and tag him that way?
Tom,
While I agree whole heartedly about your thoughts on the movie I went into it with my mind on Crank mode (i.e: Turn down the fanboy and turn down the expectations to 0 ). I was pleased with how it turned out even if there are glaring inconsistencies with the movie.
It’s a good popcorn flick and for people who only have seen the movies and never read any of the source material it makes perfect sense. I mean really would an average theater goer really care if Cyclops optic blast shot heat waves vs concussive blast. I mean for most people it could shoot rainbows and gummy bears and as long as the movie tried to justify it in some way it would work.
I didn’t like Stryker or Gambit at all in this, hell I could have done without Blob altogether. Sadly this movie suffered from Spiderman 3 syndrome (too much in too little a time frame). Oh well I’ll still pick it up on DvD and enjoy it later.
Matt, I see where you’re coming from. But I can’t accept that X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a movie that’s meant to be appreciated in a vacuum.
If this were the first movie in the franchise and there were no other X-Men films, then fine. Redefine the characters and their powers however you please.
And although I recognize that changing Cyclops’s powers slightly doesn’t damage the film as a whole, I believe it is the most obvious example of the laziness on display in this film.
I hate to say it, but even in an X-Men movie-less vacuum, this wasn’t a good movie. The writing was horrific (except for the merc with a mouth), it used the same tired tropes multiple times, and lacked any real creativity. If any one of us had written this screenplay and taken it to a movie studio unsolicited, we would have been laughed at and kicked off the premises. “You have Wolverine and Sabertooth running at each other from such and such distance how many times? Wait, Wolverine yells at the sky again in this scene? ‘We put them in a pool. A deadpool’???? Get out of here, kid.”
is this the complaint department?
i liked the movie, it was fun, i didn’t pay money to go and complain about something. if you saw x3 and were able to get past the plastic needles then you shouldnt get an ulcer over this.
if i want to complain about something i’ll use USPS standard delivery when i want a package within 2 weeks so that I can get no help from them whatsoever when it doesnt arrive.
i’m surprised that no one has mentioned what they thought of the multiple endings after the credits.
I think the complaints are justified, Tyler. It wasn’t a good movie. What recourse does anyone have left but to complain?
Good point about the alternate endings. I got the lame Wolverine-in-Japan ending. I wish I would have seen the Deadpool ending. But I suppose it’s a matter of time before they both show up online.
Tom- You aren’t missing much with the alternate ending. For anyone willing to hunt down a theater that is showing the other ending, or absoulutely CAN wait until DVD, please move along. Everyone else, after the break
**************************************
OK. here we go. In the rubble we see an arm with the katana sticking out of it. The katana retracts and the hand starts to move. The arm burrows out of the debris and starts reaching for his (severed) head. The hand gently caresses the face, the eyes open, the mouth (somehow un-sealed) opens and quitely goes sshhhhh. I don’t recall if the hand does the finger to lips thing, but that would have been kind of “cute”. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point.
I would like to add that I thought it was pretty cool that the way they wrote the story the incident at Three Mile Island in 1979 was due to mutant activity and the “meltdown” was a government cover up story. Why couldn’t they have been that clever with the rest of it.
One more thing, anyone else get a Baraka from Mortal Kombat vibe off of “deadpool”?
Too bad people actually do watch Fox movies (Taken and Wolvie)
Well, they watch ’em – but they feel bad about themselves later.
Hey, Tom. I’ve enjoyed your comic for a while, first time commenting.
It’s funny, but even though I was acutely aware of every horrible detail that this movie did so very, very wrong, I have to say I liked it. Honestly, I’m not even sure I know why. Some of the performances were great, I still like Hugh in this role, and as Steve mentioned above, Liev was a simply awesome Sabretooth. The CGI wasn’t good, a lot of the characters felt shoehorned, the story was iffy, the whole Deadpool thing was just . . . bleh . . . but I still liked it.
It’s interesting to me the kind of polarizing effect that some movies can have, dividing so many people into a love-it/hate-it schism. I mean, look at your pal Joe Dunn, he gave it a freaking 9 out of 10. Everyone I went to see it with said they liked it, and yet all I see online is vitriol. I’m not sure if there’s really a point to that, but I just find it amusing and bemusing at the same time.
As for the optic blasts, I think it’s an even greater crime that they couldn’t even hold to their version. Sometimes it’s obviously a heat beam, and yet Victor gets it in the chest, prolonged, and his shirt’s not even singed, and numerous materials get blasted without embers or heat trails. Consistency, at least, would’ve been nice.
I respect your review of the movie, but as a die hard fan of the character I found NO redeeming quality to this movie. I was bored with it, and I wish that they had done a more adult approach to the movie and not this “we need to sell Wolverine cups to the kids at burger king” travesty of a movie.
Just my opinion, but I just don’t get why they took such liberties with something that could have been so good.
Its actually hard to agree with the changes in cyclops’s power after the forty-bajillion times they did that in the comics… cyclops’s power was basically defined as “whichever type of beam would be more useful at the moment”. That being said… my BIGGEST complaint is that wolverine and sabretooth should not be brothers… that and the blob doesn’t have an eating disorder… or that gambit wasn’t supposed to be there… or that xavier shouldn’t have been walking… maybe i should make an enumerated list. Despite all of this the movie was ALMOST good enough to make up for the dung heap that was X3.
Yeah, I remember thinking that in a couple scenes his claws had almost exactly the same look/texture as the singing sword in Roger Rabbit. It’d ridiculous how as the technology progresses sometimes CG looks WORSE than it did before.
Also I said to my friend as we walked out “So…wouldn’t that mean that wolverine would have bullet sized holes in the adamantium in a number of places that would show up when x-rayed? and someone might go ‘oh these bullet holes in your forehead might explain your amnesia’ “
Only way I can see they fix the “fire vision” thing, is if they put in something about secondary mutations. Maybe his vision was heat based at this age, but by the time of the trilogy, he has undergone a secondary mutation that has turned it into an optic blast? I doubt they’ll bother covering the tracks, though.
In the day and age of movies like The Dark Knight and Iron Man, I really have to say that this sucked. Hell even if TDK had never graced our screens and proven to us that a superhero movie can be critically acclaimed I’d still hate this movie.
It’s as if they forced cheese down my throat what with all the Wolverine walking from an exploding helicopter, Wolverine getting a jacket from an old couple just before they’re brutally murdered and its all his fault, Silver Fox telling Wolverine this legend, that line near the end where he references to the said lame ass story, Wolverine crying to the sky and damning the world. Gag me. Please. What was more, I expected an “extra scene worthy” ending. But no. I get a lame-assed Wolverine in Japan drinking to remember. I could almost feel the simultaneous eye-rolling in the theater.
Don’t even get me started on how they screwed so many characters *coughDeadpoolamongotherscough*. This movie was unnecessary and unwarranted. If X3: Last Stand wasn’t enough to nail that coffin shut, then worry not. This film certainly did the job.
As most people have said, some of the performances were great, especially Liev as Sabertooth, but the CGI, story and little details were bad. Also I’m surprised that “Taken”got some hate in these comments, I thought that was a well done flick.
I agree that the first 20 minutes were amazingly entertaining.
Listening to the Triple Feature and reading some of the comments, I just wanted to pipe up again and say that I dig Tom’s comic and the point of changing Cyclops’ optic blasts in indicative of many other aspects of the Wolverine flick that were similarly changed. I get that the movies aren’t the comics, and there is always going to be change when a new creative team tackles a story, but what is the point of adaptation if the story elements are all going to be changed to fit the new vision? Why bother adapting? The creative team on the film changes Deadpool to become more like the character Mimic. Why not just use Mimic? Or use a brand new character? They want Wolverine’s claws to become super-heated in the finale? Why use Cyclops when you could use Sunfire (or a hundred other heat/fire producing mutants in the X-Men universe)?
Sometimes I honestly wonder if Stan Lee was even present as an executive producer. Obviously he was mentionned in the credits but it’s as if the entire script, aside from a couple of points, were written while it was nap-time for Mr. Lee.
The way they screwed up with Wade made me sad, they managed to pull off something decent in the plane and in the elevator but that’s pretty much it.
Also, Weapon X program is Canadian… not american…. damnit….
The comic book movies were coming along just fine until now… I fear the worse honestly.
I wouldn’t put any of the blame on Stan Lee. He didn’t create the characters and he doesn’t even work for Marvel these days.
Getting an Executive Producer credit doesn’t carry as much responsibility as it implies.
And yet despite all these points, 87 mil. What are the studio execs gonna be concerned with?
I feel bad for any comic movie to come out in the next 3 years. Because everyone has the knee-jerk “TDK and Iron Man were better!” Yes. They were. But the other movies can still stand and be watched based on their merits.
AND TAKEN WAS GREAT!
for me the killer is the unfinished graphics. gambit’s graphics were great, yet Wolvie’s claws and the end were awful. I mean, first thing I thought was “Who framed Roger Rabbit” as mentioned before, and then the kids escaping to Professor X’s helicopter… wtf was that greenscreen job? I, a college student, could have done a better job! I’ve seen better animation done by college students for FUN. and these animators and editors get paid good money for this junk.
the Cyclops power did bother me throughout. i’m not a big x-men fan (Spidey is my cup of tea), but the inconsistency between movies was a real annoyance.
As someone who watched the leaked version and has seen the finished version multiple times (I work in a movie theatre and they make me stay there until all the movies are finished but don’t watch where I am) I think I can laugh whole heartedly at the CGI.
My main beefs with Wolverine were the Silver Fox wolverine legend and that’s why he wanted to be called Wolverine which was just ugh and of course Deadpool, but mainly because the katanas shouldn’t fit and when i saw his mouth closed over I thought “Hey redeem the stupid swords right now and use one to slice open your mouth so we can have some fun chatter!” One thing that really pissed me off mainly because I’m Canadian was the dogtags. I thouroughly enjoyed that in the other X films his dogtags, which let’s face it were given more screentime than some people were Canadian ones, not only that but the bottom was ripped off something that only happens when the wearer is dead. This made perfect sense for someone who in the opening montage gets shot up to hell 20 times. It’s just one of those things where I just see them being lazy, watch your own damn movies Fox.
Actually I was thinking the optic blasts heating up Wolverine’s claws did make sense. They might be pure force, but applying force to something for long enough and you get heat through friction. Most of the time you wouldn’t see heat buildup because the optic blasts are only being used in short bursts.
I just got back from seeing this with a friend, and we talked at length about those darn optic blasts. My thought: they are absolutely consistent.
They’re used prominently 4 times in this movie, and twice (unrestricted) in the other movies. In X1, he gives the train station a new sunroof, which only shatters glass and old roofing material. In X3, he churns up a lotta water without boiling it. Consistent with force but not heat.
In this movie, we start with that school slice. Yes, there are sparks and flames and hot spots up there. Know what’s also up there, behind the flimsy ceiling tiles of a school hallway? ELECTRICAL WIRING. Blast through that, and you’d lose credibility by NOT setting it on fire. What you’re seeing isn’t the direct effect of Cyclops’ power, but the indirect consequence of it.
Second, we have Wolverine deflecting the blast on the reactor thingy. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and allow his shiny new claws to break up the energy, since I don’t have a PhD in physics. Deflecting THAT MUCH raw power, for THAT LONG, would build up a lot of energy/friction/force/whatever in Wolverine’s claws, which would absolutely translate to heat. Again, the heat isn’t a direct effect of the blast, but an indirect consequence.
Third, Sabretooth takes the full hit in the chest for a while. No singed skin. No damaged clothing. If they were going with the “heat ray” angle, he’d be a crispy critter.
Fourth, with the spiral slice of the reactor. This time we DON’T see the sparks and flame that we saw in the school; a big ol’ concrete/cement/whatever tower won’t have the same concentration of active electrical wiring. It’s just getting punched through with raw force.
Tom, I love your comic and agree with you about 85% of the time. (So far, the biggest thing I’ve disagreed on has been Will Ferrell.) But this strip? Basing your rant against the movie on a detail they DID, in fact, keep straight, is beneath you. I get the impression you went in expecting it to suck, latched on to one little detail, and justified your preconceived opinion with it.
Do I think Wolverine was the greatest comic movie ever? Heck no – that goes to Dark Knight. But is it a well-made, entertaining, and functional stand-alone movie? Heck yes. Totally worth the cost of a matinee ticket (evening ticket if you’re a fan), and would not be out of place in the average DVD collection. Try to reign in your fanboy next time, please.
Amy, you make a well-reasoned argument. But my opinion is, if you have to come up with a well-reasoned argument, the film is doing something it’s not supposed to be doing.
Cyke sends a blast through the school and there are fire and burning embers because of electrical wiring? Sorry, but I don’t buy it. If that’s the case, why didn’t the train station catch on fire in the first movie? I’m sure there was some wiring up there.
Second, you talk about the raw power Wolverine is exposed to on top of the cooling tower when he takes a direct hit of Cyke’s blasts. If the power was being used consistently, he should have been thrown clear of the tower. He’s not anchored to anything. He shouldn’t have been able to withstand the blast.
The fact that Sabretooth’s clothes didn’t get singed doesn’t mean anything. To me, there is an inconsistency between emitting enough force that causes enough friction to cause a building to catch fire, but not enough force to blow Logan off the top of a cooling tower. I wouldn’t expect them to stay consistent by paying attention to a detail like whether or not Sabretooth’s clothes are singed. My entire argument is that they weren’t paying attention to ANY of the details.
Also, you’re not going to see sparks or flame from the cooling tower being destroyed because a solid hunk of concrete isn’t going to catch fire as easily as a building made of wood and plaster. Take a match to your sidewalk and see what happens. It has nothing to do with electrical wiring.
I’m not the only one that noticed what was going on with Cyclops’s blasts in this movie. While I can get on board with the idea of intense friction causing heat, that’s not what’s happening here. And if it’s enough to take you out of the movie, even for a minute, then they screwed up. The entire point of movies is to make you believe in the characters and the scenarios being played out in front of you. I’m not saying everything has align with the comics 100%, but if it’s different enough from what’s been established in previous movies, then I think it’s a fair criticism.
Did I go in expecting Wolverine to suck? Yes. Did I latch on to one little detail and used it to justify my preconceived opinion? Yes. But as I’ve said before, the inconsistencies in Cyclops’s power is a representation of EVERYTHING else the movie did wrong. It’s not like I’m saying because of this ONE THING, what could be considered an otherwise great movie is ruined. There are PLENTY of other problems with the movie. If you want me to go down the list, I can do that, too.
I appreciate the points you raised, Amy. But also keep in mind that the “fanboy rage” on display in the comic has been exaggerated for its entertainment value.
I agree with most of the comments made concerning the down points of this film, but at the same time I do believe that overall it was a decent movie. MY biggest two concerns were with Deadpool and the terrible CGI claws.
On the Deadpool side, it seems that Ryan Reynolds has been trying to get a Deadpool movie off the ground for some time now, if it is based off the character that was shown at the beginning of the film, I think it could be a terrific movie, however, if they follow it with the alterinate ending where he has all the powers and is weapon XI? Eh… All he should have is the healing powers he gets from Logan and his teleportation device.
On a side note, where did you go see the movie? I know that Coppercreek 9 has, or at least for my showing, had the Deadpool ending… not that it matters much, neither one seemed to be very extensive or needing to be seen to know what happened.
Spock, I agree that if the Deadpool movie is based off the version we saw at the beginning of Wolverine, things will be fine. They wouldn’t have gone forward with Ryan Reynolds if that weren’t the case. You need his wit and quick delivery to make a Deadpool movie work.
I’m thinking that it’s the effects of the Weapon XI program that gets Deadpool to the point where he’s scarred and psychotic. They could always make up some sci-fi mumbo jumbo about the powers canceling each other out.