Wolverine: Hair Club for Men President

I think I may be running low on testosterone. I am just having trouble getting excited about any of this summer’s special effects laden, ass-kicking, girls in short shorts, bleak looks into the future, extra terrestrial based, mindless remakes/toy commercials. I think it is time for all of the starving writers who tag along with their slutty cousin to the Sky Bar so they can catch a peek of McG or Brett Rattner and hand them their screenplay to stand up and say, “I think we can do better than this.” Of course, I don’t really know if they can, but wouldn’t it be cool if the people who aren’t involved and have no say try to take back the Hollywood they did not previously have? I truly believe that Hollywood is now being run by toy manufacturers and the aliens behind the human-like exoskeleton of Miley Cyrus.

So, my lovely wife and I attended our first “Summer Blockbuster” last night in the form of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film featured Hugh Jackman reprising his role as the protruding blade fingered Wolverine of Marvel Comic fame. Also in the movie were Wolverine’s brother Benvereen, a fat guy, a guy with the worst case of pink-eye I have ever seen, a guy who plays poker “to the death,” a woman who touches you and gets her way (is this really a superpower?), an Asian Ned Nederlander, one of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings, and a black guy.

The basis of this movie is much the same as the Star Wars prequels. The Vice President of the posable action figure division decided that the market was saturated with toys based on the grown up star of a popular movie so he ordered a new movie to be quickly written, directed and distributed to showcase the younger days of the movie star so that new action figures could be created and sold showcasing the stars various stages of physical development.

So it turns out that Wolverine was a sickly Canadian child who just prior to being stabbed by his brother witnessed the murder of his father by his mother’s lover, got mad and killed his mother’s lover with his protruding finger bones (the protrusions were not yet made of metal) but then finds out that his mother’s lover was really his father. At this point, Wolverine does what anyone would do when faced with the aforementioned scenario; he runs away and joins the US Army. While in the Army, Wolverine and his brother fight in pretty much every major war (I did not see him in the Six Day War or WCW’s War Games) until they go nuts in Vietnam and get executed by a firing squad (which of course did not hurt). Since the Army couldn’t kill Wolverine or his brother, they decided to assign him to a special unit in charge of collecting moon rocks and killing diamond smugglers.

After a few missions in the Army’s special unit Wolverine decided to call it quits and retire to the great Northwest in order to dawn the rich fabrics of a plaid shirt and do some lumberjacking. At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Warren, is this the story of Wolverine or your Uncle Leon?” Their stories are actually very similar. The main difference being that there used to be a statue of my Uncle Leon standing in front of a truck stop gas station west of Booneville, Missouri.

In an ironic twist of story telling, it turns out that the moon rocks that Wolverine was gathering while assigned to the Army’s special unit contain an indestructible metal that is injected into Wolverine thus giving him his infamous protruding blade fingers. Of course, it is a movie fantasy land so there doesn’t need to be any tough questions asked with regard to having one’s entire body filled with moon metal. I guess it should be mentioned that Wolverine volunteered to have moon metal injected into his body so that he could get enough strength to kill his brother who was supposedly killing the other characters in the movie (Fat Guy, Pink Eye, Deuce Dropper, Touchy-Feely, Asian Nederlander, Hobbit, and Black guy).

There were two things that really rubbed me wrong about this movie. The first thing is, if you are going to make a prequel, you have to have watched the movie it is prequelling (Trademark). If you watch X-Men Origins and then watch the first X-Men movie you will notice that when Wolverine meets his brother they don’t seem to know each other. Now, granted Wolverine loses his memory at the end of the Origins movie, but did his brother? And Pink Eye is in the first X-Men movie too but in that movie he doesn’t seem to recognize either Wolverine or his brother (neither does Halle Barry). Additionally, in this Origins movie Wolverine’s brother is an articulate, nearly indestructible force but in the X-Men movie he is just a grunting meat-head with limited power and Andy Rooney's eyebrows that is unceremoniously killed off.

The second thing that I did not like in this movie was the creation and deletion of the super villain Weapon XI. Supposedly, Weapon XI is a combination of all of the powers of all of the movie’s characters (except Fat Guy). So this guy has almost unlimited power and healing ability and yet he gets killed in about 30 seconds by Wolverine and his brother. My best guess is that the movie was humming right along and then the credit crunch occurred and the movie’s producers could not afford any more CGI so they told the film’s director to just wrap it up. Let’s think about this one for just a second, Weapon XI has pink eye, is filled with moon rocks, has a Terminator 2 style sword in his arm and can float like Muhammad Ali. So, Wolverine and his brother punch him a couple of times and about twenty-five seconds later Weapon XI is dead of decapitation.

The real irony in this death is that earlier in the film Asian Nederlander is told by the creator of Weapon XI (William Stryker) that he can only kill Wolverine by taking off his head. This would lead you to believe that Stryker knew that the cabeza was an area of concern…so let’s secure that thing to the shoulders! Why not put a layer of moon rocks around the neck area? Oh well, at least nobody attempted the jump-punch.

So, to wrap this one up, Wolverine is Canadian. And let’s not forget, if you ever get into a superhero fight protect your neck at all costs (I recommend a layer of moon rocks in the traditional African Ndebele arrangement).

Warren