X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Let me spare you the drama- this movie was a pile of warmed over feces.
I didn’t have high hopes for this, and I was still let down. The last two X-Men movies were pretty solid, had some good times, and so on.
What was good-
Casting was pretty top notch overall. Most of the actors fit the roles given them well and pulled of their silly lines admirably.
Costuming was generally not bad.
What was bad-
Remember how all the sets in the first X-Men movie looked like rejects from a theme park or were just variations on one square sound stage? Yeah, that’s how this is too.
The name thing. We don’t need elaborate stories behind names. He is Wolverine because he’s short, hairy, and mean. There’s worse ways to pass along key character points (see the t-shirt thing in that awful Punisher movie), and in a better movie it could have even worked ok. But naming Deadpool and Blob the way they did was retarded.
The fighting was generally boring and when it involved any wire work it lapsed into the slow motion feel which plauged the first X-Men movie.
The story. The whole fucking story they stitched together did nothing but waste time and fail to go anywhere.
I don’t know the technical term for it, but there’s zero cohesion from one scene to the next. He spends like five minutes every in North America, then jaunts off for no reason to do more nothing.
The cinematography. This person should be rendered asunder by a motorcycle gang. The shots varied from boring to cliche to more boring.
What was beneath contempt-
The script, as a whole.
The whole “Wait, no, your woman is alive because we want to kill her at the end of the movie” thing was absolutely pointless. What the hell? How long were you guys together anyway? Did they steal your sister from the babysitter?
Zero. I have no idea who this guy was supposed to be, but his character was pointless and retarded. He apparently had the mutant ability to be Asian and summon up ancestral gun-fu.
The re-imagineering of Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds is perfect for Deadpool, but this take on the character was, like the rest of it, pointless and boring.
The CGI claws looked like something from Ang Lee’s Hulk.
The naming of Gambit. “Because he always beat them at poker” or some shit. Again, just say “They call him Gambit”, it’ll avoid stupid shit stories and the audience will think it’s just fine.
I’m sick of writing about this now, so I’ll give you one example of the sort of scripting we’re talking about here. They send Zero out to stop Wolverine. After Zero is killed one of the dudes at the Weapon X facility pulls out this revolver in a padded case with some adamantium bullets. My first thought was “Dude, those bullets look like crap, you should wrap some lead or copper around your spiky little friends” then two insane realizations caught me. One, this guy had the time, and pull, to wander off with enough adamantium to make these bullets, get the gun case made, polish everything lovingly, and all without having to tell anyone or get noticed. Two, did he hate Zero or what? Your guy with the mutant ability to make life into a Jon Woo film took off to kill this dude and you failed to give him a weapon his bullshit power was good with, only mentioning it after he died?
Good lord people.