Movie review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Lately superhero movies have been all over. Recently you've had Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Punisher: War Zone and The Dark Knight. The latest movie in the superhero trend is X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

This movie tells the story of how the character of Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, came to be who he is. It starts off around the time of the Revolutionary War when Logan is still a child. He comes into his powers and winds up running off with his "brother" Victor Creed, played by Levi Schreiber. If you aren't familiar with the character of Victor Creed he is later known by the name Sabertooth.

During the credits we then see Logan and Victor fighting in most of the major wars of the last 100 years. Of course they can do this because they are both mutants and they have the ability to heal their wounds. The movie starts off with them both fighting in the Vietnam War and we see that Victor has become a bit bloodthirsty. They are then approach by William Striker. You first saw him in X2 and he is the man who gave Wolverine his claws and metal skeleton. He recruits them to be part of a group made up entirely of mutants. You've got The Blob, played by Kevin Durand, Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, Kestrel, played by will.i.am, and Bolt, played by Dominic Monaghan.

Wolverine eventually decides to leave the group and settles off with a wife and a blue collar job. Without giving anything away I will say that he is thrust back into his old life and agrees to take part in a procedure to cover his skeleton with an indesctrubile metal called Adamantium. This is also where he gets his trademark metal claws.

We also get a small glimpse of a young Cyclops but he doesn't play a huge part in the movie. The only other character that we meet is Gambit. This is the one character that fans of the X-Men series had been waiting a long time for. He was supposed to be in the previous movies but for one reason or another they could never work him in. It was nice to see him but I would have liked it if he had a bigger part.

Now the movie is meant to center around Wolverine but that doesn't mean we couldn't have had some more development of the minor characters.

But saying that this movie was good. I will say that it was definitely better than X3 but not quite as good as X2 or the original X-Men. But if any character was going to make for a good solo movie it's Wolverine.

The acting is good all around. Hugh Jackman does his usual good job as Woleverine. But Liev Schrieber was a bit of a surprised for me. I didn't think he would be right for the role but he did a good job. The villain William Striker wasn't too different than he was in X2 but with a different actor playing the role it brought a bit of a different perspective to the part.

The special effects and fight scenes were done really well. There are some big explosions and set pieces that came off very well. Now I'm not hardcore into the comics so I can't really say if they fudged any of the details of any of the character's back stories. I have been told that they did but going into this with only a base knowledge help and I think I probably enjoyed it more than I would have otherwise.

Now one weird thing was Patrick Stewart makes a cameo as a younger Professor X. But instead of putting him for hours a makeup chair they used green screen and altered his appearance on the computer to make him look younger. As I said the special effects in this movie are great but as soon as he is on screen it is a very obvious green screen effect. It only lasts for a few moments but it's a little off putting.

Now there are going to be more of the origins movies coming out. The next new one in the works is X-Men Origins: Magneto and that is slated to come out in 2011. Also around the same time they are already planning X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2. There are also rumors of Storm getting her own movie but it is not listed in IMDB and the odds of them getting Halle Berry to play the role are slim to none.

So if you are a fan of the X-Men series then definitely watch this movie. If you just like superhero movies than again this is one to check out. I think it also has enough in it to satisfy fans of action or fantasy. This is a good entry in the X-Men franchise and helps to show that it still has some life in it. After X3 I, along with a lot of other people, thought that the franchise was dead. But Wolverine was able to bring the franchise back to where it was before.

My score: 7.5/10