X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I saw this movie on Sunday afternoon with my girlfriend. It was an utterly incomprehensible story retconned to fit into the continuity of the earlier films, filled to the brim with poorly written and defined characters that only resemble the original characters in the vaguest possible sense.

So, in that, it was refreshingly faithful to the comics.

I love X-Men and I love Wolverine, or, at least, the X-Men and Wolverine I remember from the 70s into the early 90s. After that is when the character began to get a little sketchy, and that is the character they choose to put on screen. Well and why not? That's the character kids today know. It's just too bad that Wolverine Origins mini was one of the worst comics I've ever read. All things considered, the film improved on it in many ways, simplifying things as films are want to do.

Also, it was a benefit that most of the characters from the Weapon X team are ones I am not all that familiar with, so they didn't do to much damage for me. And the characters I did know, came out fairly unscathed. No, I didn't understand why Gambit was suddenly able to fly around, but he was still fairly well done and a lot of fun to have on screen. And Kestrel from the film has, um, the same hat as the one in the comics.

But this was the Wolverine / Sabertooth show, and they were both great. I've long since forgiven Hugh Jackman for being too tall and too handsome to be Logan, since he is such a badass in every other respect. He's great as Wolverine, in my opinion. And the fact that he is so handsome means that my girlfriend wants to see these Wolverine movies even more than I do. And Liev Schreiber was awesome and deliciously evil as Sabertooth. I never really understood what his character wanted or what he was doing most of the time, but he was always fun to watch on screen.

So... I liked it, to the same extent that I've liked the X-Men and Wolverine comics for the past decade or so. That is to say, they have the X-Men in them and they are reasonably entertaining.

And my girlfriend loved it. She has obvious affection for Mr. Jackman, but she also said that she really enjoyed the story. And that's from somebody who had probably never read a comic book before she'd met me. In fact, after seeing this movie, she asked to see some of my Wolverine comics. After we saw Watchmen, she asked to see my copy of tha comic as well, which she really liked, but she only reads about a page or so before bed every night. At that rate, maybe she'll finish it in about 500 years.