Wolverine

Hugh Jackman recently flaunted his singing skills as host of the 81st Academy Awards in February. Now you can see Hugh Jackman show off his roaring abilities at a theatre near you. As the titular hero of the sloppy, inconsequential blockbuster blunder X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Jackman spends most of the movie snarling and roaring at either an enemy or the open sky. And while Jackman's guttural growl is impressively animalistic, the eventually laughable repetition of his angry battle snarls and skyward screams sums up the silly emptiness that defines this pointless mess. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is all bark and no bite.

This fourth instalment in the popular X-Men franchise is actually a character-centric prequel that, as the title suggests, explores the origin of powerful mutant Wolverine. After the clunky, idiotic third X-Men movie (which featured the uncomfortably cheap title X-Men: The Last Stand), there was really nowhere left to take the franchise other than backwards. That movie killed off a handful of main characters, robbed some main villains of their powers, and generally reduced the entire movie series to a pile of ill-conceived rubble. So with that mess of a movie out of the way, the franchise has gone back in time to focus on the beginnings of one of the X-Men's more intriguing characters.

But in the hands of screenwriters David Benioff and Skip Woods, the story of how a young mutant named James grew up to become the metal-clawed, mutton-chopped Wolverine is a dull and lifeless tale. The movie follows James (who eventually changes his name to Logan, before adopting his familiar moniker Wolverine) from childhood to seemingly never-ending adulthood (James has a heightened healing ability that apparently stops his aging at about the thirty year mark).

Eventually, James volunteers for the fateful Weapon X program which transforms him into a nearly indestructible being due to an expensive process that involves grafting the fictional metal adamantium to his bones. This process leads to the adoption of his new name and the initial brandishing of his trademark metal claws. Wolverine survives the painful experiment, but is mighty angry about the whole thing, so he runs away and vows to take down William Stryker (Danny Huston, desperately chewing scenery), the dastardly mutant-hating human who masterminded the Weapon X program.

This synopsis barely scratches the surface of the knotted plot, which continually feels like rehashed nonsense. Various mutants from the X-Men comic books make cameo appearances, but each of them is underused and seem to serve little purpose beyond trying to distract the fans from how pathetically unimaginative the story is. The Weapon X program was hinted at through flashbacks in the first two X-Men movies and so there is a certain pleasure in seeing the entire event play out in the context of this plot. But the glimpses shown in the early X-Men movies were far more frightening and intriguing than what goes on in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so the novelty of witnessing the whole sequence quickly wears off.

Once Wolverine is on the loose, the movie turns into a standard action flick with a hero thirsty for revenge. Standing in Wolverine's way is not only Stryker, but also Wolverine's mutant brother Victor (Liev Schrieber, who at least tries to look convincingly mean) and another strange mutant creation who looks nothing like any previous villain from the comic books, but instead strongly resembles a character from the Mortal Kombat video games. This trio of bad guys gives Wolverine plenty to roar about, but they never succeed as believable threats. This is paint-by-numbers villainy all the way, simply giving the hero a reason to get upset and flash those impressive claws.

But the blame for this clunky disaster cannot be singularly heaped upon the screenplay. As bad as that flimsy piece of writing may be, the strangest thing about X-Men Origins: Wolverine is that the movie seems incapable of getting anything right. Director Gavin Hood (whose Johannesburg-set drama Tsotsi won the Foreign Language Oscar in 2006) has no business handling a big-budget action picture. His direction of every scene, from the intimate moments to the noisy action sequences, is awkward, clumsy, and wholly unsatisfying. He seems to approach every sequence with a lowest-common-denominator attitude and the result is more laughable than engaging.

Even talented cinematographer Donald McAlpine seems to be asleep at the wheel. McAlpine previously breathed life into beautiful worlds of fantasy with movies such as Moulin Rouge!, the underrated 2003 version of Peter Pan, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. McAlpine even photographed the 1987 movie Predator, which remains one of the greatest tough-guy action movies of all time. So how come a mega-budgeted movie shot by a man of such considerable talents ends up being so ugly? This question plagued me for the entire duration of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which looks uncomfortably flat for each and every frame.

The one saving grace of so many blockbuster action movies is the spectacular special effects. Back in the summer of 2007, three of the biggest blockbusters of the season (Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Transformers) all suffered from uninspired scripts and weak performances. But while I didn't care for any of those three movies, it is safe to say that each of them boasted vibrant eye candy.

On the other hand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine looks like it has been dragged out of the bargain bin of blockbuster movies. Recycling some effects from past X-Men movies and ignoring any effort to integrate the CGI with real environments makes for a pitiful attempt at creating the unreal. Even Wolverine's claws (originally physical props in the first movies) have been mostly replaced by shoddy digital versions. Seriously, where did the reported $130 million budget disappear to? Perhaps the catering bill was really high.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is easily one of the least exciting blockbusters in quite a while. Unlike last year's triumphant Iron Man, this movie gets the summer movie season off to a sluggish start. It is time for Hugh Jackman to hang up the claws and move on to better things. He has taken this character as far as he can and this franchise continues to plunge in quality. All of the snarling and roaring in the world cannot pull this movie back from the brink of sour stupidity. This is blockbuster filmmaking that hits with a thud, evaporates upon impact, and leaves us all wondering how that once-exciting franchise vanished into thin air.