Axiom’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By Sam Christopher

Ratings: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

I went into this film with very low expectations. I didn’t think much of the last X-Men film because I thought it, like Spiderman 3, just had too many stories going on to do any of them true justice—and I wasn’t thrilled with the way they characterized Phoenix, but that’s another story. Also, I’ve never thought much of Wolverine’s backstory anyway. He always seemed to me to be one of those characters who benefited much more from having a mysterious past (along with DC’s Phantom Stranger and Black Orchid), and any origin story they could give him after all the hints they’d made could only be a disappointment. But with all the Wolverine comics and the amazing popularity of the character an origin story was inevitable and Marvel actually did a passable job with it, even though I still didn’t think it measured up to the mystery that had surrounded Logan before. It kind of made sense that he would be very old, as the healing factor that is his main mutant ability would have kept him from aging much and it had been hinted at before. And, finally, I had heard nothing but bad about the film from those who had seen it. The print that had been leaked to the internet had been roundly booed, although I had to cut the filmmakers a little slack on that as I learned that the cut was without any special effects—wonder how Superman or any Star Trek movie would look without the effects. On the day of release, however, I finally heard some good things about the film.

My brother described the beginning of the film the best; he said it had a very Batman Begins feel to it. That is dead-on. The entire early sequence of the sickly young James Howlett and his childhood “friend” Victor Logan, with James’s father, Thomas, being murdered by Victor’s father, Thomas, and James losing his head and extending bone claws from the backs of his hands to avenge Thomas’s death is great. This apparently brought Victor, who had been shown as a sullen bully, to the realization that he and “Jimmy” are true brothers—as Victor is also a mutant. The two escape the men hunting them and go one to fight together in every war from the Civil War through to Vietnam, a timeline shown to the audience of this film as stills and snippets of action scenes. We are also shown Victor’s increasingly feral personality and likewise increasing disregard for human life; he is stopped a few times from committing acts of wanton murder by his brother James. But we also see that the brothers stand together against anyone else—which at one point leads to their being sent before a firing squad.

This is when William Stryker enters the picture. He offers the Logan boys a spot on his elite squad of mutant soldiers. The hardest thing to get past with Stryker is his staying alive through the whole movie. He continually puts himself in compromising situations with the man who will be known as Wolverine. He orders a mass murder of an African village, which leads James Logan to quit the team. He shows up just before James Logan’s girlfriend is “murdered”. He orders Logan’s liquidation after putting James through the extremely painful process of coating the latter’s bones with adamantium (the hardest metal known in the Marvel Universe). He reveals to Wolvie that the love of Logan’s life was all a setup by him in order to goad Wolverine into allowing the adamantium process to be performed so that Stryker could use Logan’s DNA to create a super-weapon to control mutants.

That super-weapon is Deadpool, a being with the combined powers of many mutants. He has Logan’s healing factor, Scott Summers’ eye blasts, and John Wraith’s teleportation abilities for starters. It is hinted he has many other powers as well but they never get around to showing those here. He fights against both James and Victor and has them both defeated at one point before the inevitable loss (the movie isn’t named “Deadpool”, is it?). He is played by Ryan Reynolds, who was rumored to be the choice for The Flash in a film of the same name, so maybe there is a solo film for this character in the offing.

I haven’t said much about the movie here, mainly because I want you to see it for yourself. I will tell you that it dragged in the middle and, for me, really kind of tailed off at the end. It seemed to me they had built up an expectation that never paid off. I’ve heard that the director, Gavin Hood, had a problem with 20th Century Fox’s handling of this film—don’t know how true that is so I don’t know who to blame for the problems. And the post-credit epilogue (there’s also one just after the credits start) was just dumb. That said, it is still a very good picture, well worth seeing at the theater. Hugh Jackman is perfect for this role; I’ve thought so through all three previous X-pictures and nothing that happened here changed my mind.

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