Be Excellent To Each Other

As this showed up on ("Channel 4" - Ed) yesterday I thought I'd watch it with the missus and share my opinions.

Firstly, the workprint that I watched had a fair bit of unfinished SFX. Most of the CGI was missing or rough (Wolverine's claws come and go a lot), there was no colour matching between shots and some of the ADR was done with subtitles . All the scenes were present and correct though and it wasn't too distracting.

So, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, then. When I first heard about this I thought I heard the distinctive sound of a barrel bottom being scraped. The X-Men movies had written themselves down a cul-de-sac after the third and a lot of the recognisable characters had been killed off or de-powered. Everyone's favourite anti-hero was left without an enemy to fight or a team to fight with. And the name? "X-Men Origins"? Did this mean we were going to get a whole stream of origin stories? Wolverine, fair enough. Gambit, Cyclops, Storm and the main players, why not? But Maggot? Lifeguard? I was not convinced. BUT! The missus is a Huge Jackman fan (see what I did there?) so I thought we'd give it a bash.

And I'm glad I did.

The movie doesn't waste any time with explanations of powers. A young Sabertooth (incidentally, I don't think anyone calls him that in this film) and Logan run away from home in 19th Century Canada and fight in dozens of wars in a clever montage over the credits. After crossing the line in the military they're sentenced to death by firing squad (which, obv. doesn't work) and get a visit from Colonel Stryker (see: X-Men 2) who is assembling a special team for 'special' assignments.

The movie, even in the rough form that I saw hangs together quite well. It's pretty fast paced and light on the dialogue and the action scenes and fights all flow nicely. I'd definitely like to rewatch the final 15 minutes with finished CGI and effects as I reckon that will be a highlight. The film rewards fans of the comic with a few background characters and details showing up and there's a cameo at the end that shouldn't surprise anyone, but still delights.

If I were critical (and I'm trying to be), then I would mention that a couple of the new characters are entirely underdeveloped, (including a massively overweight boxer, his teleporting, beer swigging friend and Charlie from Lost as a Techopath) and even Wolverine himself has little character progression throughout the course of the movie. It's almost as if they thought "Hey, fuck it, he's getting his memory erased at the end, let's not bother" and lumbered him with two character traits: The Man and The Animal. Much as I admire Hugh Jackman, I don't think he has the acting chops to give that range enough depth. (INSERT FROM MRS DAVPAZ: He *does* look good in a vest though!)

So, in conclusion. Not bad at all. It lacks the depth of more recent superhero movies such as Dark Knight or Iron Man, but there's enough in there to make it a solid Saturday night watch.

And yeah, he looks good in a vest.

Oh. I'll probably not bother with that then. There doesn't seem much point in watching a special effects-laden summer blockbuster that's missing half of the special effects.

It's mainly a few helicopter shots in the opening montage and the colour matching. There is one shot of Wolverine being thrown across a truck that switches from live action to untextured, unlit cgi and back again which made both me and the missus laugh out loud.

I've seen some of these workprints before and it's actually quite fascinating to see how much CGI is actually impossible to spot nowadays.

My fave ever was the bit in Jurassic Park where the kid is hanging over a drop and looks up at the camera. The stunt woman looked up when she shouldn't have and they had to replace her face. No one noticed that.

Or how about changing the old lady's eye colour in Titanic to match Kate Winslet? See also: Contact for eye colour switching.

It seems an entertaining enough flick, certainly not Citizen Kane but amusing enough. It is shocking though the amount of CGI, Wires and Greenscreens that are used, almost to the point of laziness on some of the scenes.

Seems harsh.

I both love this place and hate it for knowing that any time I prepare a gag like this, I'll scroll down and find that you bastards will have beaten me to it.

The question remains: How badly have they fucked up Gambit and (more importantly) Deadpool?

Well, if you really want to know...

Gambit is vastly underused, but comes across well.

Deadpool... I wouldn't like to say

Unless you *really* want to know

And even more importantly: the White Queen?

has anyone else watched this yet?

off topic, but for those interested in CGi and stuff, get the Special Edition or Bluray of Zodiac, that is awesome how much they did and it looks great imho.