It’s been at least a couple of decades since I last read the X-Men comics, so I cannot say with a certainty how close Gavin Hood stayed to cannon. What I can comment on, is the trepidation I felt, sitting in that theater seat, waiting for the lights to go down. Would it be any good? Would it live up to the X-Men Trilogy (which I thoroughly enjoyed), or would it be a cheap attempt at continuing a franchise that was better left as done? I knew that I would have my answers in about 109 minutes.
I was well rewarded for my time and the cost of the ticket. Wolverine’s story opens by taking us on a trip through his dark past, starting with him killing his father as a boy (though he did not know who it was at the time), and his subsequent journeys with his brother, Victor Creed who is also a mutant, later to be known as Sabertooth. The two fight sis by side in every war from the civil war to Vietnam, with Victor getting more wild and violent as time passes.
They are eventually discovered as mutants after surviving a firing squad, and enlisted by a younger Stryker to be in part of his special group. As Victor continues to revel in killing, becoming harder to restrain, Wolverine becomes disgusted with it, finally breaking from the group, and from his brother.
This sets the foundation or the story, and ties it all back into the original X-Men franchise. Wolverine moves to Canada, and tries to live a more normal life as a lumberjack for a while, before Stryker (who is more the villain than Sabertooth) catches up to him to warn him that someone is killing his old team members. After Sabertooth apparently kills Wolverine’s girlfriend, Wolverine reluctantly partners with Stryker long enough to have his bones infused with Adamantium, turning his bone claws into the more familiar blades, and making him virtually indestructible.
From here the move falls into a fairly predictable path, Wolverine discovers that Stryker has double crossed him; he escapes, and is pursued by Stryker relentlessly. Wolverine hears about an Island that Stryker is using to experiment on mutants, and tracks down Gambit (who had escaped from the island) to help him get back in to kill Stryker and Victor.
After getting to the island, Gavin Hood deftly spins his last couple of plot twists. Wolverine find out his supposedly dead girlfriend is really alive, and is a mutant who helped get him to Stryker in the first place, so he could harvest his DNA to make a “Super Mutant” that would have the powers of several different mutants (known as Deadpool). Wolverine saves the mutants, telling Silverfox (his now ex girlfriend) to get them out while he faces off against Deadpool in an epic battle that sees Sabertooth come to his aid one more time.
In a final tie together with the original x-men, Silverfox dies, and Stryker manages to shoot Wolverine in the head with adamantium bullets, knowing it won’t kill him, but sure that it will rob him of his memories, just before a dying Silverfox uses her mind control powers to send Stryker walking off “till his feet bleed”.
All in all, it was a well put together movie, with a story that seemed plausible, good effects, and even some cameo appearances such as Patrick Stewart at the end, and a young Cyclops having a small roll. Gavin Hood gets two thumbs up for his work on this, the first of the Origin’s series. Next up is Magneto’s story, which should begin filming now, since Wolverine has had such a strong start at the box office.
