( 2112 )

I’d like share my thoughts re X-Men Origins: Wolverine with anyone who happens by 2112 today, but I honestly just don’t know how to say what I want to say. I mean, somewhere, some-when, someone will know exactly how to respond to a production like X-Men Origins: Wolverine with decisive-descriptive language. Some future personage – who’ll truly deserve a hug for his or her effort – will coin just the right turn of phrase to sum up its particular brand of “cross-platform entertainment product” conceived by individuals whose collective vocabulary have been literally imprisoned by an endless strings of corporate marketing catchphrases and buzzwords. I don’t envy that whomever that extra bit of vocabulary but, it will no doubt exist and doubtless come in handy. Unfortunately I only have two more or less straightforward but nevertheless inadequate descriptive options. I could imitate the mad astronaut’s manuscript from Michael Moorcock’s The Final Programme by simply neatly typing “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” over and over again or I could lift a phrase from one of the soldiers letters read aloud in Good Morning Vietnam and tell you all that X-Men Origins: Wolverine stinks worse than the sweat on a dead man’s balls.

But first things first and first I’d like both of you to know that I don’t have anything against cross-platform entertainment per-se. Seriously, The Dark Knight was cross-platform entertainment, so was Sin City, so was Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, so was The Matrix Reloaded, so were the Lord of the Rings films, so was Battlestar Galactica and so is Doctor Who … All of which were and/or are great. There’s nothing wrong with producing an entertainment and then making money on it on every available avenue. I was a big fan of Sid Meir’s Pirates and enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean game. I own the Battlestar Galactica game for XBox, listen to the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures on BBC Radio and God help me, I  … uh, even have a remote control Dalek sitting around here somewhere.

I don’t think making money is wrong, I think people  people are obliged to call bullshit on it when you make a bad  [as opposed to entertaining] Mattel commercial and try to pass it off as a film.

But like I was saying; we don’t yet have a word to describe how bad X-Men Origins is. It’s Blade 3 without Jessica Biel’s well Jessica Biel’s to watch. It’s Batman and Robin in the worst way, in terms of both quality, and in how it seems to exist solely as an excuse to manufacture and sell action figures. It bolstered my opinion of Michael Bay’s … uhm … “talents,” in that by comparison his silly Transformers exists several shoulders above it. And substantially increased the likelihood that whatever the GI Joe film’s inevitable flaws amount to, I’ll be willing to partially forgive them on the basis of simply competent production values. Is X-Men Origins as bad as say Catwoman or The Punisher or Daredevil or Elektra? I don’t know. That’s a bit like comparing and contrasting the odors of turds to determine which one is actually a rose. Does it make sense, or is it fair, to compare it only to other comic book based film as it they constituted a sub-genre so inherently lacking in quality that they have to be graded on a critical bell curve? No. And to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, no genre capable of producing work as  exceptional as Superman: The Movie and The Dark Knight can be discounted or ghettoized.

I’ve seen at least one reviewer compare it to Iron Man, The Crow, Blade, Blade II, Hulk, Constantine and Hellboy. And well, Constantine was a bloody mess; I’m no fan of Ang Lee’s giant gamma poodle fighting Hulk; despite being well produced and generally delivering solid set pieces the first two Blade films have their problems; but anyone watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine and comparing it Iron Man, The Crow or Hellboy either watched a different film or was high on one of Walter Bishop’s hallucinogenic cocktails while typing his or her review. Which is to say: No one involved in X-Men Origins [other than maybe Hugh Jackman's personal trainer] seems to have been trying to make a good and or enjoyable film.

Let me be clear here: X-Men Origins: Wolverine lacks the glossy technical visuals of a film as bad as The Day After Tomorrow, it utterly fails to include eye candy in any form [excepting Hugh himself], doesn’t even attempt the proficient action of Live Free or Die Hard [or even say Underworld: Evolution] and it looks to have been designed by someone who couldn’t have gotten a job dressing sets on Transporter 3. Basic concepts like the need to establish and  appear to maintain the spatial relationships between characters within scenes are ignored. And its screenplay fails to present anything resembling a sense of internal logic [emphasis on internal]. Things just sort of happen at random leaving you unable to answer basic questions about the “characters” and their “powers” and “motivations.” I’m not suggesting it should have been Hamlet, but considering the part where the title contains the word “Origin,” I think I should at least know why Wolverine got his adamantium bones. I’d take just being able to suss know how-slash-why Gambit went from being at Wolverine’s feet at the beginning of  a  fight with Creed to being on a rooftop several  blocks away charging back to it at the end. But I don’t. You won’t either.  The film isn’t just bad, its ridiculously, laughably bad [as in when Ma and Pa Kent showed up  - targets on their foreheads - disused Harley at the ready - handy indestructible leather jacket to offer our hero - a "you have to be f-cking kidding" burst of laughter  literally erupted out of me ... and that wasn't the only time]. So skip this thing, it’s a turkey, trust me.