Nope, you're not mistaken. This is, indeed, a personal movie review of the much-hyped X-Men Origins: Wolverine, not some Third World porn blogging site posting pictures upon sick pictures of some nude women in all their lewd sexual positions. What you see on the left is an artistic shot (well, anything nude has always used the artistic excuse) of Lynn Collins, the actor who plays the Kayla Silverfox part in the movie, who is Wolverine's smokin' hot Canadian outlet for er...withdrawal of anger and Biogesic-induced migraines. So yeah, hear me sick sex perverts, the nude Kayla Silverfox heading this post is still tied up to this review apparently. Also, screw you for being more interested in the steamy photo than what I have to say regarding the movie itself.I am penning this review not as some comic book geek who breathes and lives the Marvel Universe, reciting the names of every mutant imaginable with ease like The Lord's Prayer and discussing layers upon complicated layers of mythic X-Men lore but rather, as some regular dude who happens to be a certified couch potato raving or dissing films as he deems it fit and whose encounter with the epic comic book franchise goes only as deep as the memory of that X-Men TV series I've religiously watched during my pre-pubescent years sans the idiotic Tagalog dubbing, which is basically a good thing. (I mean, for chrissake, what exactly is the logic behind networks dubbing English cartoons in vernacular today? If anything, the gesture only implies how they're undermining the Pinoy viewer's intelligence; what douchebag A-holes these greedy corpo's are!)
So there we were, me and Binchee, my ever reliable drinking buddy-slash-call whoring teammate, going to the mall for some seemingly so-fuckin'-gay M2M date just because nobody else on the team would want to extend becoming adamantly awake and to watch the darn X-Men prequel (call whoring shift ended at 11AM, movie started at 2:30PM; do the Math). By the way, as I am already 15 hours awake beginning 12 MN last night, my apologies to the grammar OC readers for the typographical errors and glaring S-V disagreements and mediocre sentence run ons if there's any. I am, after all, writing this impromptu without the edits - the drooping eyelids temporarily abated by measly ounces of adamantium caffeine.
The problem with follow ups (be it prequel or sequel) of very successful movie franchises is that the film either ends up exceeding the expectations from a very loyal fanbase or it ends up falling flat on its face, receiving too much flak for gawd-knows-what reasons. It does not help that viewers are treated to very awesome, very cool, excellence par none trailers of next attractions prior to the actual flick runtime, thereby setting the mood to such comparable high demands and anticipations.
The abovementioned really really cool, really really awesome, really really coolawesome (wait...did I just create another adjective out of sheer, nerve-wracking excitement?) trailers I'm talking about are in the form of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. First, Transformers 2 promises a lot of gritty, first-rate machine mayhems between more Decepticons and Autobots. Second, judging by the epic display of eye-popping wizarding battles and jaw-dropping wand flicks, HB6 is love! Third, HB6 is love! And lastly, HB6 is love! Yeah, these are very rare instances when I take back what I said. I'm willing to be redundant to stress the point that HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT THE HB6 TRAILER IS SO AWESOME GAWDDAMN IT I CAN'T WAIT FOR JULY 18 HOLY FRACKIN' COW LOOK AT ALL THOSE INFERIS OH WOW OH WOW MY JAWS ARE DROPPING WITH ALL THOSE FREAKIN' MAGIC WAND SLASHING SWISHING CHURNING AVADA KEDAVRA STUPEFY RICTUSEMPRA HOLY SHIT SNAPE AND HIS "IT'S OVER" SNIPPET IS BLOODY CREEPY I WISH I WAS IN HOGWARTS WHAT THE FUCK I SOUND LIKE A MUGGLE RETARD YADDA YADDA YADDA.
HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HP6 IS COMING TO THIRD WORLD TOWN! But I digress. The first few minutes in the opening credits set the tone for Wolverine's back story, building the pace of mutant-battles-his-own-mutant-existence plot. The war montage of how Wolverine and Sabretooth guard each other's back in one hellish piece of Commando action spanning four big battlefields (Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War) pretty much tells you how the two brothers (yes, much to my chagrin, they're brothers albeit with different surnames; what did I tell you about not being one hardcore X-Men fan?) are seemingly immortal mutants and toying on the idea of self-healing, how they end up in catfights over clawish catfights.
Between the two of them, Sabretooth undoubtedly possesses more of the animalistic blood and thereafter acts as one, which hauls both of them to Stryker's elite military group of mutants who will become America's arsenal of freakin' fighting machines. Still confused with fighting over his own demons, Wolverine pukes over the idea of becoming a killer to be a savior and becomes a Canadian hermit-slash-lumberjack, leaving the rest of the Stryker's skilled carousel freaks and eventually humping with a sex goddess girlfriend in the form of Kayla Silverfox (see nude photo above) in some some recluse mountain.
Here we see the not-too-original plot of "with great powers come great government usage" mantra. Stryker builds a not-too-ingenious plan of using Kayla Silverfox and Sabretooth to bait Wolverine from finally agreeing to be put to the Weapon X adamantium experiment. Kayla plays the part well in exchange of her sister's freedom and Sabretooth does the round-about killing spree in exchange of the adamantium claws itself, expounding the cliche of brothers getting jealous over what the other brothers have but they don't.
Sister, I soooo like your adamantium claws! Did you have that made through Gandang Mother Ricky Reyes?From here, every piece of the rolling film becomes replays of fights over mutant fights of CGI proportions. Wolverine fights Sabretooth, Wolverine fights Agent Zero, Wolverine fights *surprise surprise* Gambit, Wolverine fights Sabretooth again, Wolverine fights botoxed and obesed obesed Blob, Wolverine fights Sabretooth some more, and finally, Wolverine culminates the hellish X-Men fighting over some Colossus arena with Weapon XI Deadpool (which leads me to asking: whatever happened to Weapons I to IX?; are Stryker's previous experiments total failures?).
While the actors' performance are quite commendable, their acting seems to have been overshadowed by the thinly thought-of plot, which lacks the complexities and rich-layered emotions present in other comic book films like say, The Dark Knight. As Zafra aptly puts it, there are really only a few plots in existence. X-Men Origins: Wolverine uses the Cain and Abel story, Frankenstein, and throws in a bit of Oedipus. Which is not to say entirely pathetic since for all I know, this is really how the Wolverine character grew and originated in the comic book-verse and the director only went as far as becoming faithful to the derivative. Again, let me reiterate that my knowing the entire X-Men saga is only as deep as the X-Men series I watched when I was a kid.
So yeah, if you're a regular dude who craves for belligerent badass CGI fight scenes of god-like powers, then this X-Men prequel won't disappoint. The mutant fight scenes are well-choreographed, the visual imagery are a rare eye-candy, and the special effects are worth the ticket. Oh and yes, you get a glimpse of Cyclops and Professor X, and some other mutants (I think I saw Toad in one cameo; or was it Nightcrawler?). Did I already mention Gambit played some parts for a reasonably long run time?
Ngeyoarr!!! Gimme that JLC and his fuckin' Biogesic commercial! I will shred that piece of hair-receding matinee idol to pieces! If you're a flick geek though who almost always finds something wrong every after two minutes of the film's showing, meticuolously pointing out how Wolverine's devilish hair-do seems to be inconsistent or nitpicking on the multi-powered Deadpool's death of "that's it he gets decapitated by Wolverine's toaster-hot adamantium claws and he becomes a piece of dead mutant meat?" then I'd recommend to just download the ripped copy of the film, complete with the conspicuous strings and half-baked CGI.
Lio Loco's rating: Seven out of ten one-arm-amputated Wolverine plastic toy bust
Ngeyoarrr! Kids, don't try this at home. Accidentally cutoff my other arm during sleep! Ngeyoarr!SPOILER WARNING: READING THIS POST PRIOR TO WATCHING THE MOVIE IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED. BLOG CONTENT INCLUDE KEY PLOT SCENES THAT MAY BE DETRIMENTAL TOWARDS YOUR GETTING A SATISFACTION-GUARANTEED MOVIE VIEWING. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. AT WHICH POINT, YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW. SO YEAH. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
UPDATE
The film, apparently, had three alternate endings:
1. Stryker walks down the road with toes wounded and bloody (Before Silverfox died, she controlled Stryker to "walk until his feet bled" as opposed to just commanding him to pull the trigger on his head.). A military officer apprehends him for being responsible in one general's killing.
This is the ending that I saw during the movie.
2. Deadpool's hand is shown reaching from the rubble of the nuclear complex to touch his decapitated head, whereupon the head comes to life and makes a brief hushing sound before the scene fades to blackness.
This may be to indicate Weapon XI's further exploits in succeeding sequels of the movie.
3. Wolverine drinks in a bar in Japan and a woman approaches him. She asks whether he's drinking to forget; he responds, "to remember."
A clear indication that X-Men Origins: Wolverine's plot will have Japan as the setting. I was told that Wolverine sired a son in Japan in the original comic book story. This may be hinting at the movie closely following the comic book's story in future films.
Survey Says
On a more or less related note, here's the result of last post's survey regarding the best potential Hollywood blockbuster flick that people can't wait to see in the theaters:
1. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince (38%)
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (33%)
3. Angels and Demons (10%)
4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (14%)
5. Dragon Ball Z Evolution (5%)
This week's survey (upper right-hand side) asks bandwidth bystanders to give their two cents' worth on which language would Lio Loco be most effective in this piece of Internet domain. Clicking is free so feel free to chip in your thoughts. Participation will be very much appreciated!
