wolverine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Hugh Jackman has been itching to take Logan to the land of the Rising Sun since before X-Men Origins: Wolverine hit theaters, and as a sequel was announced mere hours after Origins hit theaters, it was no surprise when he announced this week that he was actively developing it. But "active development" has resulted in a big announcement as according to The Hollywood Reporter, Christopher McQuarrie has been hired to pen the sequel. The Christopher McQuarrie. That weird noise you hear is the sound of my hopes going up despite my best efforts.

As you might remember McQuarrie is no stranger to the X-Men universe, having originally penned the first X-Men script before David Hayter came in. A very brief Google search doesn't reveal what McQuarrie's script would have been like, so maybe someone else can offer up what might have been. I think I can safely say that if he had written Origins, there wouldn't have been gaping continuity errors and laughable memory-removal MacGuffins.

Like most Wolverine fans, I love Frank Miller's Japan saga. It's the first time Wolverine was actually shown to have those things called "feelings," experienced something known as "failure," and it deepened his character beyond the berserker who did nothing more than hack, slash, and hit on Jean Grey. If done right, we could honestly pretend Origins never happened, and this is Wolverine's cinematic origin story.

Yesterday MTV reported a story from the Teen Choice Awards that Hugh Jackman was already working on a follow-up to this summer's X-Men spinoff, Wolverine. "Japan is where we're heading, [and] we're starting to work on it now," Jackman said in a taped interview. "We're in ... the first steps of developing that story."

Suffice it to say that the first film was not universally well-received, so a sequel might give the filmmakers more time to put together something better-suited and more faithful to the character's illustrious comic book legacy. While Jackman didn't officially confirm that the film would follow the storyline of the 1982 miniseries that catapulted the character from supporting player to superstar, he observed that could certainly be a jumping off point for the film: "I think the fans love that saga," he said. "It's my favorite saga of the Wolverine stories. That's a movie I've longed to make from the beginning, so that's where we're heading."

The question is, does that aspect of his back story really matter any more?

Watch your back, Iron Man! Wolverine might just be about to learn what happens when your film is a critical and commercial (well, in movie studio terms -- it made more money than you or I will ever see) failure. It's The End, though not before you embarrass yourself with Peter Parker in the newspapers.

Marvel decided to tease everyone with this promo image, and at the moment it's not clear just what's in store for the Old Canucklehead. Marvel has already run a few glimpses into his bloody future (most recently with the Unforgiven-ish saga Old Man Logan, and in the past with both Paul Jenkins' Wolverine: The End and X-Men: The End), so "killing" or maiming Wolverine is nothing new, especially if it's in an alternate future. Frankly, it might not even be his end at all, but the death of his mohawked retcon son, Daken.

Sure, this is comic news and not really movie related (though they're quickly becoming one and the same), but you can't help but laugh at the nice timing. I wonder if they'll incorporate the film's magical bullets in order to do Wolverine in, thus forcing us to accept that creativity as canon. Or will he be embarrassed further by enjoying a fate inspired by summer's other flop, Terminator: Salvation? Whatever happens, I'm sure he's wishing he'd read the fine print on his movie contract.

LEGOs really are the perfect toy, aren't they? Think about it: no pesky gender divide about what boys and girls like, they thrive off of pure imagination, and they come in handy for some pretty geeky fan art. Now, we've already seen Silence of the Lambs done in LEGO, recreations of our favorite scenes, but now an industrious group of individuals at Speckyboy Design Magazine have compiled some great examples of movie posters that are made of those oh-so adaptable plastic building blocks. There's a poster here for everybody, including a few nods to the current summer movie season (my favorite just might be the Inglourious Basterds recreation courtesy of Dr. Sinister -- it's not easy to find a bat that small), but we've also got some classics like Jaws by LegoLyons, and Rocky by Marcin ImpreSariO to round out the mix.

So it just goes to show that with a little imagination and a few plastic blocks, there is no limit to what a fan can, or will do. Check out some of our favorites in the gallery below.

Just when we thought we had seen the last of gossip columnist and part-time movie pirate Roger Friedman, it looks like the guy has found a new home at The Hollywood Reporter. The trade paper announced that they've hired the infamous writer to head up their new celebrity news feature. According to THR editor Elizabeth Guider, Friedman was joining the team because, "For some time, THR has wanted to beef up its coverage of the celebrity world and how it intersects with and influences the business of show business. Bringing Roger on board gives us a great leg up in that effort and will help extend our audience reach."

In case the name isn't ringing any bells, Friedman infamously covered the OJ Simpson trial back in 1995, and was also considered one of the 'leading authorities' on Michael Jackson after covering the pop star's 2005 child-molestation trial. Friedman always had a taste for the tawdry, and over the years, broke some equally seedy stories about Anna Nicole Smith and the collapse of Rudolph Giuliani's marriage. But after Friedman published a review of Wolverine using an unfinished print that had surfaced online, he was quickly (and publicly) fired. Granted, it didn't come as a big shock, but you almost felt sorry for the guy ... almost. Even if you didn't want to argue about the morality of Friedman's actions, you have to wonder: just what did he think was going to happen when he admitted to downloading an illegal copy of one of the summer's big releases?

Friedman already has a reputation for fighting dirty, but as periodicals jostle for position among a growing pool of online competition, I guess even THR isn't above playing fast and loose for a scoop -- and it looks like nobody is willing to bend the rules like Friedman.

In an interesting video game/movie tie-in, GameStop has a promo running until June 30, 2009 ("or until all e-Movie Cash tickets have been distributed, whichever comes first," natch) called "Love the Movie - Live the Game," and it's definitely a mixed bag.

Basically, if you buy one of the following games, you can get a $10 voucher for select movies at participating theaters that's only good until July 31, 2009. That's a lot of ifs, especially if you check out the games they're offering, which are not all tied in to current releases. And some of them will make real gaming geeks bleed from the eyes. Take a look.

When you hear the word boycott, your mind probably goes to big moments in history like the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 or President Carter boycotting the Olympics back in 1980; what you probably don't think about are summer blockbusters. Over at The New York Times, Michael Cieply looks at a rare summer season that saw almost all of the big studio releases experience a fan boycott. So even though there are the obvious targets like Angels and Demons; it didn't stop there. Practically all of the big summer releases have earned a spot on a list that included: Terminator (thanks to a very unpopular PG-13 rating), Star Trek (in hopes of a little fund-raising for space exploration), and even Wolverine (and no, not because of the amnesia bullets; instead it was due to the political leanings of one of the film's consultants, Richard Donner).

You almost have to wonder why anyone would go to so much trouble? Even though I totally get how a film can inspire protests because of content that a group may find offensive or inappropriate; to me it seems a little extreme to organize online petitions and custom-design logos just because you might have to wait a little longer for the next installment of Harry Potter. But the voice of experience in this debate is New Line's President, Rolf Mittweg, who told the Times, "If you have a group that might speak out against the movie, and they're large enough to affect the box office, you have to do something about it," Mr. Mittweg knows better than anyone the effect a boycott can have on a film's bottom line, having dealt with the backlash for The Golden Compass; saying, the film could have "done 50 percent better in the United States had there been no organized opposition."

After the jump; why movie studios still aren't losing sleep over fan boycotts.

My busy schedule of late has kept me out of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine loop, though based on our own Elisabeth Rappe's comments and our 1-10 Scale poll, it would appear as if most of you weren't crazy about the movie. It's too bad, really, and hopefully Fox will listen to the fans and inject some of their say into the next Wolverine movie (and Deadpool movie), but I'd venture to say that not all bad has come from the new mutant release. If anything, the film has inspired a whole bunch of bored dudes to create their own homemade Wolverine claws -- and then proceed to either dance in front of a camera or punch the living crap out of a poor old cardboard box. Oh, and don't forget the horrific costumes that go along with those claws.

Is it just me, or is there something very creepy about building your own homemade Wolverine claws, filming yourself with said Wolverine claws in different positions and then uploading that video to YouTube so people can immediately say, "Um ... this seems a bit not safe." Then again, maybe everyone is doing this and I'm just a silly Nancy Boy who's scared of real-life weapons inspired by make-believe characters. Feel free to browse the videos below (more after the jump) and let us know what you think: Harmless fan fun or psychotic stalker boyfriend in training?

It is of course impossible to say whether the much-discussed work print leak damaged Wolverine's box office take, nor whether Fox's cockamamie strategy of tacking on different mid-credits codas to different prints of the film helped matters. All we can conclude is that if piracy hurt, it didn't hurt that much (which really has been the refrain for the movie industry all along), since I don't think too many people will be unhappy with an $87 million first weekend. For those keeping score, that's well ahead of X-Men, marginally ahead of Bryan Singer's X2, and roughly $15 million behind Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand. Wolverine is not likely to hold up well, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where it doesn't get to $200 million domestic. And after all the angst, that's a victory.

One thing to consider is what this means for the straight action model of the comic book movie. I didn't dislike Wolverine like a lot of people did, but it undoubtedly did away with the nuance, intricacy and character focus that we've gotten used to seeing in major comic book adaptations. I bet it's much easier to make a Wolverine than a Iron Man or an X2 or a Watchmen, and it seems not to be much less financially rewarding.

I very much enjoyed not watching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past this weekend, and it seems so did a bunch of other people. The Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy picked up $15.3 million, which isn't bad, but puts the film way behind the last three identical Matthew McConaughey romantic comedies. And the 3D-animated Battle for Terra, while not a Delgo-level bust, couldn't break the top 10 and ended up with just over $1 million on around 1,200 screens. It's tough out there for animated features not bankrolled and marketed by huge studios.

The weekend's top 10 after the jump.

In the early 1980s I was an "X-Men" fanatic, eagerly devouring every comic book I could get my hands on. But my favorite, and it remains my favorite to this day, was a 1982 four-issue mini-series written by Chris Claremont, drawn by Frank Miller and devoted exclusively to Wolverine. In it, Wolvie goes to Japan to find out what happened to his true love Mariko. He's a magnificent warrior and he understands Japan's ancient codes and rules but also understands his own raging animal instincts and his need to abandon the rules. He constantly battles these two sides, and in one sublime image, after a fight, he smoothes the disturbed pebbles in a Zen garden, making the connection between chaos and order.

Sadly, there's nothing in the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine even remotely as good or as interesting as that one image. This Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) no longer struggles between his two sides. He's smack dab on the side of good, and beholden to the unwritten Hollywood rule, which says that no hero can kill anyone in cold blood (only in self-defense, or in response to senseless acts of cruelty and violence). Sure, he can rage and howl from time to time, but he must pull back at the last second -- to set a good example for the kiddies, I guess. To spur him to action, the film brutally dispatches everyone who's nice to him, from his kind-hearted father/guardian in the opening flashback to the sweet farmer couple that gives him refuge, to his own sweetheart Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). So there's some bad foreshadowing for you: if you help an old lady across the street or tell a romantic story about the moon, you're toast.