x-men origins wolverine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We've been pretty hard around here on a certain movie with adamantium claws. Yes, whenever I'm reminded of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today, I wish I had been shot with amnesia bullets. Still, I appreciated Hugh Jackman's determined efforts to stay out of the damn costume. Whenever Wolverine has donned a uniform in the previous X-Men flicks, he looks like he can't wait to rip it off. In his natural state, as the wandering, memory-challenged Logan, he repels latex like Congress repels taxpayers.

Most actors quickly declare that the biggest challenge in superhero movies is the costume: how to avoid looking sheepish or silly while wearing a form-fitting, custom-made suit that may reveal more than most of us are willing to bare at the beach? With advanced, super-realistic, computerized special effects and ripped body / stunt doubles available as needed, though, I think the bigger challenge lies in bringing the secret identities of superheroes to life: all those moments when supposedly normal people are leading supposedly "normal" lives.

Who, then are the most convincing superheroes without costumes? What actors and actresses have made you believe that their very human characters on screen could transform into larger-than-life heroes and/or heroines with a quick dash into a phone booth? Mind you, I'm not just talking Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen ...

1. Famke Janssen as Jean Gray in X-Men
She cuts a fine figure, doesn't she? Famke Janssen is undoubtedly sexier than Wolverine when they both suit up, yet she really shines whenever she's using her brain -- which is all the time. She doesn't need the costume to be one of the smartest, most empathetic, and most lethal people, in the universe.

So here we have it, the summer movie season finally winding down, and maybe it's just us, but a couple of peculiar trends have cropped up since May that we thought were worth bringing to light. For starters, we've only further elaborated on Eric's early indicator that puking was 'in' this year (seriously, it's gotten to be a pretty considerable theme), and as for the rest, you can check them out after the jump. Some spoilers follow. And if there are any corrections or additions to be made, please pipe up in the comments, and do so gently.

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.

It's a dispiriting exercise to think about movie franchises that have been run into the ground. For years now, big Hollywood studios have focused on developing and cultivating franchise properties with worldwide appeal that are dependent more on iconic characters than the actors who play them.

When it works, it's fabulous (Star Trek). When it doesn't, it's awful (Fast & Furious). Even worse than the total misfires, though, are the movies that drag down a franchise into mediocrity, yet still make enough money to justify a sequel from a financial standpoint (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Box office disasters don't necessarily discourage further installments, but often force a studio to rethink the property (Superman Returns). But good box office earnings despite negative reactions tend to empower executives and filmmakers, who then feel they can safely ignore the warning signs and make another sequel without really considering what could be done to improve the product film.

After two fabulous movies, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines "revived" the franchise, but was barely average as an action picture. The new producers of Terminator: Salvation tried to make it their own by bringing in a new director, new stars, and a new storyline, but the results were disappointing in every way but the bottom line. With total worldwide earnings of $341 million, however, Terminator 5 is on its way, and director McG is talking again about what he wants to do. As for me, I say it's time we kill off the franchises that have become mediocre. Let them lay fallow for a few years or decades. Which franchise would you most like to see put out of its misery? Take our poll and let us know!

The announcement of a Deadpool spinoff was pretty much a non-event. It was a guarantee the moment they cast Ryan Reynolds way back in February 2008. It may even have been predestined from the moment Reynolds was born. It's probably written on a scroll somewhere ... a scroll illustrated by Rob Liefeld, because that's how mysticism works.

The real issue is whether or not fans care after they trotted out a guy with arm-katanas and called him Deadpool. (Let's pretend it matters that we do or don't.) There was a lot of happy talk that Reynolds was "actively developing" the spin-off, but Hugh Jackman "actively developed" X-Men Origins: Wolverine, too.

So, take HitFix's interview with Reynolds for what it's worth. Drew McWeeny caught up with the man who assured fans he would really give us the Merc with a Mouth: "Well, I'm intimately involved with it. We're just trying to break a story right now and figure out who the villain is going to be and all that stuff. But, it's going to be just like the comic books. I'm gonna have a messed up face and you may see some flashbacks of Wade earlier in his life, but primarily what you see is what you get in the comics and that's the goal. And there is no better place to draw material from then the comics which are incredible." There's a fragment of hope there. Grab onto it, and dream of a movie where Wilson cracks jokes about spin-offs and franchises like he mocks the pages of his comic book.

It's a real non-surprise that mere days after the premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, confirmed sequels and spin-offs have begun hitting the trades. (Of course, they had been basically a go-ahead since filming on Wolverine began, but that goes without saying.) Yesterday, Fox and Hugh Jackman confirmed they were actively developing a Wolverine sequel set in Japan, today the MTV Splash Page got the official word that they were going ahead with a Deadpool spin-off. (Variety and The Hollywood Reporter subsequently confirmed the story, but it did arise on MTV first.)

Of course, if you saw Wolverine -- spoiler warning ahead -- you are undoubtedly wondering how this could be since Deadpool was cleanly beheaded by our feral hero. But those of you who stuck around for the credits and got the Deadpool secret ending saw that he picked up his head, broke the fourth wall to shush you, and went on his merry way. I'm going to assume that a Deadpool spin-off would actually proceed from this point, and not delve into Wilson's background pre-Wolverine. That would also go along with comments Ryan Reynolds made claiming he wasn't playing Deadpool in Wolverine, but Wade Wilson and the creature who becomes Deadpool. Considering what they did to that "creature," fans may be really glad there's some wiggle room in that statement.

Personally, I think they could retcon that, have Wilson stuck rotting in some cell, and pass that Deadpool wannabe off as some kind of clone. Stupider things were done in that film, I could excuse that rewrite ... and as Reynolds has said he wants a film that sticks to the character continuity, there might be some hope for the Merc with a Mouth.

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.