Hinterland Who’s Who describes a wolverine as the fiercest creature on earth, a fearless aggressive fighter that will drive bears away from their kills.  It is, in fact, the wolverine’s reliance on scavenging in order to survive that has given rise to exaggerations about its gluttony and ferocity.  If you have no idea who or what Hinterland Who’s Who is, it started off with a series of 60-second vignettes which were created to educate the public about Canada’s native wildlife through excellent film footage, natural sounds, and relaxed narration.  That being said, it now segues me into the Marvel character Wolverine.  Since day one of his conception Wolverine aka Logan aka James Howlett, has lived up to his name; a wild man who lived by his own rules, a savage, willing to attack almost anything that gets in his way. Making the past X-Men movies mainly dealing with Wolverine he soon become a clear favorite and was given a chance to really show himself in the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

I had two thoughts about the film once I sat through the entirety of it. One was how the average film goer would see it, and another as how a fan boy of comics would take it.  When trying to think of in what mindset I should write this as, I eventually settled with the view of a fan boy.

I need to state at the beginning of this that I really wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a Wolverine movie.  Wasn’t the X-Men films about Wolverine since he seemed to be the dominant actor through all of the three film? I guess not. Lets look at what the basic story line is for the film.

Logan, a man with a troubled past tries to forget his alliance with William Stryker and live in the Canadian Rockies with his love Silver Fox.  After eight years William Stryer contacts Wolverine to inform him that there was a rouge mutant hunting down the group he was once part of.  Without wanting any part of the past Logan flatly turns down Stryker only to find his love murdered by his own flesh and blood.  William Stryker approaches Logan, knowing that Logan has no chance against Victor Creed, he introduces him to the Weapon X project only to have Logan, now Wolverine flip out and run after his girlfriend’s killer his brother, who’s become known as Sabretooth.

Now the movie certainly introduces a whole collection of mutants from the Marvel Universe and I would like to get into them if I may and explain both the comic version and the movie version of the characters:

Say what you want about Hugh Jackman being Wolverine but I feel that even though he’s over 6′ tall where the comic character is all of 5′4″, he has the look of Wolverine. Unlike the X-Men movies he seemed to have toned down how angry/savage and stubborn Wolverine is and because of this “timid” Wolverine, it’s hard to really judge how much he’s going through with, with the death of Silver Fox.

Sarbretooth is next on the chopping block, with a height of 6′ 6″ Tyler Mane was a perfect choice. Even tho he played a dimwitted Sabretooth he had the anger and I’m sure with a bit better scripting he could really be a character to fear.  But Liev Schreiber, not so scary. Not only does he not look or even act like an animal, like he does in the comics, being shorter than Hugh Jackman, only makes the idea of him being much stronger and more of a threat to Wolverine much harder to believe.

Agent Zero also known later on in the comics as Maverick was played by Daniel Henney  an actor of Korean heritage. The problem with with this is the character was from East Germany,  sure we can let this go but what of his powers.  Well in the movie he was able to move at great speeds with deadly accuracy never seen before. Comic, he could absorb kenetic energy and fire it back as blasts of concussive force or heat.  Someone dropped the ball on this character

Lynn Collins played Silverfox.  Her native looks helped keep the overall feel of the character alive but again he powers were drastically changed, in the movie she is able to convince people to think/act differently just by touching them, in the comic, she had retractable claws and a minor healing factor with advanced training in firearms.

Will.i.Am (what movie isn’t he in) plays John Wraith. Finally a character that looks and acts as he should. Claps all around, both the comic and movie kept his pshionic ability to teleport at will from any point in space to another. Not much to say about him, good choice.

Kevin Durand give us Frederick J. Dukes Aka The Blob.  Why I ask? Blob’s not a good guy, he would never help out Wolverine, he’d rather eat him and spit out his bones.  Its a sad fact that he is in and there’s not a hell of a lot we can do.  Not much of a change from his comic except his form.  In the movie you first see him as a muscle bound army commando who has an impervious body which you see when he sticks his fist in a tank and the tank blows up.  But over the eight years since him and Logan teamed up, he gained an eating problem and his impervious body grew.  Because of this, he hates people referring to his weight.  Wha? what? Didn’t he call himself The Blob in the comics? Yes, yes he did, but there’s almost no character that doesn’t get changed somehow.

This takes the cake as the most pointless character. Chris Bradley aka Bolt aka Maverick. Yes,  he also became Maverick, I could explain it but it would be too much.  In the movie Bradley has the ability to be able to control anything electric.  Well at least that’s close to what he was suppose to do.  His powers from the comics were to be able to absorb ambient charges of static electricity from the atmosphere, generating it into electrostatic discharges that enabled him to shock people and objects on contact, or conduct the energy into electrified blasts over a distance.  He was played by Dominic Monaghan.

One character that I’ve been hearing people are waiting for was Gambit.  Well now we get to see this Cajun in action.  Taylor Kitsch who was also in the movie Snakes on a Plane, plays the sly, card chucking Gambit.  He was alright, should have had a thicker Cajun accent but whatcha gonna do.  What is strange, is that in the movie they actually played up his powers. Everyone knows his ability to kinetically charge up anything he touches, but for some crazy odd reason he now has the ability to control the cards in the air without charging them, like a weak telekinetic.

Finally we get to La Crem de la crem, Dead Pool.  Played by no other than Ryan Reynolds, who in my mind was born to play this role.  The problem is not with Ryan Reynolds who definitely should have had a lot more lines but how they changed his character. He gets my WTF??? Yes Dead Pool is a deadly assassin and can’t hold back his subconscious thoughts, and is over pronce to speaking his mind. (Turn away if you don’t want to know about the ending) The whole purpose in the weapon X program was to make Weapon XI a pool of other mutants powers in one body creating a “Dead Pool”, cleaver huh? Yea thought not. He becomes a mute freak who can shoot lasers out of his eyes. Never knew he had that power. Apparently there is talks about him being in a movie of his own, cool idea, but it’ll have to be before this movie cause….well….he happens to loose his head.

Now that I’m done digging into the characters that drive the story odds are really damn good that the story and history about Wolverine is going to be alot different from what you know, and trust me it is.  Never have I seen a story that’s over thirty years old get slashed to bits, spat on, then reassembled into what someone thought would be a good story. Sure this movie works well as long as you know nothing about the entire Marvel Universe but if it wasn’t for the Marvel Universe then this movie wouldn’t have been made.  So all in all this movie is NOT for Marvel and Wolverine fan boys, you will hate it as much as I did, or claw out your eyes you know what ever comes first.  As much as I want Fox to stop making films based on the Marvel franchise, we, the people, have to show how bad these movies are, force people to ignore the hype.  Throw down in front on the theaters, chain yourselves to a tree, make fart sounds with a megaphone while in the theater.  Say you want a comic movie made for us, the fan boy’s. Not to leave out the girls just substitute fan boy with fan girl.

Marvel Character info provided by marvel.wikia.com

Wolverine information provided by Hinterland Who’s who. Which will provide you will a lot more information about other animals.