James Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) are brothers and mutants, able to heal and live unnaturally long lives. Oh, and they have claws - Logan's are in his hands and Victor's are his fingernails. During the opening credits we see them fighting side by side through every major war since that Civil one (even though they're Canadian), and Logan becomes increasingly worried by Victor's bloodlust. The brothers are recruited by Major William Stryker (Danny Huston) to join Team X - an elite squad of mutants including Wade "Deadpool" Williams (Ryan Reynolds), John "Kestrel" Wraith (Will.i.am), Fred "Blob" Dukes (Kevin Durand), Chris "Bolt" Bradley (Dominic Monaghan), and Agent Zero (Daniel Henney). Their increasingly violent tactics causes Logan to leave, but when Victor kills his wife (Lynn Collins), Stryker offers to make James the ultimate killing machine. What the newly rebranded Wolverine doesn't know is that Stryker has been experimenting on other mutants, and may have plans for a few familiar faces from other X-films...
I had to look a number of the corresponding character names up, especially the mutants, because Origins doesn't bother mentioning them more than once, and usually in passing. Forgive me for not being as on top of the X-Verse as the Cap'n maybe should be (I read a lot of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men in middle and high school, through The Age of Apocalypse, and then the first run of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men), but I only half recognized most of the characters not named Deadpool in Stryker's team. It might have helped knowing that one of the characters would be The Blob if I'd caught his name earlier in the film, but then I guess we wouldn't get that ridiculous boxing scene...
I will confess that I'm not an expert on Wolverine (he was never my favorite X-character), but the movie plays fast and loose with some of his origin, mixing and matching from different stories, and making a few up along the way. This is the case when it comes to finding explanations for Jackman's wardrobe and vehicle choices in the (chronologically) later X-films. That said, there's not much of a point to a lot of mutant appearances in Origins (Gambit, I'm looking at you), other than to cram in a few "fan favorites" and pad the running time.
Okay, so the dialogue isn't very good. The special effects are awful (especially Logan's claws, bone or adamantium). The film introduces waaaaayyy too many mutant characters in the interest of cramming as many cameos in as possible. There are no less than three times when the camera is pointed down at Logan (child or adult) as he looks to the heavens and screams / growls. The "Ma and Pa Kent" style couple that give Wolverine clothes and feed him after the "Weapon X" sequence is silly, and not because of the lame comic relief attached to Logan's terrible looking claws (I really can't stress how bad they look. We're talking Playstation One graphics quality rendering here).
The biggest problem is that Origins totally wastes Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. Not putting the mask on? I'll let that slide, because he's still the same chatterbox in the beginning. One could argue that Reynolds is really just playing the same character he did in Blade: Trinity, and I wouldn't debate that. But rendering Wade Williams into a mute, indistinguishable mish-mash of mutant powers so that Wolverine and Sabretooth can fight him atop one of the cooling towers of Three Mile Island (and maybe cause the "incident"?) is unforgivable. It's foolish for a number of reasons and smacks of desperation on the part of "how do we end this?"
If I understand X-Men: First Class, it doesn't even matter that Origins hits the "reset" button on Wolverine at the end of the film, because chronologically this film couldn't happen. Including a teenage-d Emma Frost in Origins when January Jones plays her ten to twenty years earlier in First Class doesn't make sense, and if the time line is supposed to make any sense, Cyclops would have to be in his mid-forties by the time X-Men happens***. At best, I guess we could consider this film to be one of Marvel's "What If...?"'s.
That said, I don't quite understand why people hate this movie so much. It's not nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe. Director Gavin Hood does a serviceable job with Origins: it's not his fault that David Benioff and Skip Woods wrote such lousy dialogue. The action scenes are reasonably comprehensible, even if the visual effects are (again) cut rate for a major motion picture. Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, and Danny Huston give it their all, which helps balance out Will.i.am's wooden line delivery. I came in thinking I was going to get Elektra bad, or Green Lantern bad. X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn't even close to Ghost Rider or Blade: Trinity, which are so terrible they transcend into another level of entertainment.
Sure, Origins isn't a great movie, and it's just barely a good one, but if I only compared it to X-Men: The Last Stand, at least it's eye-rolling moments are better presented than "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" I was expecting "unwatchable" and ended up with "overcrowded." The film tries to do too much, fit too much into what could (and should) be a simple story of rival brothers. If you want to complain about Deadpool... well, that's pretty indefensible. The final fight is one of the dumber comic book moments I can think of, and if the film disappointed audiences expecting more, then I suppose I can understand that.
For me? The level of venom towards this film seems like it would be better directed at Spider-Man 3, or The Fantastic Four movies (which I sometimes hear defended). X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a pretty weak movie, but not the trainwreck I was prepared for. It's certainly watchable in a way that X-Men: The Last Stand isn't, and I've had people telling me for five years that movie was better than I thought it was. I'll count this as at least a pleasant surprise in "What the Hell" week.
* Then again, Bryan Singer was no Bryan Singer with Superman Returns.
** Mind you, I only enjoy ONE of Vaughn's films, Layer Cake, which is why I've hesitated on X-Men: First Class
*** If you go by the comics, this actually would make sense, but James Marsden was 27 when he made X-Men.
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