X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), directed by Gavin Hood, stars Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Ryan Reynolds, Will.i.am, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, and Tim Pocock. This is the fourth film in Fox’s X-Men franchise and follows the titular Wolverine (Jackman) in his life prior to the previous 3 films. It is revealed that Wolverine was born with a mutant brother named Victor/Sabertooth (Schreiber). The two brothers are inseparable throughout their early years, always having each other’s back no matter the situation. But a violent wedge is driven between them when they begin working for a shady government official known as Willain Stryker (Huston). This causes Wolverine to forge his own path, seeking a family life of quiet and peace. Unfortunately, Stryker has other plans. He tasks Sabertooth with assassinating the members of their old team, Wolverine included. This forces Wolverine to rediscover his animalistic side in order to save his family as well as countless other desperate mutants. 

Jackman is once again fantastic as Wolverine, really carrying the film through its countless less-impressive aspects. However, what works here compared to the first three films is that Wolverine is given an effective foil in the character of Sabertooth. Schreiber is so enjoyably over-the-top as Sabertooth that he injects the film with a lot of fun, back-and-forth energy. The disappointing part is, the film struggles with how it wants to present him as a character. From the jump, he presented as a blood-thirsty killer with little remorse for his violent actions. This would work if we were ever given are reason why he’s so blood-thirsty and angry, but we’re not. No event really explains where their paths diverged, resulting in the script feeling convenient as opposed to nuanced. Making things worse, the film forces a redemption arc for the character that makes things even more messy in terms of his characterization. 

Although certain comic book characters such as Deadpool (Reynolds) are disrespected to the point of no return, they are all well-cast. Reynolds would go on to portray the character with much more success in Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018) which just proves my point. Kitsch is fun as Gambit and Kevin Durand is memorable as Blob, but like the rest of the franchise, the film is just entirely overstuffed with characters. Characters such as Cyclops (Pocock) are needlessly forced to an extent I’ve never experienced before in this kind of film. Making matters worse, the film is only about an hour and forty minutes long but tries to cover decades. This results in the film feeling much too fast, not providing any time to think about the characters or what they are going through.

It’s also strange that this film attempts to connect Wolverine’s entire past to one motivation/event/issue. It just feels unrealistic in a sense and sacrifices what should be an expansive and epic story similar to the recently released Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024). Instead, the film takes the most obvious direction which feels like it was studio-mandated (which it most likely was). Everything ends up feeling coincidental simply because events/meanings are tied together so poorly. On top of this, a good portion of the film focuses on mysteries already addressed in X2 (2003), making the story feel generally unnecessary. 

This film is also poorly edited and features some of the worst CGI in the series. For example, Wolverine’s claws are so clearly built from CGI that they’re honestly worth a chuckle. That being said, the film is still able to provide some satisfying action sequences that take advantage of Wolverine’s powers in ways that this series was begging for. 

Overall, this is an objectively disappointing X-Men film that ultimately ends up feeling like a waste of time. Fight sequences are choppy and the script is a mess, yet there’s still a certain level of enjoyment to be had with all the effortless comic-book cheese. Although I can’t recommend this, if all you’re looking for is some Wolverine-styled fun, it provides the goods just enough to fly by. C