- Title: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
- IMDb: link
It’s somewhat amazing that between X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine that 20th Century Fox didn’t manage to destroy their X-Men movie franchise. For Throwback Thursday we take a look back at the first of the Wolverine standalone films. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delves into the unexplored past of Logan (Hugh Jackman) while continuing to refuse to quite nail down the exact date of his birth. Not fitting in at all with the timeline of the other X-Men films, the movie has been largely ignored in current continuity (although one important aspect does return in Logan).
Along with a brief introduction of Logan as a child, and a montage of him working with Team X, the story jumps forward to events which will pull him out of his quiet life in the Canadian wilderness with Silverfox (Lynn Collins) and lead to both his adamantium upgrade and events which will cause him to lose memories of his past.
Liev Schreiber is an unusual choice for the film’s villain, Logan’s half-brother Sabretooth, but is certainly menacing. And the film introduces Taylor Kitsch as Gambit and Daniel Henney as Agent Zero, but is more remembered for Ryan Reynolds‘ first appearance of Deadpool and his super-hero origin which the studio and fans have been trying to forget ever since. In terms of it’s spot in the larger X-Men franchise, there are more than a few certain continuity errors here (including Wolverine meeting characters in the wrong decade), but as the film’s history has been mostly ignored after the First Class reboot I’ll won’t harp on these too much.
Only forgiving fans of Wolverine or Jackman are going to be able to see past the more troubling aspects of the film which can be enjoyable at times but can’t really be called “good” by any measurable standard. X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been released multiple times over the years on both Blu-ray and DVD. Extras include commentary from director Gavin Hood, deleted scenes, and featurettes on Wolverine’s comic history and origins, the film’s stunts, and other mutants in the movie.
[20th Century Fox, Blu-ray $19.99 / DVD $9.99]
