Summer Preview: Wolverine!

The summer movie season is nearly here. Billions of dollars are going to be spent during this economic recession on movies that predominantly fall into one of three categories:

1) Big Budget Superhero Movie
2) Big Budget Kid's Movie
3) Giant Robots Destroying Each Other

(500) Days of Summer doesn't count. This week, I will bring a preview of most of the movies releasing in May. I'll do June, July, and August when the time comes.

Summer kicks off with a Marvel comic-book movie, like it did last year to outstanding results (remember how great Iron Man was?). On May 1st, X-Men Origins: Wolverine releases, a spin-off of the formerly great X-Men trilogy that was ruined by the departure of Bryan Singer and the addition of Brett Ratner. Singer, director of X-Men and X2, was seduced by the Man of Steel and made the bore-fest Superman Returns. Marvel turned to the man who brought us Rush Hour 1 , 2, AND 3 and gave us a crap-fest known as X-Men 3: The Last Stand. I love how we could have been treated to a potentially epic X3, but instead we got two forgettable clunkers. I hate you, Bryan Singer.


Back to Wolverine. It was a wise move to give Wolverine his own spinoff, since he was easily the best character in all three X-Men movies. Hugh Jackman gave great performances as the gruff and sarcastic-yet lovable mutant. His body may have been indestructible, but his heart wasn't.

...I can't believe I just wrote that.




From the trailer, Wolverine looks entertaining, nothing more. It has the conventional operatic music to create a sense of greatness. But who are we kidding, this is not The Dark Knight. The scene when Wolverine walks away, back turned, from a helicopter is also eye-rolling. The exact same shot was in Iron Man, when he turns away from blowing up a tank. Pay close attention to the final line, "I'm going to cut your head off." There's an awkward break between 'your' and 'head'. I'm pretty sure he's going to throw in an f-bomb in the final cut. Yippee.

But boy, is it exciting to see Gambit (who I'll cover in detail below) and Deadpool. Additionally, Wolverine's history looks fascinating (was that World War 2? I knew he was old, but not that old).

Liev Schreiber is a talented dramatic actor who looks like he's going to have a lot of fun playing a violently psychotic mutant as Sabertooth. He could be this year's Joker. Even though we already saw Sabertooth in the first X-Men movie, he's the quintessential Wolverine villain and appears to play a BIG role in his past. Not sure what I think about him hopping on all fours, though.

As a former comic-book nerd, it's exciting to see obscure heroes and villains show up in the trailer. We are shown clips of:

The Blob AKA Frederick J. Dukes

• Former circus act turned member of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants


• Weighs 510 lbs and possesses superhuman strength


• Has his own gravitational pull (seriously)


• Will be played, with heavy prosthetics, by insane Lost mercenary Kevin Durand

Gambit AKA Remy LeBeau

Gambit has been a fan favorite for a long time, with his slow Louisiana drawl and crazy-cool mutant powers

• Thief from New Orleans who renounced his ways and joined the X-Men


• Can convert an object's potential energy into kinetic energy


• Famous for his weapons: a staff and a deck of cards, which he charges with kinetic energy and throws


• Played in Wolverine by Taylor Kitsch of the Friday Night Lights TV show (left of Jackman in the cast picture below)

Deadpool AKA Wade Wilson

• Wise-cracking mercenary spawned from the same Weapon X program that created Wolverine and Sabertooth, but an accident left his face horrendously scarred. He looks fine in the trailer, though


• Early in the comic books, Deadpool was a villain. But these days, he's a hero. I'm not sure which route the film will take, but probably the latter. Prediction: Deadpool is hired to take down Wolverine but an accident will leave him scarred and he will switch sides. Brilliant!


• Like Wolverine, he has a healing factor. Otherwise, he's just a master swordsman and gunsmith. Nothing special.


• Played by famous funny-man Ryan Reynolds, presumably because they want to spin him off into his own movie. It will be called Wolverine Origins: Deadpool.

There's also a chick but I'm really tired and done with typing. Her name is Silver Fox, but I never read any of her comics so I know nothing about her. Danny Huston, playing the general AKA William Stryker was in Children of Men, so you know he'll be excellent. Director Gavin Hood is new to Hollywood, but he won an foreign-film Oscar for the South African drama Tsotsi. Who knows if that will translate to an expensive, high-throttle adventure? It certainly worked for Christopher Nolan, who started off in indie films like Memento.



Early Wednesday, it was announced that an unfinished, high-quality copy of Wolverine is floating around the torrents. I'm not going to watch it, since I'm a big fan of the theater experience. Plus, I promised my little cousins I would watch the movie with them.

Hugh Jackman owned at the Oscars, so I'm sure he'll ride the wave of success to a fun, successful movie. It helps that we've seen Jackman play Wolverine many times in the past. Audiences are already comfortable with the character and his snarky, rage-filled behavior. I'm just hoping that Wolverine will have an actual story, rather than a series of clashes with other mutants strung together. Although, if the action anything like the scene below, I'll live without a plot.


BOX OFFICE PREDICTION: $220 million dollars. Huge opening weekend, but dark themes and the fact that Star Trek opens the next week will kill its returns.