When I was a little girl I used to walk to the corner store with my brother so he could buy baseball cards and comic books. He usually gave me the bubblegum that came with the cards, but when it came to the comic books, I wasn’t that interested. Sometimes I’d buy an Archie, or maybe a Casper The Friendly Ghost, but mostly I just went with him for the company.
I always knew just enough about the Super Heroes to keep my cred up with the boys, but I never got into it enough to blow all my allowance on the latest issues. I just kept my mouth shut, my ears open and picked up things as I went along. Years later when all these Super Hero movies started coming out, I knew just enough to get along, but not so much that if a rule was broken, or a mythology was contradicted, that it drove me nuts. I was just looking for a good entertaining story.
When Superman came out with Christopher Reeves, I was so taken with the romance aspect of the film that I immediately went out and bought pink underwear. When Tim Burton’s Batman arrived, I enjoyed the twisted re-imagining that broke away from my nostalgic television favorite. And, when The Dark Knight emerged, nearly two decades later, I enjoyed the more serious and less campy approach. I even enjoyed the first Spiderman, which I found to be a lot of fun. I never listened to what the Fanboys said, I judged each film by its own merits and tried to decide if it was entertaining, or not.
When the first X-Men movie was released, I really liked it. There was plenty of action, good characters, and lots of humor. I have a really morbid sense of humor so I like it when characters are glib, sarcastic, or display gallows's humor. As long as the line is true to the character, I like it. Tag lines that are self-conscious are less appreciated, I like my humor authentic. So, because X-Men did such a good job of balancing all these elements, I really liked the film and have seen all the sequels. Naturally, I was looking forward to Wolverine.
After seeing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I have to say it is my least favorite of the series. The primary reason is its lack of humor. I also felt it took too long to get in to it. Not reading all those comic books I was confused by the boney claws, instead of the familiar steel ones, and I had no idea that Wolverine was immortal. Now I have to go back and either do some homework, or see all the other films again. I love Hugh Jackman, and if they just ran a slide show displaying pictures of him in various states of undress, I’d probably buy a ticket, but there was just too much ground to cover trying to explain his beginnings. Now that that’s out of the way, maybe the next film can be a little leaner, meaner, and hopefully a little more funny. As long as Hugh Jackman’s in it, I’m there.
Rating: Second Run Let the lines die down, no rush
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