So if you came here looking for scholarly criticism on 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” based on that title . . . well, you may want to look elsewhere. I hear JSTOR has some fine options for your reading pleasure.
Now, if you’re here for a look into the thirst trap that is Hugh Jackman in this film, pull up a chair and let’s spill the tea. In fact, he’s really the only good thing about this film, which says a lot since this was written by someone you would hope would be able to both drink and know things.
Actually, before we get into Australia’s Finest Export of the 21st Century, we do have to take a moment and pay praise to Ryan Reynolds, making his very first appearance as Wade Wilson in this film, and bless the beasts and the children, it does not disappoint.
(Yes, I know what happens to Wade later on in the film. Let me enjoy nice things while I can.)
James Howlett/Logan is very much a Manly Man throughout this film, doing Manly Man Things. Manly Canadian Man Things like lumberjacking and romancing the local schoolteacher. All that’s missing is Wolvie doing shots of maple syrup and saying “Sorry” way too much and maybe smacking someone accidentally with a curling broom during a rerun of Corner Gas and you’ve got Peak Canada. But the important thing is that he looks beautiful doing whatever it is that he does. Sure, he broods, but it’s a sexy sort of brooding, the Tortured Brooding of a man out of place and out of time, who is just too sensitive and loving and good and upstanding for this world. (Unlike Liev Schreiber, who just broods around here to be angry.) Logan’s peaceful pre-Wolverine life is sort of what I imagine current Disney Prince of the Western World Justin Trudeau’s early life to be like.
Even walking away from an explosion, you’re going to need a moment in your bunk.
(He also manages to have the hair of a Breck Shampoo Girl the entire time. How do you get styling that salon ready with those claws?)
Now while the severe lack of sleeves (and occasional lack of shirts) in Canada makes this epic quite enjoyable, we do get the pleasure of going the Full Wolvie as Logan gets his adamantium grafting. As is par for the course with these sorts of things (I guess??) we submerge our test subject in a pool, providing later for the superhero film equivalent of Colin Firth rising out of the lake in Pride and Prejudice. You know that scene.
And hey, at least it wasn’t a musical.