There’s a great post on Go Fug Yourself by Jessica Morgan about the idea of an actor having “Period Piece Face,” what Morgan so aptly describes as an actor having a face that looks (or can look) like it’s from another time in history and thus makes them convincing in period pieces. Period Piece Face is different from Modern Face, in that the former can look convincing no matter the time period, while the latter only fits into modern settings. Saoirse Ronan, the subject of the post, has Period Piece Face; Reese Witherspoon is an example of someone who has Modern Face.
I bring this up, because of all the ridiculous things that occur in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and there are many), the one thing I can’t get past is the idea that Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber are products of the 1840s. I mean, listen, I know I shouldn’t expect Downton Abbey levels of attention to detail from a blockbuster super hero movie that co-stars will.i.am, but would it have killed them to at least, I don’t know, dirty up the pretty boy factor in the opening credits montage?
Neither Jackman nor Schrieber have great Period Piece Face (although I’d argue that Schrieber could, given the right circumstances), which makes their transition from Civil War to World War I, World War II, and finally, Vietnam, a little clunky. But I could forgive their perfectly groomed mutton chops and their straight, white teeth. I could suspend all disbelief if it weren’t for Hugh Jackman’s flowing locks of obviously conditioned hair.
This is what bothered me the most, ultimately, throughout the opening sequence, but especially in the first scene where we see the two participating in the American Civil War (Side note: why? They are Canadian). Have you ever in your life seen a picture of a Civil War soldier who looked like this?
The answer is no, never, because fighting in a war is brutal. Soldiers during the Civil War marched, on average, eight to thirteen miles in a day. According to Joel Cook, a Special Correspondent with the Philadelphia Press at the time:
“No hardships were harder than those of the march, if we are to trust the voluminous testimony of the foot soldiers. The roads were dusty in the summer, muddy in the winter; the soldier was dressed in heavy woolens, loaded down with fifty or sixty pounds of equipment, often without food for long stretches of the day.”
Are we to believe that Jackman is marching multiple miles every day in horrible weather conditions and engaging in battle after battle, barely eating, and he still has time to maintain his layers of (against Union Army regulation, I might add) shoulder length hair? How is his uniform so clean when he’s bayonetting people in close combat? Why does his skin glow? Where and when is he even showering?
I mean, his hair literally bounces, it has so much volume.
I refuse to accept that Logan is spending decades fighting in every war that will take him when he clearly spends all his time prepping for his big commercial audition at Herbal Essences.
The only thing historically believable about their appearances in this opening sequence is Victor Creed’s disgusting, overgrown nails that look like those rubber witch nails you used to put on your fingers as a kid. It’s almost enough to distract from soldier boy Jimmy’s perfectly coiffed hair. Almost.
Anyway, there’s another hour and a half or so of movie after this initial sequence, but it mostly consists of Logan screaming (sometimes naked!), an unnecessarily long boxing scene, a villain who is controlled via a weird JRPG-like text based system, and one-dimensional supporting characters played by actors who deserve better. Luckily, to paraphrase a conversation between Logan and his sexy, supportive, disposable girlfriend, Kayla (a.k.a. Silver Fox), movies — much like gifts — can be returned.
