We were asked to decide is X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a good movie. I sat for a long time and thought about this question. How can I even begin to answer this question? Are we as humans capable of tackling such a problem? Good movie. Bad movie. What is a movie? That’s it! Lets start with something we can answer. Is X-Men Origins: Wolverine a movie?
Merriam-Webster defines a movie as a “recording of moving images that tells a story and that people watch on a screen or television.” So lets break this down. Were there recordings of moving images? Fox studios shot the film in Australia, New Zealand, New Orleans, New South Wales and some place called Cockatoo Island. A “Camera Arriflex 435, Panavision Primo and Angenieux Optimo Lenses, Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL, Panavision Primo and Angenieux Optimo Lenses” were used to record real life images to be played back, edited and distributed. From my research watching the movie I did witness images moving. Ugly, poorly acted and bizarre images but moving images none the less. So I can safely say there were moving images involved in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Next those images must tell a story. A story is “an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.” X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an account of a character named Wolverine, who appears to be imaginary, and the events of his life. He sees his father get killed by a guy who he kills with bone claws who he then finds out is his father who also has another son named Victor who I guess then is his brother? They randomly fight in a bunch of wars. Wolverine does not like to kill but does like to kill. Then some stuff happens and he gets a metal skeleton. More stuff happens. He fights on top of a smoke stack or something. Sure there is a story. Whatever. David Benioff and Skip Woods are credited as writing a script so I’m taking their words that they put a story in there.
Now for it to be a movie people must watch it on a screen or television. X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out May 1, 2009 in theaters. This is where people can go and watch it on a screen. X-Men Origins: Wolverine made $373,062,864 in world wide gross. Let’s say an average ticket was 14 dollars. That’s roughly 26,647,347 people who saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine in a theater. With that fact I am led to believe people did see this on a screen. I, myself, did see X-Men Origins: Wolverine on a screen in a theater in Albany, NY. I attempted to leave half way through but my friend said we paid 14 dollars for a ticket so we have to stay. So I stayed. Then just to strengthen it’s case more it came out on home release on September 15, 2009. In the first week of release it sold more than three million copies. Presumably people watched these copies on a screen/television. I did not buy a copy.
In the end I think I can definitively say X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a movie. People wrote a script, a crew worked on locations to film actors. It was released in theaters for the public to pay money to go see the recordings of the actors telling a story in some form or fashion. Yeah, this is a movie. Now, is this a good movie? That is a much harder questions to answer and there are so many philosophical debates that can be had. How does one even begin to answer such a question. What is good? What is bad? Oh, yeah there is that scene with the Blob. Also Will.I.Am is in it. And that scene where Wolverine is chopping up that escape ladder thing. No, this is not a good movie at all.
