Rick's Picks: X-Men Origins: Wolverine & Terminator Salvation (Selenium Apocalypse)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston & Ryan Reynolds
Directed by Gavid Hood

Reviewed by Rick

got plot?

I have witnessed the badness that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Tom Rothman and the assholes that run 20th Century Fox have struck again. The only difference this time is that they had help from the star of the film, Hugh Jackman. This studio has destroyed four potential Marvel franchises now. For those of you who aren’t keeping score, they are Daredevil, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Wolverine. I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around, but the writing on the wall is obvious. Marvel needs to somehow get these properties away from Fox, and get them back under the wings of Marvel Studios. Let me get down off of the soapbox and give you what you really want.

This is the part of the review where I had 3 paragraphs giving you a detailed breakdown of the film. But I deleted them all because this piece of shit doesn't deserve the additional space on this blog. There is simply no excuse for this movie to be as bad as it was. There were no budget constraints. The movie had $140 million dollars to play with. The result is a movie that looked like they spent $60 million. All of the CGI stuff was all over the place. When you’d see something cool , it would be followed by three effects that looked shitty.

Writers David Benioff and Skip Woods should give their paychecks back for doing such a poor job with the script. I can see it in action lines:

LOGAN looks toward the sky and screams with berserker rage.

(Yes, this happens at least four times during this film. But don't just take my word for it, you be the judge...)

LOGAN holds KAYLA in his arms. She is dying and LOGAN knows it.

KAYLA
I’m so cold.

LOGAN looks toward the sky and screams with berserker rage.

I started cracking up laughing when I heard that. Do you see what I’m saying? How cliché can you get? This was so awful. A character like Wolverine has decades of source material to work with, and they write crap like this. There is absolutely no character development at all. Logan just drifts from bad situation to worse situation with no explanation.

The performances were more miss than hit. Hugh Jackman has been a great as Wolverine in the X-Men movies. He runs or walks around this movie saying bad one-liners, corny dialogue, and yelling at the sky. Can he kick ass? He does a few times. THIS IS FUCKING WOLVERINE! I want berserker rage off the charts and Logan slaughtering goons in fake military gear. You know what I’m talking about. Liev Schreiber does his best psychopath impression as Victor Creed. Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool kicks some ass for the ten minutes of screen time that he has. I wonder if Executive Producer, Hugh Jackman, told the writers to only give Reynolds a little bit of kick ass. Feeling the heat Hugh? The ladies like them some Ryan Reynolds. Danny Huston sleepwalks through the role of William Stryker. I say they should’ve used some of that Benjamin Button CGI and de-age Bryan Cox. It’s not like they didn’t have the money for it. I have to say one performance was not that bad. Taylor Kitsch as Gambit gets a golf clap. He did an admirable job with not much to work with.

I had read to stay through the credits for a little bonus scene. I got up and walked out. I didn’t care. The collective “they” ruined that movie. I was pissed off. So, the other day I looked up what the secret scene was. It’s Logan in a bar in Japan slamming Whiskey. The bartender asks him if he’s drinking so much to forget something. Logan responds that he’s drinking so much to try to remember. Wrong answer, Wolvie! I would drink to forget that this movie ever happened. Don’t see this movie! The Selenium Apocalypse banishes this film to the barren wasteland where it belongs.

And now for something completely different...

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Terminator Salvation
Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington
Directed by McG
Reviewed by Rick

I remember watching The Terminator at my friend’s house in 1985. Arnold Schwarzenegger became “THE MAN” in this film. He would continue to ride his wave of success throughout the rest of the eighties and into the nineties. He was perfect in this role as the cold-blooded killing machine. The Terminator’s target was to kill Sara Connor played by Linda Hamilton. The reason that Sara had to be killed is that her unborn son, John Connor, will one day rise up and lead the resistance movement against the machines in the future. Michael Bien played Kyle Reese. He was the soldier from the future that was sent back in time to protect Sara Connor from the Terminator. He also is John Connor’s father. I know you start playing with these time lines and everything gets a little fuzzy. However, I remember after watching the film and how fired up I was. Sure, we’d just watched a pedal to the metal, all out action, sci fi classic. I told my friend that the movie was cool, but I want to see the future war. During the film, there were many flash-forwards to what the future war looked like. Metal Terminators firing lasers at the resistance fighters, flying ships that were attacking, and a fighting field that was littered with the skulls and bones of the humans that perished on Judgment Day.

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That was 24 years ago. I really thought that my wish was going to come through last Friday. I was going to see Terminator Salvation. I was finally going to see the future war. Was it worth the wait? I would have to answer yes, but with some reservations. Mark and I saw the movie together while I was visiting New Orleans last weekend. If you’ve read his review, he pretty much hit on all of the big plot points, so I won’t bore you with a rehash. However, we saw the same film and had very different reactions to it. He was on the fence, but leaning toward not liking it. I had enjoyed the film, and saw much hope for the future of the franchise.

Let me first get my gripes out of the way. This film takes place in 2018, and John Connor is not the resistance leader yet. He’s like the 6th man down the chain of command. I think that this was a tactical error by McG and the writers. We had just watched the character of John Connor grow up in the previous two movies. It was his time to shine. Instead, this film makes Connor a secondary character and shows his rise to the leader we want to see. I agree with Mark on the “Scooby Doo/bad guy long explanation of the secret plan at the end so the audience won't be in the dark at all ending”. Don’t spoon feed your audience. We also agree that the napalming of your secret base was not very clever considering your trying to kill one person/cyborg. I wasn’t crazy about the lame score that Danny Elfman wrote. A rule should be in effect that if you make a Terminator film, you must hire Brad Fiedel. He scored the first two films and his music added so much to those films.

I enjoyed the performances of all of the lead actors. I think that Christian Bale was very good as Connor. He played Connor very intense, and nobody does intense better than Bale these days. But in the quiet moments, he shows what a burden it is to be this prophesied leader of the human race. He plays Connor like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he actually does. Sam Worthington plays Marcus Wright with just enough bravado without overdoing it. He’s the anti-hero of the film. He needs to watch that Aussie accent coming out in some scenes. Anton Yelchin gives the best performance of the film. He absolutely nails the young Kyle Reese. He has the same tone, voice, and look as Michael Bien.

This film is a war movie and I thought that it did its job in accomplishing that. The action and special effects are top notch. You can tell that this movie had a serious budget and it looked every bit of it. I liked the movie, but I wanted to love it. It’s far from perfect, but I like the direction that they’re taking it. I just wish that the future movie was this movie. There we go with those crazy time lines again. FUZZY!

I wanted to apologize for not having a Drag Me To Hell review. I was supposed to go to an advance screening on Tuesday night, but it didn’t work out logistically. I plan on coming through with an advance review of Land Of The Lost. I look forward to the return of Phil. In all seriousness, he should be the one to do the Drag Me To Hell review. Phil likes him some good scary Raimi. Make it so, Number One!