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Movie:		4.0
Picture:		5.0
Sound:		7.0
Extras:		7.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Gavin Hood
Writer(s):	David Benioff and Skip Woods
Starring:	Daniel Henney • Danny Huston • Dominic Monaghan • Hugh Jackman • Kevin Durand • Liev Schreiber • Ryan Reynolds • Taylor Kitsch • Will.i.Am
Genre:	Action • Comic Book
Website:	http://www.ugo.com/therush/
Release Date:	September 15, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $22.99
Amazon:

You know that good friend whom, after graduating from high school, you sort of lost touch with for a few years? And then, you receive an invitation to an event, like a wedding or reunion, and you just know your friend will be there too. You wonder how he’s fared since you saw him last? Has this friend, we’ll call him Logan, recovered from that horrible string of bad luck he was having when last you met? Has he met someone? Has he bettered himself as a human being? Or maybe he has a new job?

So you arrive at the fateful reunion. You scour the crowds of familiar faces and find him – standing at the bar looking slovenly out of shape. He’s nothing at all like you remember him from your glory days of youth. Where once his wit was razor sharp he can now barely string together a cohesive quip. He used to be a shining emblem of badassery and now he’s little more than a clown parading about and singing for another drink. At one point, you thought he may have been the coolest person you knew. Now you wish he’d never have signed over his life to the forces which have slowly killed him. In Logan’s case, these forces are Gavin Hood, Brett Ratner and, ultimately, Fox.

We can all remember his less than shining silver screen debut in the first X-Men film. He had a few typical Wolverine moments: a slow claw deployment before chopping a man’s shotgun in half, a snide remark to Cyclops here or there, or a classic middle-claw birdie when annoyed. He wasn’t the perfect embodiment of the wily warrior comic book fans loved: but he was close enough for a first effort.

Then Bryan Singer gave us X2: X-Men United which many would say is the best screen representation of the X-Men we have or may ever see (considering the next few efforts are X-Men: First Class, Magneto and another Wolverine film). It created a beautiful setup for a third film and featured some of the most incredible scenes to ever appear in a superhero film (tell me you’re still not giddy about the opening Nightcrawler scene in the White House).

X-Men 3 was the first misstep, but it wouldn’t be the last. As if deciding Brett Ratner’s work should be the mold for all future X-Men film endeavors. Gavin Hood took the most ridiculous and inferior aspects of Ratner’s film and used them to construct the stage for Wolverine’s debut story. From his coming of age in a plethora of historic wars to his time in the covert operations unit under William Stryker (Danny Huston), Wolverine’s origin story, as written in the comic books, has lots of material to draw a coherent and fantastic film from – but that’s not what we got here. Instead we ended up with a sloppily edited blockbuster whose bluster and second-rate special effects destroy any elements of the film which might have made it a purchase-worthy endeavor.

They managed to string together a respectable cast after Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber took on the lead mantles of Wolverine and Sabretooth, respectively. No fan would argue with Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, but none of them will appreciate the treatment he receives in the story. Just as Sam Raimi desecrated the good name of Venom in Spider-man 3, Gavin Hood’s Deadpool gets the full on bastardization treatment, even after promises of additional scenes just to bolster the fan-favorite for a spin-off (which is coming regardless and apparently with no consideration for the events of this movie). Even if there was some stunt-casting like Will.i.Am of the Black Eyed Peas or Taylor Kitsch as Gambit, the fact of the matter is the cast was satisfying. The characters may have been executed poorly, but it was never the fault of the actors. After Wolverine receives his mythical adamantium infusion and begins his vendetta against Sabretooth and Stryker it just drops down to the doldrums in terms of quality. X-Men Origins: Wolverine fails from start to finish thanks to poor direction, storytelling and special effects.

Usually with a big blockbuster on Blu-ray you can at least boast about the special effects and how extraordinary they look in high definition. You can’t do that here. Wolverine’s claws look horrific, the CGI Professor Xavier at the end makes you regret the ending (moreso than you did already) and even the stunts look horribly choreographed against poorly integrated green screening.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

The movie may be lacking but the Blu-ray discs are packing. As it should be. With Wolverine being one of the most popular characters in the Marvel canon, you could expect lots of people wanting to throw in their two scents:

“The Roots of Wolverine: A Conversation with Stan Lee and Len Wein”

Stan Lee is a cheeseball through and through, but God help me I love watching interviews with that man.

“Wolverine Unleashed: The Complete Origins Featurette:

It’s all here. All the behind the scenes footage, all the cast and crew discussing the history of the character and their time on set. It’s the meat and potatoes of the film’s extra features and may be worth your time more than the movie is.

“The Thrill of the Chase: The Helicopter Sequence”

A production featurette boldly boasting about stunt work and special effects in a film whose work in those areas is deserving of loathing and contempt.

Finally there’s an immersive commentary track that comes in two flavors: purely audio from either Director Gavin Hood or Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter or the type that only Blu-ray brings with Director Gavin Hood showing up on screen to discuss the concept of Wolverine’s origin and its translation to the screen.

There’s a BD-Live feature that may be the most pointless thing ever which allows you to link directly to the IMDb pages of the film’s stars. Really, who wants that?

Yes, ladies and gentleman, this Wolverine has been neutered…and yet it will still bear progeny. Fox has defied nature.