Here’s a text message I got last night from Marvel Comics friend Julian: “I read your review. I’m still seeing Wolverine, and it’s still going to suck.”
Ok, I’ve been piling a lot of industry crap on Wolverine recently, and now that you too can spend your hard earned money watching Wolverine, I thought I’d take a step back from my usual bitching.
Wolverine is what this franchise needed to survive. I might have made a big deal about that when I said that they might as well have made an ashcan version of an X-Men movie, but since they didn’t go that route, Wolverine is the best they could have done.
Gavin Hood is no Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer. He’s not establishing ownership over the property. He’s much more akin to a Bret Ratner, who was brought on X-Men: The Last Stand after a story had been developed, populated by new mutants via committee. Though I’m not going to put Ratner on any best director lists in the future, X-Men: The Last Stand was not his fault, it was Fox’s fault, as any movie that is given over to a director in the middle of pre-production with an immovable release date is the studio’s responsibility.
Hood’s occasional fights with Fox CEO Tom Rothman over Wolverine were probably about tone and possibly about characters and story, but they were had. The idea that Gavin Hood wanted some artistic integrity is interesting and, depending on your opinion of the film, a boone to the man’s patience for futility.
The question remains, what did Wolverine do right? And here are you answers…
1) Wolverine kick-started the summer movie season. Check out THIS TV SPOT, I’m pretty sure it sends the right message. Big special effects, epic music, more people flying through the air than expected in a movie where no one flies.
2) Wolverine was everywhere. Marketing is important, especially when anyone who knows how to work the internet could potentially see your movie online before it came out. The workprint leak was instantly available to all the fan boys Fox was trying to court by chocking Wolverine full with new mutants (one of the strongest things the X-Men Franchise has going for it is it’s large pool of usable mutants). If that audience is jeopardized, the best thing you can do is be like buck shot instead of an assault rifle. Get someone who maybe saw X2 a few years ago and wants to come back to the first SFX movie of the summer. Get them with a wide variety of products, from the video game to the PR push, to my favorite ad that sells the idea to men: “Everyone wants to be Wolverine”
3) Put Hugh Jackman everywhere. People love him, will ask his opinion about anything, and will plug Wolverine when they ask him. Take this Google News search done on Jackman as I’m writing:
How Madonna feels? Hugh Jackman can bench press, Hugh Jackman’s penis. Every single one of those articles is really about: “See Hugh in Wolverine. Now.”
4) Wolverine brought Gambit and Deadpool into the X-Franchise. Both characters are popular and regardless of how they are dealt with, neither character is soiled beyond being brought back. Oh, yeah, did we also mention that both those characters are badasses played by heart-throbs? Taylor Kitsch as Gambit just saw his stock shoot up among the action-core group who hasn’t noticed him on TV’s awesomest drama Friday Night Lights, and Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson. Hell, the guy already draws women to his romantic comedies in numbers that do not match the quality of those films. Women are going to come to Wolverine for Jackman, but since Hugh’s price can only go up, Gambit might be the character the ladies have a secret desire to see again. I’m betting there are a few X-scripts getting the Gambit re-write about now.
5) Continuity wise, they only f*cked up one thing: Sabertooth. How or why Sabertooth pops up at the beginning of X-Men not knowing he’s Wolverine’s half brother is something that is not addressed in this film. Though the flick does lead into X-Men: First Class with a Captain Picard cameo. Thing is, with this whole “secret ending” crap, Fox is starting to realize that they need to unify their X-Universe if they’re going to start shooting off in different directions. Even JJ Abrams needed Time Travel to re-set Star Trek. All I’ll say about the one contiuity f*ck up is this: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two X-Projects in development have lead-ins with this film. I’m guessing since Sabertooth shows up on the arm of Magneto in X-Men that something like Wolverine’s memory-bullets will play a part in X-Men Origins: Magneto. I’m also guessing that Liev Schreiber will show up in that film, as well as one of the eye-candy mutants: Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds and/or Taylor Kitsch. ‘Cuz no one wants to fantasize about Ian McKellen.
