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X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (2009) Dir: Gavin Hood ⭐️⭐️ The first X-Men spin-off suffers from an uneven tone and an over-emphasis on cameos at the expense of a badass revengeu002Forigin story. Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Lieve Schreiber) are mutant siblings and veterans of several wars, now under the employ of William Styker (played here by Danny Huston replacing Waystar Royco patriach Brian Cox). When an operation in Africa gets out of hand, Logan leaves for greener pastures, but is enticed back into the fold with promises of an adamantium upgrade as the means to enact revenge for the death of a loved one. The first half of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is decent enough, the opener a pre-cursor to Watchmen as we see slow-mo Wolvie and Sabretooth ply their trade across multiple eras of military combat. Once the reason for revenge occurs the film needed a switch to full beserker bloodlust mode. Instead we see Wolvie faff around on a farm with Ma and Pa Kent, fat shame the Blob (Kevin Durand), undertake a pointless fight with Gambit (Taylor Kitsch who looks but doesn't sound the part) and endure a pointless interlude with Scott Summers (Tim Pocock) as a rebelious teen student. will.i.am plays teleporter John Wraith and gives a performance almost as bad as the 2018 AFL Grand Final Pre-show (which to be fair wasn't all that bad...but forever tarnished in my mind as every Black Eyed Peas song now gives me random Dom Sheed PTSD). And speaking of bad...boy did they really do Deadpool dirty in this film. Thankfully Reynolds was able to gain enough traction with his humorous take in the earlier part of the film to eventually score his own film some 8 years later. But yeah this dumbass Amazo version of Deadpool that appears in the finale is controlled by the ludicrous concept of Stryker TYPING commands into a keyboard as if real combat was somehow akin to a turn based RPG?!? This was partially filmed in Straya (thanks Hughie - looking out for the local film industry) and as such it is always fun to play spot the Aussie - with Asher Keddie, Max Cullen, Peter O'Brien and Aaron Jeffrey all making appearances. Tahnya Tozzie plays a young (pre-Dominatrix) Emma Frost and a baby faced pre-pop superstardom Troye Sivan is a young Wolvie! This was written by David Benioff who would later go on to script Game of Thrones. He must really have a thing for decapitating fan favourite characters during climatic yet underwhelming finales... My ⭐️⭐️ review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Letterboxd https:u002Fu002Fboxd.itu002F6Wsm25