When we first meet Anakin Skywalker, we know him as the villainous Dark Lord of the Sith who single handily took down the Jedi order. Anakin used to be a decent fellow. How did good guy Anakin turn into Bad guy Vader? ‘The Phantom Menace’ finally sliced his way out from George Locus’s mind to begin answering that question. We find one of the greatest of all screen villains was once a little boy who yelled yippee, was a mama’s boy, was a slave, built C3PO, participated in pod-car racing and developed a crush on a teenage queen who he would later sacrifice his Jedi hood for. When sequels are no longer a necessity it’s time to go back to the beginning and look at the origin of what transpired before the original story took place. Ahhhh, the prequel.
The summer of 2009 kicks off the summer season with two prequel origin stories in a row. From a comic book born in the 60’s, having its fourth film on the silver screen is X-Men’s Wolverine. Cha Ching. If you saw X2 you pretty much know the synopsis of the origins of the Comic Book’s most popular mutant superhero. ‘X-Men’s Origin: Wolverine ‘fleshes the back ground story told in the second X-Men movie out. If you saw X2 you saw the Apex of X-men movies. If you saw the 3rd X-men, you may have felt you saw one of the lamest sequels in Superhero movie history; although it wasn’t as bad as all that. This fourth entry is neither great nor awful but good enough to enjoy. There is nothing totally mind altering about Wolverine’s origins, but its fun to go along for the ride, providing you’re an X-Men fan. If your not, you might as wait till next week and see new pumped up Star Trek.
In this film you will travel with Logan through his long life. He is immortal like ‘The Highlander’. There is however no Queen Soundtrack and no fights with swords on top of cars in a garage. But Logan does talk about taking off the head of another immortal named Victor Creed, who turns out to be Logan’s brother, who turns out to be Saber Tooth in the first X-Men picture. It shows his violent history as he goes from war to war fighting and killing, fighting and killing.
After Vietnam he finally joins a Special Forces unit with his brother and a bunch of other mutants including Charley the Hobbit from Lost/Rings. For some reason after all the years of not dying and fighting he has had enough and walks away from killing bad guys to living life with a pretty girl in the Canadian back woods and killing trees for lumber. He uses an ax and not his boney claws.
Of course you can never just walk away from a life like that. His violent past follows him to his sweet peaceful life and sets off a series of events that lead him to confront his brother in a vicious non-hold battle of immortals, volunteer to have his body become the ultimate indestructible weapon fusing his skeleton with adamantium, and mingle with other well known X-Men including the indestructible Blob diamond skinned Emma Frost and kinetic energy card throwing Gambit. Young Cyclops is given a small role, probably to make up for killing him off so quickly in X-Men 3. You also learn just how nasty General Striker was when he was younger.
As Logan is on the run from the very people who gave him his newly razor silver sharped indestructible claws he hides out on a farm with a nice old couple who share their food and loving warm hospitality with him. The old man gives him some solid advice. He sees that Logan is a man full of anger and hatred and warns him if he goes looking for blood, he will find it. Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.
When instructing his disciples on how to be Holy, Jesus warns them that hating someone in your heart is just as bad as actually doing it. The actual killing of someone is only the material reality of an inner spiritual disposition. If you want to let anger and hatred into your house they will come in and dine and you will manifest that in your dealings with others. If you want to let peace and non-violence into your life, it will come in and dine and it will manifest in the way that you deal with others. It all starts in the heart. Over the course of Logan’s life and the course of the film, he struggles with the tendency to not let his animalistic beastly nature control his inner humanistic tendency to be a decent person.
Wolverine has several exciting action sequences, several interesting characters and a look into the complex inner workings of a man struggling with his unique fallen nature. If your looking for a x-men superhero fix, this film will suffice. Look for a cameo of another popular X-men and stay to the end for a nice little Easter egg. The summer 2009 movie season has stuck its claws out and has begun to scratch the surface of what looks like an exciting movie season.
This has been a Normal Me Story Blazer Report
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