The Worst Wolverine Movie Is Worth Revisiting On Disney+
When it comes to movies featuring our favorite mutants or superhero cinema in general, many hold X-Men Origins: Wolverine up as one of the worst movies to watch. Despite that prevailing wisdom, I recently decided to stream the movie again after watching (what else?) Deadpool & Wolverine for the millionth time. That’s when I discovered something even more shocking than Logan’s cartoonish claws: while the movie is full of flaws, it is surprisingly enjoyable and worth revisiting for any Marvel fan.
Give X-Men Origins: Wolverine Another Shot
What is X-Men Origins: Wolverine about? The movie is mostly an origin story for Wolverine, showing his convoluted history with Sabertooth (revealed to be his brother) and how the future hero gets conned into working for Weapon X.
The movie notably serves as the big-screen introduction of a very different Deadpool, and while the chronology makes less sense than ever before, we get more information about Wolverine’s earliest adventures in helping his fellow mutants, including some future X-Men.
The Cast
For Marvel fans, the cast of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a grab-bag of familiar faces and fun surprises: for example, Wolverine is played by the inimitable Hugh Jackman, and Ryan Reynolds makes his first appearance as Deadpool.
Liev Schreiber has replaced Tyler Mane as Sabertooth, and he gives the character a much more sadistic edge straight out of the comics. Other notable cast members include the musician will.i.am as John Wraith, Kevin Durand as the Blob, and Taylor Kitsch (sorry, Channing Tatum fans) as Gambit.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine faced some interesting challenges, including a hilariously incomplete workprint version of the movie leaking before its theatrical release.
Despite that, the movie ended up being generally successful at the box office. Against a budget of $150 million, this film clawed its way to a worldwide gross of $373 million.
The Reception
Critically, however, X-Men Origins: Wolverine fared far worse. The movie has a critical score of 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. In general, critics praised Jackman for doing the best he could but complained about the script being filled with cliches and tropes that would be instantly familiar to any fans of the earlier X-Men movies.
Now, it’s time to address the adamantium-laced elephant in the room: given this movie’s bad reputation and how it was dragged through the streets by the critics, why the heck am I recommending that you revisit X-Men Origins: Wolverine?
One obvious reason is that the movie makes for a fun companion piece to Deadpool & Wolverine. After you watch those two frenemies slice and dice their way through that bloody R-rated masterpiece, it’s rewarding to go back and watch the first movie that paired these characters together.
Wolverine/Sabretooth
Also, your mileage may vary, but I’m a huge fan of Liev Schreiber’s Sabertooth—in the original X-Men film, Tyler Mane did a great job of capturing the character’s hulking menace, but he mostly came across as a mindless monster. But Sabertooth’s best comic stories have been the ones that reveal the depths of this serial killer’s rage and hatred.
Schreiber brings that to light while also helping create a modern mythology where Sabertooth and Logan are immortal brothers who once fought alongside each other but have not turned into bitter enemies.
On top of that, it’s just as convoluted as the comics that came before it, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine provides a serviceable origin story for Wolverine’s past, including how he came to be laced with an adamantium skeleton. From the very beginning, his character has been portrayed as the ultimate mystery man, someone whose past is a secret even to him.
The explanations (like the movie itself) are imperfect, but they do provide interesting answers to questions film fans have been asking since that first film came out in 2000.
Stream It Now
REVIEW SCORE
Now, as onscreen mutant adventures go, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not the best movie, but it’s also not the worst—I’d personally take this movie over X-Men: The Last Stand or Dark Phoenix any day of the week.
It has some spotty effects and makes some baffling narrative decisions, but the movie also has great character moments and memorable fights, including with Deadpool. Plus, if you’re a Hugh Jackman fan, his native charisma helps make even the strangest films (Van Helsing, anyone?) worth watching.
Will you find X-Men Origins: Wolverine worth a snikt, or is this a movie you’d rather get memory-wiped after watching? You won’t know until you stream it for yourself. And if you do find the whole thing terribly painful, you can always engage your healing factor by watching Deadpool & Wolverine again (just save me a seat).
