X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) | The Superhero Rewind Commentary Project

[@thomasmurphy8187]

Gavin Hood's filmography is on the smaller side but does showcase talent. His 2005 film Tsotsi won an Oscar for Best International Film. Origins is a classic case of take this director who got noticed with more personal works, put him on a tentpole studio project, gets pushed around by the executives and when the final product comes out terrible, the director is the one whose career suffers rather than those who are truly responsible for the mess.

[@thomasmurphy8187]

Having recently completed a slightly drawn out X Men marathon, I can without a doubt say Origins is not the worst movie in this series. That title easily goes to Dark Phoenix.

[@shoshawty2]

This is definitely one of my favorite bad superhero movies

[@SpedeVesku]

Origins is terrible, but it might be the most watchable of the bad X-Men movies (which are X3, Origins, Apocalypse, New Mutants and Dark Phoenix). It has easily the best soundtrack of the whole franchise, all the main actors are cast well and giving the best they can with the material and the opening credits montage is genuily a banger. It also never feels like it has its own head inside of its butt and acting like it's deeper than it is. Obviously not a movie I ever would go out of my way to watch, but in a "you have to watch one of these" kind of situation, I would go with it.

[@WhatsUpFella]

Most I can say positive for this is it at least looks more like a real movie at times than some of the more homogenized superhero movies that came after it. It’s just so dull. You guys said it looks like a TV movie, but it’s less how it looks and more how it feels. It all comes off really small scale.

[@matterstoyou2970]

He isn’t made up he came from I think new mutant or generation x; “spark” I believe but yes I agree not prominent and odd choice.

[@Geekvolution]

Oh you're right. He doesn't typically use an alias and he's only credited as "Bradley" in the movie, which is why I thought he was made up. He's a New Warriors character. He's used the alias "Bolt" and "Maverick" before. They should have gone with Bolt. But then he'd have to do something more exciting with his powers than turn on light bulbs and run bad carnival games.

[@matterstoyou2970]

@@Geekvolution knew it was something obscure but that he was a character. Also I think technically we are both right bc this version of bolt was created more for this film. It’s not a well developed character so it might as well have been created for the screen solely. It’s so sparsely connected to the source materials already. The character Bolt is only in this film to spoon feed the audience exposition before he gets killed in a cut away. any character could have delivered the same information.

[@thomasmurphy8187]

Watched this again a few weeks ago and it goes without saying that Origins isn't good. Doing Logan's backstory might not be needed but it could've worked under good execution. And what we got was a generic pastiche of 80's/90's action movie tropes. Just with mutants thrown in. The outrage at the time while hyperbolic was somewhat understandable. Now that we've had better films with X Men, Wolverine and Deadpool it's not worth getting upset over. There was a time where I was on the bandwagon of it's funny bad. Not anymore. Over the past few years I've completely lost interest in riff culture as a method to look at things. Origins is just bland to me now.

[@TheDayGhost]

Yeah that’s how I felt going back to it, mostly just bland and boring as you said. There’s a couple of moments that are funny bad but it’s not enough to hold for the full run time

[@gstone8255]

You destroyed Superhero rewind when you made them commentaries 😕😫 I no longer watch them I hope you’re happy 😠

[@HumphreyKaye]

The dude has 6 kids. Give him a break.