The Movie

For the fully uninitiated, Wolverine is a wolverine-ish man with mutated DNA, a gruff attitude, super-regenerative abilities, and sharper-than-razor-sharp metal claws that protrude from behind his fingers. He is also one of Marvel Comics' most popular characters, as evidenced by the ludicrous number of comics with his name in the title. As for this story, it is about Wolverine hunting down his similarly mutant brother Victor to get revenge for his murdered wife while dealing with all the twists and turns any plot like this is bound to have.

For a movie with the word origins in the title, this film pays fairly little attention to Wolverine's backstory. Even viewing the entire film as a backstory, the fact that he loses his memory in the end completely neutralizes any such significance as it relates to the character. What this movie is really trying to be is a revenge tale. Yet, it doesn't quite succeed there, either. What sets itself up as a story of a man seeking revenge quickly turns into a long string of fight scenes. Basically, Wolverine hunts down someone who can help him find Victor, then fights him and acquires some information. Then he finds the next guy, fights him, and acquires some more information. The filmmakers' desire simply to set up cool mutant mash-ups is evidenced by the fact that Wolverine is even made to fight several good guys, one because he thinks Wolverine has ulterior motives, another simply because fighting puts him in a good enough mood to give out information. I'm serious.

While the action is good, the film remains unable to connect with the viewer. It is about a character who only the core fan base knows and cares about, and even to them the story will serve only as an explosive display of trivia, not something that affects any understanding of Wolverine. Good for a slow night. Not much more.

Click here to read our full review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Extras

This release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes with the following extras:

• The Roots of Wolverine: A Conversation with Stan Lee and Len Wein Featurette
• Wolverine Unleashed: The Complete Origins Featurette
• Weapon X Mutant Files
• The Thrill of the Chase: The Helicopter Sequence
• Ultimate X-Mode BONUSVIEW
• Deleted & Alternate Scenes with Commentary by Gavin Hood
• Fox Movie Channel presents World Premiere
• Audio Commentary by Director Gavin Hood
• Audio Commentary by Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter
• BD-LIVE: Live Lookup powered by IMDb
• Digital Copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine for Portable Media Players

Though it's titled as the "Ultimate 2-Disc Edition," the second disc is purely the digital copy. All of the real extras are on the same disc as the film. Nevertheless, this disc is absolutely packed with supplemental material.

The Stan Lee/Len Wein discussion is fairly engaging and occasionally kitschy in a fun, light-hearted way. There's nothing too deep here, but some basic discussion about Lee's creation of the X-Men and Wein's creation of Wolverine offers nice tidbits of information. And listening to Stan Lee discuss his creation of such things is like listening to your Grandpa tell stories of the good ol' days. It's always a pleasure to hear.

Wolverine Unleashed goes over the background of the Wolverine character as well as the thought process behind some elements of the story. There are also some set stories from other actors as well as the director and producers but not much to that isn't covered in the commentaries.

Weapon X Mutant Files is an hour-long featurette that goes over each main mutant character in the same ways Wolverine Unleashed analyzes Wolverine: by discussing their powers, their backgrounds, their motivations, the technical aspects of creating and filming them, and other behind-the-scenes information. It is a nicely in-depth supplement.

The Thrill of the Chase is a five-minute behind-the-scenes bit on all the effects from the cabin explosion to the downed helicopter, mainly focusing on the pyrotechnics. Nothing more than a quick rundown of how the explosions were shot.

Ultimate X-Mode is only available on BONUSVIEW-enabled players, and provides four different types of picture-in-picture content, played inline with the movie. X Connect features commentary from both director Gavin Hood and producer Lauren Shuler Donner, comparing elements from this X-Men installment (such as characters and locations) to the same elements in the other three X-Men films. The Director's Chair features Hood discussing (surprise!) directorial and storytelling decisions made in the movie. Pre-visualizing Wolverine displays the storyboards and rough computer animation of action scenes used to illustrate what the scene should look like during shooting. Finally, the X-Facts Trivia Track displays pop-up trivia facts throughout the movie.

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All of the BONUSVIEW content comes and goes periodically during the film, depending on whether there is anything to discuss relevant to what's on screen. Particularly interesting is Hood's occasional explanation of the liberties he took with certain characters (especially Deadpool) and why he felt justified in doing so. BONSUVIEW has the added benefit of not only getting to see the commentators as they talk, but occasionally the PIP will display video to illustrate certain points (such as clips from the first X-Men film to illustrate Sabretooth's design in that movie).

There are four deleted scenes, one of which is the alternate Japanese bar ending -- the Deadpool ending apparently winning out as the "real" one (these were two different post-credits sequences on two different prints when the film was released in theaters). Each scene has optional commentary by Hood.

Fox Movie Channel presents World Premiere is short and mostly unneeded. It shows the actors at the film's world premiere in Tempe, Arizona, and basically features them talking about how great it is. It's mostly hype, and what little substance there is is covered elsewhere.

Hood has a lot to say in his director's commentary, and it is all relevant. He discusses characters' motivations, the ideas behind certain scenes, the technicalities of scenes -- everything you want to know if you're taking the time to listen to a director's commentary.

The Producers' commentary is slightly more sparse, with a good number of pauses. They mostly discuss special effects, occasionally imparting some interesting information. The details of Wraith's teleporting effect are particularly interesting, revealing a really cool touch visible only with slow-motion.

The most unique extra feature on this disc is BD-LIVE: Live Lookup. If your player is connected to the internet, this allows you to access cast information from IMDb on the fly. This is especially useful for those "What movie do I know him from?" moments, as it will display the actors' credits, live from the web. It is particularly helpful in the way it functions: By default it displays only the actors (names and pictures) of the current scene, though it will optionally display all actors in the entire film. This is the first disc to ever feature this functionality, and I hope to see more of it in the future. One potential caveat, though: on the back of the box, there is some small print that reads, in reference to Live Lookup, "BD-LIVE may be available only for a limited time." I don't know why this would be the case (maybe simply a disclaimer in case IMDb ever miraculously goes defunct), but hopefully the feature will stick around.

Video/Audio

The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen format on a 50GB dual layer disc (as if all those extras could fit on anything else). It definitely looks better than the DVD, although there is some grain throughout the transfer. On the other hand, the hues at
times can be smooth as suede (see the mutant platoon's night raid near the beginning). Overall, the picture looks good and natural with no extra sheen.

The audio comes in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 5.1 Dolby Digital. It also has options for Spanish, French, and Portuguese dubs, all in 5.1, as well as subtitles in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Cantonese. The sound is more than adequate. The clinking of a chain-link fence sounds like it's right next to you, and the bass is
powerful when it needs to be. Unlike the film's DVD counterpart, the dialogue comes through strongly.

Packaging/Menus

Standard stuff. The DVD set comes in a regular Blu-ray case with the Digital Copy disc hidden behind a Digital Copy instruction slip on the inside cover. The menu system is your typical Blu-ray stuff as well, allowing on-the-fly selection of most options. The only problem is that you cannot switch among the BONUSVIEW features without starting the film over.

Conclusion

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not a good film, but it does have its moments. Particularly if you're a fan of the X-Men or of Wolverine specifically, there are things to like in this ultimately pointless movie. If you do like it, this Blu-ray disc offers everything you could want. This was definitely made with the fans in mind. While there is a good bit of overlap among the disc's many supplemental features, it was practically inevitable given the clear attempt to cover every base possible.

Click here to purchase X-Men Origins: Wolverine