Tuesday, December 13, 2011

"Nooooooo!"

I know the film has been out now since 2009, but last week they were showing X Men Origins: Wolverine on Film 4. I quite enjoyed the other X Men films, so thought I'd give it a go, but was very disappointed. None of it made a whole lot of sense, and it was so cliché it was ridiculous. How many times did Wolverine hug a dead person to his manly chest, turn to the sky and scream "Nooooooooo!": 2. How many minutes of the film were dedicated to long shots of someone driving through Canada in a truck?: several. And the plot was all over the place. Why was the man baby Wolverine thought was his father played by Hugh Jackman, if he wasn't in fact his father? Who was he then? Why did Wolverine and Victor have to fight in all the wars of the twentieth century? Why would an adamantium bullet kill Wolverine, when he survived his skeleton being fused with the stuff? Similarly, why would a bullet make him lose his memory? I have to admit, they did a pretty good job on Gambit, given that I never saw the appeal in the past after watching the cartoons (his mutant power is that he can shuffle playing cards? Lame). Just a pity we'll probably never see him again. I found myself more moved by poor Ryan Reynold's character than Wolverine/Victor's sibling rivalry. The poor man got his mouth sewed together, injected with mutant powers, and then manually controlled like a toy car by that Striker bloke. Poor sod. And his only crime was that he talked too much.

I'm on a bit of a Superhero bent at the moment, having dressed as Batgirl at Butlins a few weeks ago (How come most of the famous female superheroes are DC?). I'm currently reading Demo, a brilliant comic by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan about disenfranchised youths with certain superhuman abilities. I'd like to say it's all research for Matti, but really it's just for fun. I'm still having problems with Matti; I'm still not sure how to write it. I mean, I have a plot, I have characters, but how to stylistically do it justice, I can't figure it out. At least I know not to make my heroine scream "Noooo!" anytime she finds someone dead. That's just plain annoying.