X-Men Origins: Wolverine

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Movie
German title X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Original title X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins - Wolverine Logo.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2009
length Theatrical Version: 106 minutes
Extended Cut : 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Gavin Hood
script David Benioff ,
Skip Woods
production Hugh Jackman and
John Palermo ,
Lauren Shuler Donner ,
Ralph Winter
music Harry Gregson-Williams
camera Donald McAlpine
cut Nicolas De Toth ,
Megan Gill
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
X-Men: The Last Stand

Successor  →
X-Men: First decision

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an American action film about the origins of the comic book character Wolverine from the series X-Men of Marvel Comics . It was released by 20th Century Fox on April 29, 2009 in Germany and on May 1 in the United States. Directed by Gavin Hood . As in the first three X-Men films , to which this film sees itself as a prequel , Hugh Jackman plays the leading role.

action

In Canada in 1845, the young James Howlett witnessed Thomas Logan shooting his supposed father. In anger, he kills the archer with bone claws that protrude from the back of his hand. As he dies, he reveals that he is James's biological father. He then fled with his friend Victor Creed, the son of Thomas Logan and thus James' half-brother. In subsequent years, James takes the name Logan and fights with Creed in the American Civil War , the First and Second World War and in Vietnam . There they are put before a firing squad after Victor's attack on his superior, but survive thanks to their self-healing powers. The Major William Stryker shows up and takes them as members of his team on mutants. Logan leaves the team after a mission in Nigeria .

Six years later, Logan works as a lumberjack and lives with his girlfriend Kayla Silverfox. Stryker visits him to offer him his old job, but Logan refuses. Creed later shows up and kills Kayla. It comes to a fight between Logan and his brother, which ultimately emerges as the winner. Stryker turns to Logan's help against the renegade Creed, who has killed other former members of the mutant team. Logan agrees and Stryker has his skeleton coated with adamantium . When Logan realizes that his memory is about to be erased, he flees and finds refuge with an elderly farmer couple. This is killed by Stryker's henchman Zero who is hunting Logan. Logan avenges the couple by destroying Zero's helicopter, leaving Zero in the burning and exploding wreck.

In Las Vegas Logan meets his former teammates John Wraith and Fred Dukes. Logan learns that Stryker has set up a mutant prison on an island from which only Remy LeBeau aka Gambit has been able to escape. Logan and Wraith track him down in a casino. While Wraith meets Creed in the backyard and dies after a short fight, Logan and LeBeau escalate inside. This catapults Logan with his mutant ability through the wall of the casino into the back yard, where Logan sees Creed's murder of Wraith. The two brothers fight again. Logan can decide this for himself, but Victor escapes. Then Logan also defeats Gambit.

With Gambit's help, Logan arrives at the prison on the grounds of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant . There he meets Kayla again, whose death was just a ruse to get him back to work for Stryker. Stryker made Kayla do it by detaining her sister Emma on the island. When Kayla tries to run after Logan to tell him this, Creed stops her. When Logan hears her scream, he comes back and confronts Creed. It comes to the third fight of the brothers, which Wolverine wins again. In the end he spares Creed because Kayla makes it clear to him that he - unlike Creed - is not an animal. Together, Logan and Kayla free the captured mutants. To stop Logan, Stryker activates weapon XI, also known as "Deadpool". While Logan and Deadpool are fighting, the freed mutants, led by Cyclops and Emma, ​​escape to a helicopter that Professor Xavier has brought to the island.

In the fight against Deadpool, Logan surprisingly gets support from Creed. Together they behead Deadpool and Creed flees the island. When Logan's attempt to save the injured Kayla, Stryker shoots an adamantium bullet in the head. Logan doesn't die, but he loses his memories. Before Kayla dies, she hypnotizes Stryker, who is about to shoot her, to leave until his feet are bleeding. Gambit returns to tell Wolverine that the mutants have been saved, but Wolverine does not recognize him due to his memory loss. Wolverine then flees alone while the police and rescue workers arrive at the destroyed power plant site.

Stryker shuffles down a country road in a totally neglected manner until the military police show up and arrest him.

There are two different post-credit scenes that ran differently from cinema to cinema. In one you can see that Deadpool is still alive. In the other, Wolverine is sitting in a bar in Japan. This scene is the transition to the sequel Wolverine: Way of the Warrior , which is set in Japan.

Deviations from other publications

Differences from other X-Men films

  • In the first X-Men part , Tyler Mane took on the role of Sabretooth. He embodied a later, wilder version of the character. A family connection between Wolverine and Sabretooth was not discussed.
  • In X-Men: First Decision , which is set before X-Men Origins: Wolverine , Charles Xavier suffers paraplegia from being shot in the back. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine , however, he can still walk.
  • In X-Men: Apocalypse , which takes place in a different timeline due to the events in X-Men: Future is Past , Scott Summers (Cyclops) is brought to the X Institute by his brother Havok , in X-Men Origins: Wolverine he becomes freed from the facility by Wolverine and then picked up by Charles Xavier.

Differences from the comics

  • In the comics, Wolverine's amnesia stems from his self-healing powers, which also "medicated" his mind and made the traumatic memory of his excruciating operation forgotten. In the film, however, it is a result of the gunshot wound to the head that Stryker inflicts on him.
  • That Sabretooth is Wolverine's half-brother is an interpretation of the film, not the comics.
  • Deadpool is shown differently in the film: he has more skills and does not act independently.

Alternative ending in Deadpool 2

  • The credits of Deadpool 2 show Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio repairing Cable's time travel device and giving it to an alternative version of Wade Wilson aka Deadpool. With the device he travels back in time and first saves his girlfriend Vanessa Carlysle. He then uses his time machine again to execute the version of Wade Wilson alias Deadpool alias Weapon XI used in the present film with a headshot before the final fight between Wolverine and Wade. The alternative Deadpool justifies his act with the fact that he wants to straighten the timelines again. In addition, the time-traveling Deadpool asks Wolverine not to finally hang up his claws, but to save the world with him in the distant future.

Game to film

In the same year, the video game of the same name, produced by Activision , X-Men Origins: Wolverine for PC , PlayStation 3 , PlayStation 2 , Xbox 360 , Wii , as well as PSP and Nintendo DS came on the market. Since the graphics were too detailed for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and the game is very brutal and glorifies violence, the corresponding versions were indexed on List B by the BPjM in Germany after a short time .

production

Hugh Jackman at a press conference on the film (2009)

development

David Benioff was hired in October 2004 to write the screenplay for the film. He was inspired by, among others, Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X from 1991, as well as Chris Claremont's and Frank Miller's limited series on the character from 1982. Hugh Jackman also worked on the script to make Wolverine more similar to the character from X-Men. Benioff had a "dark and slightly more brutal" story with the US R-Rating in mind (entry under 17 only with legal guardian), but admitted that it was up to the director and producer. For his part, Jackman saw no reason for this classification.

After Deadpool was planned as a separate film adaptation by New Line Cinema in 2003 , work on Blade: Trinity thwarted this project and Benioff began to incorporate the character into the script. The character Gambit was supposed to appear in various X-Men parts before, but only made it in X-Men Origins: Wolverine through Jackman's sympathy for this character. After David Ayer had revised the script, Benioff completed his draft in October 2006. Before the 2007/2008 writers' strike , James Vanderbilt and Scott Silver were hired to write the final version of the script.

Gavin Hood was introduced in July 2007 as the director of the film, which was due to be released in 2008. Before that, the directors Bryan Singer and Brett Ratner were in discussion, who had already directed the first two parts and the last part of the X-Men series. In addition, interested Alexandre Aja ( Mirrors ) and Len Wiseman ( Die Hard 4.0 ) for the film. Zack Snyder turned down a role as a director because of his work on Watchmen . In October 2008, Fox announced the final release date.

Filming

Filming preparations began in late 2007 at Fox Studios Australia , Sydney. Actual shooting finally began on January 18, 2008 in New Zealand . After that, filming in Los Angeles and New Orleans continued; some key scenes were shot in Vancouver . The motif for Stryker's property is on Cockatoo Island , an island in Sydney Harbor . Filming ended on May 23, 2008.

After making the previous X-Men films in Toronto and Vancouver , Jackman consciously chose New Zealand as the main location for filming: “One of the challenges was to find a new home for this adventure, a new production location. Although I feel obliged to the style of the previous films, I also wanted our production to look more impressive and different. [...] New Zealand has something unreal about it. It's kind of magical. That helped us to create our world and to give the film its reality. "

Sequels

Hugh Jackman and John Palermo produced a sequel entitled Wolverine: Path of the Warrior (2013).

The film, which was developed in collaboration with 20th Century Fox, focuses on the samurai story from the comic series.

In the comics, Logan has memories of a time as a samurai in Japan, but the authenticity of these memories is controversial due to implanted memories as part of the Weapon-X program. On June 16, 2011 it was confirmed that a replacement for the director Darren Aronofsky had been found, namely James Mangold , who u. a. Directed the films Walk the Line and Knight and Day .

With Ryan Reynolds , cast in Wade Wilson / Deadpool , they produced a feature film of the same name in 2016 . In contrast to the Deadpool from X-Men Origins: Wolverine , this one is initially a normal person. A mutation was only triggered in this after an intervention. This gave him supernatural self-healing.

In March 2017, Logan - The Wolverine , again directed by James Mangold, was another part of the series.

Reviews

Andreas Borcholte wrote in Der Spiegel that both the film and the main actor looked far too smooth for the hair-raising story that screenwriter David Benioff wrote on the basis of the comic book 'Weapon X'. Superficially, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is “of course a solid Hollywood product full of suspense and show values. But there are also many missed opportunities. The escalation levels are ignited much too schematically. "

Fritz Göttler from the Süddeutsche Zeitung said that the viewer should “not expect a really consistent explanation, no psycho-analysis of a pathological lone fighter with an Adamantium-hardened body and sharp claws in the fight against racism and aggressiveness. Who can regenerate his body remarkably easily, but is helpless against the game of memories. "

The Cinema wrote that "inspire the action sequences and the female audience [...] given the muscular upper body of Hugh Jackman hoot [would]. But beyond the show values, the film is unfortunately a disappointment - especially when you compare how the new ' Star Trek ' film manages to create huge images and tell a gripping story. Conclusion: Action-packed comic book adaptation with great show values, but a simple story that cannot really inspire the viewer. "

Steve Buchta criticized the lack of "ethical-moral undertone of the X-Men trilogy" in the widescreen . However, the film is convincing as a "vehicle for cool action and appealing popcorn cinema."

Prematurely available working copy

On March 31, 2009, a DVD-quality Workprint version of the film appeared on the Internet. 20th Century Fox passed the case on to the FBI , which confiscated numerous servers in Dallas . According to the film studio, the working copy was "an incomplete, stolen and early version" with numerous effects missing. "In addition, some of the scenes planned for the final version are missing, and it contains uncut scenes as well as sounds and music that were used temporarily." The version contained references to the origin from the Australian Rising Sun Pictures . This special effects company, however, denied that it was the leak, citing that it had never had such a complete version of the film available.

After the film was initially available on various share hosts such as Rapidshare , the rights holders endeavored to delete the film quickly. Most of the copies were then distributed via Usenet . On the first day, the film was downloaded over 75,000 times; Fox estimated the total number of downloads to be around 4.5 million.

Roger Friedman, a gossip reporter for Fox News , was fired after doing a pre-film review based on the working version. In it he also described how easy it was to get the workprint version even though the original source had long since gone offline. The article was immediately removed from the network.

success

Box office earnings [million]
territory U.S$ € CHF
world world 373.1 313.1 336.9
Production costs 150 125.9 135.4
United StatesUnited States United States Canada
CanadaCanada  		179.9 151 162.4
GermanyGermany Germany 9.6 8.1 8.7
AustriaAustria Austria 1.6 1.3 1.4
SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland Not available
(Access date: February 1, 2015)

On the day of the US premiere, Wolverine grossed $ 35 million. This positions the film in the X-Men franchise behind X-Men: The Last Stand , which grossed 45.1 million US dollars in 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for X-Men Origins: Wolverine . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2009 (PDF; test number: 117 588-a K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for X-Men Origins: Wolverine . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ moviepilot : How did Wolverine come about?
  4. ↑ Spiegel Online : The Taming of the Shrew
  5. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung : The double ripper ( Memento from May 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Cinema.de: film review
  7. ↑ Widescreen : X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Review / Filmkritik ( Memento of April 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ FBI raid - web host taken offline. In: gulli.com . April 4, 2009, archived from the original on January 25, 2013 ; Retrieved May 3, 2009 .
  9. ↑ Goldstein, Patrick : Fox on 'Wolverine' whopper: No fibbing involved . In: Los Angeles Times , April 29, 2009. Retrieved May 4, 2009. 
  10. ↑ Christine Spines: Fox chairman says leaked 'Wolverine' is an 'unfinished version' and 'a complete misrepresentation of the film' . In: Entertainment Weekly , April 2, 2009. Retrieved April 3, 2009. 
  11. ↑ Pamela McClintock: 'X-Men' takes hit in foreign markets . In: Variety , May 6, 2009. Retrieved July 11, 2009. 
  12. ↑ Ben Child: Wolverine review leads to Fox News writer's dismissal . In: The Guardian , April 7, 2009. Retrieved July 11, 2009. 
  13. ↑ Wolverine - Expected to be 100 million despite leak and swine fever. In: gulli.com. May 3, 2009, archived from the original on February 16, 2013 ; Retrieved January 11, 2013 .
  14. ↑ Overall grossing results from X-Men Origins: Wolverine at BoxOfficeMojo.com (English), accessed on February 1, 2015.
  15. ↑ International box office earnings from X-Men Origins: Wolverine at BoxOfficeMojo.com (English), accessed on February 1, 2015.
  16. ↑ Variety : 'Wolverine' thrashes box office ( Memento from May 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )