X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Yeah! Finally I'm free from CPA! It won't last long as new semester will be coming soon, but I'll get to enjoy it while it lasts! So to celebrate my freedom, I'm heading to watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which tickets are booked in advance, as always! Let me tell you, it's so hard to find the good seats and I did the booking last night. Most of the studios in town were packed before the day even come. I just got lucky that I got to get a good one in Bugis, but the seats are too low so you can automatically see a little mountain (the head) blocking your full view. Gee I wonder why the seats were available yesterday and now I know why. Too bad Cathay doesn't air Wolverine.

So how about the movie? We all know what it's all about. You don't need to be a regular movie goer to know this because the promotion, trailer is all over the place. Newspapers showered the movie with bad reviews yesterday. So I'm curious, is it that bad? Let's see how it fares.

It's a no brainer that the story is one of the X-Men franchises except that this is the prequel from all the previous X-Men movie and the main focus is Wolverine and Wolverine only. Well, X-Men without Wolverine is no X-Men but at least Wolverine here doesn't wear any spandex. Here we see the beginning of Wolverine. How he become Wolverine and where the name Wolverine comes from. We all cringed as we saw they injected the metal into Wolverine's body. The scene lasted for couple minutes so we all braced ourselves narrowing our eyes as we saw Wolverine twinged in agony under the water.

There're lots of surprises for me in Wolverine. But the biggest surprise is Daniel Henney! Me and my movie kaki almost squealed together when we saw his name on the opening. Both of us really acted like fangirls at that precise moment. Then it hit us, is it really him? Yes, it's really Daniel Henney from our beloved K-drama! Well, he's there as one of the villain, Zero, but we don't really care, don't we? So, there we were catching our squeals and breathes every time we saw him at the scene. For those moments, we just forget about the reason why we're sitting there in the first place, sorry Hugh, though you're really buff, macho and all that, but Daniel is our priority now. And we went back to focus on Hugh after Zero died, Lol... Off course before that, we're fixed in the butt-naked Hugh too Lol...

The next surprise is Gambit! Yey! Finally I get to see Gambit in action. Always love this character from the comic books in the old days. But this is where the major disappointment in the movie comes. Why they have to make Gambit look more like Kung Fu master? The first action scene with the cards was totally cool, but after that, no more card, but he ends up using stick? Why would Gambit want to use stick and act like a Shao Lin on the loose if he can use the cards? It's totally illogical and irrelevant!

Other than Gambit, the other X-Men characters are not fascinating and they just pass by as the movie goes. Quite a disappointment for me because I want to see the more familiar characters that were straight out from the comic books. Will love to see Mystic again, or may be the make up is too tedious that they decided to take it out? With this pool of not so exciting characters, the fighting looks more like the regular action movie scenes, and with those Kung Fu movement, I kept feeling the strong de javu of those Hong Kong movie moves reinvented.

The CG? Fabulous and current. I feel that it's not overdone as what the newspapers keep repeating because it's X-Men movie, not some Oscar nominated drama. Do you want to see X-Men movie with Wolverine keep thinking and phasing with his own mind and not clashing his iron (I will say iron because the metal name is just too... complicated) claws? Not me... To me, X-Men movie is about CG CG and CG. The more the better! I want to get entertained, not to think during the movie. By the way, the mountain scenes are fantastic too, the scenes look just straight out from the postcards.

So is the movie good and worth the money? I'd say yes. CG won't be that nice if you watch it with your 22" home TV, off course unless you have the home theater, but the effect won't be the same. I had my own disappointment with the movie, but with what's currently out there now, I'd pick X-Men without a second thought.