My summer of blockbusters!

Since I can't sleep due to worry about heading in to a hellacious day at work tomorrow, I will keep you updated on my summer movie watching progress. I have no impulse control, so the plot is pretty well laid-bare below. You have been warned.

Wolverine

I have enjoyed all three of the X-Men movies, which require the ability to seriously suspend your logical thought for about two hours. (If all Storm is gonna do is eventually zap somebody with a bolt of lightning to kill them, why the hell doesn't she do it at the beginning of the movie, instead of near the end of the movie - after getting the crap kicked out of her? Also, why doesn't she whip up some freezing weather at the end of X-2 in order to freeze Alkali Lake, or why doesn't Freez-o boy freeze the lake in order to save everyone from being drowned? Oh right, so Jean Grey can step outside of the ship to do it, and 'die' in the process. I guess they needed some emotional immediacy. Rant aside, I dig the series thus far.) I was also looking forward to Wolverine due to the Hugh Jackman factor. If anybody can look nice with that wierd haircut, it's him. In fact, he looks kind of prissy when clean cut, so he should never be allowed to shave beyond a 5 o'clock shadow, in my opinion.

However, Wolverine....ech. It was a combination of totally illogical strangeness and empty characters that failed to pull me into the movie. So, Wolverine and his brother not only heal from just about everything - but they don't age much past late-twenties adulthood either. After living for a couple hundred years, you would think they had bank-rolled enough dough so that they could support some sort of playboy lifestyle. Apparently not so in that they really dig fighting in wars, on the US side of things. They are their own men, they are rebels, until they are recruited by a shady military officer for a special ops mission and then they blindly follow along, killing possibly innocent civilians without any sort of objective for the mission. Wolverine can't take it, so he leaves the group. Flash forward a decade or two, Wolverine's brother Sabretooth is taking out members of the old rogue military unit. The shady military officer shows up to warn Wolverine, telling him about this special procedure that could make Wolverine more deadly than Sabretooth. Wolverine declines the offer...but hey, Wolverine's special lady gets offed by his brother, so then he agrees to the medical procedure in a fit of vengeful rage.

So if this wasn't spoiler enough, let me just lay it all out there. Lady friend isn't dead, it was all a setup to get Wolverine to undergo the metal-bonding-to-skeleton procedure. She's a mutant that can hypnotize with her touch. Then the procedure was all a setup to get Wolverine's DNA to make a superweapon? If all of these things were a setup - then why kill the other members of the special ops unit? Why not just get the love interest to love-hypnotize him into getting the procedure done? Why not just get his DNA in a less obvious fashion. They can get it off of a drinking glass for crying out loud.

Essentially, it was all an elaborate setup so that the series could try to explain why Wolverine has metal shooting out of his hands. Ultimately I didn't care. Since I was already watching the X-Men series, I'm already on board with buying that metal blades can shoot out of Hugh Jackman's hands. If I wasn't watching the X-Men series, because the metal-hands thing is too outlandish - Wolverine is not the movie that will bring me into the fold.

Also, Sabretooth is creepy. His special powers include growing gross yellow fingernails, quadripedal running, and growing totally inappropriate sideburns. There are also shots of his hands where his fingertips are huge and puffy, and reminded me of the worst creature special effects from those Leprechaun movies you've peeped on the USA channel when you're bored in October.

At one point in the movie, a doctor tells Wolverine "Focus on the reason you came here, that will help you through this procedure." I tried, but not even a nearly naked Hugh Jackman could save this lead-sinker.

Rating: Like gargling with salt water, kind of unpleasant and disappointing.