5. Not Exactly Retelling The Wolverine Backstory
Perhaps one of the biggest crimes committed in comic book adaptation history was the deliverance of
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and yes, I'm still not italicizing it). It's performance was panned as a shotty telling of the Wolverine character, a mockery for introducing cameos of some of our most beloved mutants like Gambit and Deadpool, and working against the central bearings that held (for the most part) the original trilogy together. But one of the most overlooked aspects of its failure was its focus on the origin of Wolverine; that's what made
X2 so entertaining was learning about Wolverine's past dealings with Stryker and the development of the Weapon X program. Bryan Singer's version of handling the tense backstory really fleshed out
X2 in a way that made Origins seem like a joke. Origins didn't need to do that, let alone be an origin story in the first place. It could have been a continuing adventure of Wolverine or further explaining the bizarre circumstances that surrounded the ending of
The Last Stand. It had no need to be what it unfortunately turned out to be. Because there's
nothing there to digest or learn from. It's just an empty shell of wasted talent and potential.
The Wolverine worked out great this way for not becoming another origin story. When first announced, that was my first impression: "oh no, here comes another massive failure to ruin the X-Men name." But after learning it was a sequel and not a retelling of the Wolverine backstory, I was joyous. While we do see Logan in Japan during the Nagasaki bombings in the 1960's, it lends more to the story ahead than to a disappointing avenue of wasted, meaningless understanding that the fans already know for the umpteenth thousandth time. Even that, the times in when it does take place in 1960's Japan are few and far between, covering a brief section of backstory that was already noted in the present.