A Critical Review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

How the incompetent use of the 9 Ingredients can make one of the great franchise pictures into a box office failure, even though its franchise following gives it a colossal opening week …

… and how, with just a basic knowledge of how to correctly use the 9 Ingredients, it could have easily grossed over $250 million or more at the US box office alone

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the worst picture ever to have a colossal opening week. 

There are two reasons it had a gigantic opening, and there are two other reasons it will die a horrible death the Monday morning following its gigantic opening week.

The two reasons for its success:

1.      It was the tent-pole picture of a very successful franchise, with its millions of followers who will run to see any opening of their beloved franchise’s sequel.

2.      They bought a great opening with tens of millions of dollars of well made trailers and commercials that appealed to the hardcore following.

… but it will die Monday morning, dropping well over 50%, for two basic reasons.  (For a movie to be a repeat business picture it cannot drop more than 15% the second week of its release.  The more it drops below 15%, the less likely it will have “legs” and be a repeat business picture, or a strong “word of mouth” picture.).  We predict Wolverine will drop a staggering 70-75% the second week of its release.  

Why?

1.      Because it lacks many of the 9 Ingredients, and seriously violates others, which are essential to having both a repeat business picture and a strong word of mouth picture, it will fail miserably despite the film capitalizing on the powerful franchise following for an opening weekend.

2.      It is a classic example, a perfect example, of how not just having the 9 Ingredients present in a picture guarantees its success, but how leaving out a key ingredient, and in this case not just leaving out, not just violating a key ingredient, but actually massacring it, can by itself destroy a picture.

In Wolverine’s case, it so mutilates the ingredient of Credibility, the “What if?” ingredient that it makes the entire picture an absurd joke, and makes it impossible for Wolverine to do the $200 million to $250 million cumulative gross its colossal opening would indicate.

A basic knowledge of how to correctly use the 9 Ingredients – a beginner’s knowledge – would have turned Wolverine, with its huge franchise following, into one of the top 20-25 US grossing pictures of our time.

… and how the application of another key ingredient would have made Wolverine into one of the Top 25 US grossing films of all time.)

The Massacre of Credibility in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

… and how the correct use of one of the key ingredients could have made it a box office champion

The ingredient of Credibility is violated in the opening sequence, though only mildly it gives us a prelude as to the outrageous violations of Credibility that come throughout the film. 

Credibility and the “What if…?” Ingredient are the key tools to having an audience identify with any character in the film, or to turn against a character in a film depending on whether the character does what they believe the character with those given attributes and personality traits would do “if” they were in that exact same situation.  If an actress is supposed to be a loving mother holding and caring for her colic beset baby, and holds the baby exactly as every mother in the audience would hold their baby if they were colicky, the audience identifies with the actress and believes everything she is doing, saying and is happening to her.  On the other hand, if the actress holds the suffering baby in a way no real mother would ever hold such a colicky child, they turn against the actress and tune out of identifying with what’s going on in the picture.  They no longer feel what’s happening to the actress in the film is happening to them.  The projection of themselves into the character is broken.

This principle of Credibility and “What if?” is violated in the very first scene in Wolverine. 

In the opening the boy’s real father viciously murders his apparent step father and the one boy murders the father with the shotgun who for all we know may turn the shotgun on both the boys, their mother and themselves as the headlines tells us this happens every day.  At worst, it was an act of self-defense against a vicious cold-blooded murderer.

Yet the next scene we see the boys fleeing for their lives from dozens of police types hunting them down.  Why?  All Wolverine did was act in self defense to prevent a further slaughter, so why are they hunting them down as if he did a premeditated cold-blooded murder?  And where did so many of them come from in so short a time – literally seconds?  And how did the boys escape so many expert trackers right behind them?  Last of all, what happened to their mother?  Why did they just abandon her?

All troubling questions for the discerning viewer, but in this case the Marvel Comic book and violent video game fans of Wolverine do not ask themselves those kind of questions, but just go with the flow.  However, this serious lack of Credibility, this failure to ask the “What if…?” question is a sneak preview of the many outrageous breaches of Credibility and “What if?” that fill the rest of the picture – most of them too egregious for even the hardcore fan to swallow.

A word about Credibility.

You can set up ground rules at the beginning of your picture that violate Credibility, but will be acceptable if you stay within the boundaries you set.  Clear examples of this are not only Superman, Spiderman, Batman and the like, but also such classic comedies as Mrs. Doubtfire and Tootsie.

In all of these it stretches Credulity to the breaking point not to realize that Mrs. Doubtfire is really their father or her ex-husband, or to recognize that Tootsie is really a man.  The same is true in the Superman-type pictures that no one recognizes the clone-like similarities between Clark Kent and Superman.  But as long as an audience buys the deception, and the filmmakers stick with the ground rules of Credibility they establish at the beginning, the audience is quite content to go with the flow.  But if you exceed the boundaries that you’ve set up, it immediately turns audiences off. 

The classic example is Superman in which Superman is given the choice of losing his superhuman powers, but if he makes that choice he will never - ever – get those powers back again.  At this point in the picture we’re hooked, riveted, how is Superman going to get out of this?   And then the film does an incredible violation of this principle – a major breach of Credibility that he would never get his super human powers back again – he just goes into a crystal cave and gets all his powers back.  This is a major cheat on the audience, an astonishing breach of Credibility that makes the rest of the picture far less enjoyable to every member of the audience.

A similar absurd reneging of a Credibility promise made to the audience occurs in Wolverine.  After being submitted to an excruciatingly painful ordeal and submerged for hours in water, Wolverine has been filled with special material that makes him invulnerable, indestructible, beyond the reach of death or of being mortally wounded, yet in his very first physical fight he gets the “spit” beat out of him by first his brother, and then a new character arbitrarily thrown into the mix.  Forget the fact that my lack of knowledge about the X-Men characters led me to believe that they were already invulnerable, or almost so, making Wolverine absolutely invulnerable and then have him get so easily whomped in his first fight breaks Credibility, our belief that he was now indestructible.  If he’s so easily wounded, harmed, and whomped what was the purpose of making him into this superman-type character by filling him with some magical material?

This Credibility is further violated when we learn that there is a special bullet that can kill him.  This is straight out of our mythology in which only the silver bullet can kill the evil one.  It is so arbitrary, so ridiculous a ploy to destroy the premise that he’s invulnerable and make him now vulnerable that it goes back to the Achilles’ myth where the only spot he was vulnerable was in his heel by which he was held in the river of Eternal Life. 

These are just some of the massive number of absurdities, of violations of Credibility that run throughout this picture.  In the scene I just mentioned where he gets pummeled by his brother and another mutant, his brother who has been tracking him and even murdered his girlfriend to flush him out of hiding, now has him in an enclosed space in an alley, suddenly turns and walks away without killing him.  Why?

More violation with his brother killing the girlfriend.  If his brother wanted to kill Wolverine and knew where his girl was, he absolutely knew where Wolverine was and could have simply gone to him and confronted him.  To get within minutes of his house and then arbitrarily murder the girl and then leave to go sit in a bar is another absurdity.

Another example is Stryker puts Wolverine through this extremely painful technological process that makes him invulnerable so he can use him in some evil way, only to have him shout orders to have Wolverine killed as Wolverine emerges from the tank.  Why within seconds did Stryker go from wanting him invulnerable, indestructible, and immortal to wanting him killed?  It makes no sense whatsoever and continues turning this film into one of the silliest absurdities ever made. 

Another example – and there are dozens – is the motorcycle.  It stretches Credibility slightly that he coincidently runs into a barn in which this poor couple and their ramshackled barn just happened to have in it a beautiful Steve McQueen type motorcycle which our Hero will certainly use in a recreation of Steve McQueen’s heroic motorcycle ride in The Great Escape (??).  In the chase, Credibility is blown to smithereens.  Though he’s chased by a helicopter that has machine guns and missiles, a Hummer and a tank, all heavily armed to the teeth, and though they shoot 2,714 bullets at him on the bike, they never once hit him, and if you want to argue that the bullets were bouncing off of him because of his new indestructible capability, they never once hit the motorcycle either, dismantling it and causing it to crash.  They could have easily ended it with a missile, but they never even shot a missile at this motorcyclist they were so desperately trying to kill.  Amazingly he kills them all, including blowing up the helicopter. 

Credibility is just one of the many key ingredients that are missing from this picture.  It completely lacked:

·      Undeserved Misfortune which results in the audience having fear or pity for a character on screen.  We have a moment of fear and pity when the girlfriend gets killed, but then she disappears so we have no one left to fear and pity.  Yes, we have a moment of fear and pity for the kind old couple who rescues him, but they too are quickly dispatched so there’s no ongoing character in the film that we have fear and pity for. 

(Speaking of the nice old couple, it obliterates Credibility that they would see this naked man run into their barn and after talking to him for a few minutes – but not having him say anything that would reassure us he’s a good guy and not psychotic or drugged – they wrap him in their arms and treat him as a loving friend.  Again, absurd.)

·      It violates the Ingredient of Jeopardy and the Sword of Damocles because the Hero, having been made invulnerable and indestructible, is never really in Jeopardy.

·      It emasculates the ingredients of Credibility and “What if…?” time and again throughout the entire picture.  A small but critical example of this is when the girl is driving down the road and sees Victor standing in it, she stops and waits for him to stroll casually up to her car and go alongside the driver’s side to talk to her.  “What if…” that had been me or you?  Would we have sat there passively with this monster approaching us?  Hell no!  We would have floored it and sped away as fast as we could. 

·      The picture also emasculates Humor.  There is virtually none in the entire picture. 

·      Above all, it totally lacks the most important ingredient of all … the ingredient of being a Love Story.  (The all time US box office champion of $600 million is Titanic – which is nothing but a Love Story.)  While it has it for a few moments in the beginning, the girl is murdered and that’s the end of any Love Story in the film.  Destroying the Love Story element in the film is almost as bad as the unbelievable destruction of Credibility and “What if…?”

(See below for how the correct use of the Love Story ingredient could have pushed the cumulative gross of Wolverine to over $250 million or more US.)

There is much, much more to be said about the picture’s failure to include in it the 9 Ingredients.  Though it has some – like a Visible Villain You Love to Hate, a Conflict of Wills, and a Hero – it so brutally massacres Credibility and “What if…?” that the picture appeals to virtually no one, including many of its hardcore X-Men fans – so few that it will die a horrible death in its second week, and continue its freefall in the weeks that follow.

Wolverine is a classic example of how you can take a franchise picture with a great following of millions, and massacre it by your failure to include the necessary 9 Ingredients, or even worse, so seriously violate one of the key ingredients as to destroy the picture even for its hardcore fans so they won’t come back again, and they won’t spread great word of mouth about it. 

How the correct use of one Key Ingredient could have made Wolverine use its mega-opening as a launch pad to a $250 million or more grossing picture

That Ingredient is still the most powerful one of all – the Love Story

Every investor, studio executive, producer, director, writer and star should never forget the unbelievable power to attract audiences to line up in droves at the box office is the Ingredient of making your film a Love Story, or having the Love Story be an essential part of your film.  Never forget the unbelievable power of the Love Story in Titanic.

Here is how with the basic addition of the Love Story ingredient Wolverine could have become a $250 million or more grossing picture.

Start with “What if…?”  What if instead of Victor killing the girlfriend just as we’re beginning to identify with her and Wolverine, and really like her and care for her, instead of killing her Victor kidnaps her and they hold her in a place where her life hangs in the balance and Wolverine is desperate to save her, willing to do almost anything.  Now you would have both the girl and Wolverine in real Jeopardy, and the girl with a Sword of Damocles over her head because she hasn’t  attained invulnerability and immortality. 

The villains could demand a dozen things from Wolverine in order to keep her alive and unharmed, starting with him subjecting himself to the excruciating pain he underwent to become the invulnerable, indestructible man for their killing purposes.  Imagine all of the things that actually happened in Wolverine for no really solid reason except a continuation of the good guy vs. bad guy theme taking place because he was desperately trying to find out where she was being kept and rescue her.  She could have been put in one terrifying Jeopardy after another as he continued his desperate search to placate the evil ones and rescue her at the same time … and the ending when he finally succeeds in rescuing her and the two lovers are reunited would be a magnificent emotional ending that would deeply satisfy every Wolverine fan.

Just the addition of the great Love Story and the elimination of all the violations of Credibility would have made Wolverine satisfy its millions of franchise fans hoping for a magnificent, emotionally satisfying ending that the brief moment of the Love Story promised.  To have it aborted and never satisfy was a tragic mistake in creating a box office mega-hit which Wolverine was destined to be, but was badly botched by those who made the creative decisions that resulted in the current Wolverine film.

And the correct usage of other ingredients could have made it on the list of America’s All Time Box Office Champions.