Wolverine (Open Spoilers)

[Batman]

I'm surprised nobody has started a thread about the new movie.

I haven't seen the movie in theaters yet (the theaters are all closed here) but I saw the pirated version two weeks ago and loved it, I can't wait to go see the finished movie at the theater. I think it is on par with X-Men 2 as one of the best in the series.

For those of you that have seen both versions, is there much of a difference between the two? I heard that the theater version had from 5 to 20 minutes of extra scenes.

[OneCentStamp]

I saw it in the theater on Sunday. A mess of bulleted observations, since I'm too lazy to type a cogent paragraph:

- It was a competently done action film. I was white knuckling the armrests during a lot of the action scenes.
- Hugh Jackman is outstanding once again in the title role. Never hammy, always convincing.
- I really like Liev Schreiber, and he nailed the role of Sabertooth, but would it have hurt the filmmakers to put a little effort into making him look like Sabertooth? It's especially egregious since Sabertooth already appeared in another film in the same franchise, and he looked (long blond hair, shaggy catlike facial hair) like the classic comic book version. As it is, Liev looked like...Liev Scheiber with Hugh Jackman's facial hair.
- I don't know how I feel about the "Wolverine and Sabertooth are both 175 years old" plot device. No, scratch that. I know how I feel about it. I think it's lame.
- The special effects were good, but not consistently great. Gambit's powers were dazzling. So were Wolverine's bone claws. OTOH, Wolverine's adamantium claws, the first time he unsheathed them in the farmhouse bathroom, looked almost Photoshopped. Awful.
- Ultimately, I have to agree somewhat with Roger Ebert, who said something like "Why should I care about this guy? Nothing can hurt him and he can't be killed. Which basically makes him a vehicle for action scenes." I got that feel from this movie, in a way I didn't from Wolverine in the other X-Men movies.

Ultimately, it's a worthy addition to the franchise: like the others, it's a fun action movie with pretty good dialogue and characters, some jarring breaks from (the admittedly already disjointed) canon, and one or two plot holes that make my head want to explode.

[Baldwin]

OTOH, Wolverine's adamantium claws, the first time he unsheathed them in the farmhouse bathroom, looked almost Photoshopped. Awful.

A lot of people have mentioned this, and I have to agree. It's odd, considering that his claws looked just fine in the previous movies.

[parzival]

I didn't see the previous version, but I did see it in the theater last weekend. The general impression of most of us was - good quality film. Definitely worth the matinee price, and possibly worth full price.
Not disappointing, really, but not exactly mind-blowing. It probably was nearly as good as X2, though they're good in different ways. This tells a more in-depth story of one person, and the story is tolerably well done. I didn't quite like way Sabertooth was tied so closely to him. He also seemed to be presented as the more mentally strong (and evil almost by extension of that) brother, which really defied the previous movie portrayal.
I was also bothered by a minor point - is he Canadian or not? If so, it's hard to believe him heading down for both the US Civil War and Vietnam.

edited to add:
On the effects, they did look awfully mediocre. The motorcycle explosion looked even more like it was ripped from T2 - I mean, like they were using early 90's level technology.

[Batman]

He is definitely Canadian. It's part of his official backstory. As to how he could've fought fought for the Union, well, I'm sure they weren't very stringent on who's a citizen of where back then.

I liked Liev Schrieber as Sabertooth as well as his portrayal; the first version of him would not have been appropriate for this movie. My only complaint here is that I kept thinking of PBS every time he spoke. "Wade? Wade's gone... On Nova"

I'm going to go see it in theaters this weekend.

[MsRobyn]

I saw it on Saturday. I think it's the kind of movie that works if you don't set your expectations too high. I mean, it probably won't win any major awards, but the characters were, for the most part, well fleshed-out, the good guys were good and the bad guys were bad. It was also fun because the Island is supposed to be Three Mile Island, which is right up the river from me.

Of course, if you're into the whole lit-crit thing, the film sort of works as a metaphor for the Holocaust because of the rounding up of mutants and experimenting on them. But then, I've always thought that the whole X-Men story had a Jewish sensibility.

[annehere]

OTOH, Wolverine's adamantium claws, the first time he unsheathed them in the farmhouse bathroom, looked almost Photoshopped. Awful.

A lot of people have mentioned this, and I have to agree. It's odd, considering that his claws looked just fine in the previous movies.

Thirded. Otherwise I thought the movie was fantastic.