It looks like X-Men Origins: Wolverine is really going to happen as young Kodi Smit-McPhee was recently cast as the child version of everyone’s favorite feral hero. I have pretty strong feelings about this project and know where I would like to see it go, and thought best to share.
First of all, I like that a guy like Gavin Hood is directing this thing. He is known for more serious fare (Tsotsi, Rendition) and that’s good because if done right, Wolverine’s origin tale could be really something special. But as I’ve understood it, the film is going to focus heavily on the Weapon X series. That’s fine and dandy. But if the filmmakers were really smart, they’d also include Paul Jenkins, Joe Quesada, Bill Jemas and Andy Kubert’s Origin into the mix.
Origin takes place well before the Weapon X storyline and if the screenwriter, David Benioff (whom I believe is quite good), could somehow meld the two storylines into a 2 1/2 hour epic (if Armageddon can run for 150 minutes, so can this), we would have what is easily the classiest, most sophisticated and engaging comic book film ever. The problem is there would be very little Hugh Jackman in this portion of the film since it mostly involves adolescents and there’s relatively little action (although there is some significant violence).
In many ways, I’m asking for the impossible, but I’m still asking. See, the way I would have it is that you would use Jackman obviously in the Weapon X storyline. More than half of the movie should be his. This is the story that on the surface has the real juice and action potential. But then you use this Kodi kid in the earlier Origin flashes, using the two stories the way Francis Ford Coppola used Don and Michael Corleone’s two stories in The Godfather Part II, juxtaposing themes along the way. I don’t want to get too geeky here or talk over anyone’s head who may not be familiar with the story arcs but you use the diary to reconcile everything. There is even more than one character that appears in Origin that appears in Weapon X and they’re both pivotal.
Origin takes place in the late 1880s. It’s a coming of age tale mixed in with a mystery. Other than your not-so-standard origin tale, it’s a story about classes, family and brotherhood. If you need to excise stuff, you can condense things by ditching much of the later years Origin delves into, particularly once the characters enter the mining camp. But you bring the story up to the point where the Origin portion meets the Weapon X portion and the final shot has to be the burning of the diary and all the truth that will be lost to Wolverine forever.
Of course, Benioff and Hood I’m sure have thoughts of their own and the pressure to leave the “boring” non-X-Men-like stuff that Origin focuses almost entirely on would be substantial I’m sure. It’s not your typical “exciting” origin tale, I get that. However, it is rich in drama, character and conflict and that is exactly what would set this movie apart from every comic movie that preceded it.
