X-Men Origins: Wolverine


X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a 2009 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Wolverine. It is the fourth installment in the X-Men film series, the first Wolverine solo film, and a prequel to X-Men. The film was directed by Gavin Hood and written by David Benioff and Skip Woods. Hugh Jackman stars as Wolverine, alongside Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, and Ryan Reynolds. The film's plot details Wolverine's childhood as James Howlett, his time with Major William Stryker's Team X, the bonding of Wolverine's skeleton with the indestructible metal adamantium during the Weapon X program and his relationship with his half-brother Victor Creed.
The film was mostly shot in Australia and New Zealand, with Canada also serving as a location. Filming took place from January to May 2008. Production and post-production were troubled, with delays due to the weather and Jackman's other commitments, an incomplete screenplay that was still being written in Los Angeles while principal photography rolled in Australia, conflicts arising between director Hood and Fox's executives over the film's direction, and an unfinished workprint being leaked on the internet a month before the film's debut.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released on May 1, 2009, by 20th Century Fox. The film received mixed reviews from critics. It opened at the top of the North American box office and grossed $179 million in the United States and Canada and $373 million worldwide. Two subsequent films, The Wolverine and Logan, were released in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Beginning with Deadpool, Reynolds would star as a new version of his Origins character, Wade Wilson. Later, both Jackman and Reynolds would star together in the 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine.

Plot

In 1845, James Howlett, a boy living in the Northwest Territories, witnesses his father's murder by groundskeeper Thomas Logan. Rage activates the boy's mutation: bone claws that protrude from his knuckles, and he impales Thomas, who reveals that he is James' biological father before dying. James flees with Thomas' other son, Victor Creed, James' elder half-brother, who has sharp claw nails and a healing factor mutation like James. They spend the next century fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, the increasingly violent Victor attempts to rape a Vietnamese woman and kills a senior officer who tries to stop him. James returns to Victor and rushes to defend him. The pair is sentenced to execution by firing squad, which they survive. Major William Stryker offers them membership in Team X, a group of mutants including marksman Agent Zero, katana-wielding mercenary Wade Wilson, teleporter John Wraith, super-strong and invulnerable Fred Dukes, and technopath Chris Bradley. They join the team for a few missions, with James using the alias Logan, but Victor and half of the group's lack of self-control and empathy causes Logan to leave.
Six years later, Logan works as a logger in Canada, where he lives with his girlfriend Kayla Silverfox. Stryker and Zero approach Logan, reporting that Wade and Bradley have been killed, revealing someone is targeting the team. Logan refuses to rejoin Stryker, but after finding Kayla's bloodied body in the woods, he realizes that Victor is responsible. He finds Victor at a bar and loses the subsequent fight. Stryker explains that Victor has gone rogue and offers Logan a way to become strong enough to get his revenge. Logan undergoes a painful operation to reinforce his skeleton with adamantium, a virtually indestructible metal. Stryker orders that Logan's memory be erased so he can be used as their personal weapon, but Logan overhears and escapes to a nearby farm, where an elderly couple takes him in. Zero kills the couple the following morning and tries to kill Logan, but Logan takes down Zero's helicopter, killing him as he swears to kill both Stryker and Victor.
Logan locates Wraith and Dukes at a boxing gym in Las Vegas. Dukes, who has ballooned in size due to a guilt-induced eating disorder, explains that Victor still works for Stryker, hunting down mutants for Stryker to experiment on at his new laboratory, located at "The Island". Dukes also mentions Remy "Gambit" LeBeau, the only one who escaped from the island and therefore knew its location. Wraith and Logan find Gambit in New Orleans, and then both fight Victor, who kills Wraith and extracts his DNA. Agreeing to help release mutants that Stryker has captured, Gambit takes Logan to Stryker's facility on Three Mile Island. Logan learns that Kayla is alive, having been forced by Stryker into surveilling him in exchange for her sister's safety. However, Stryker refuses to release her sister and denies Victor the adamantium bonding promised for his service, claiming that test results revealed Victor would not survive the operation. Stryker activates Wade, now known as Weapon XI, a "mutant killer" with the powers of multiple mutants.
As Logan and Victor fight off Weapon XI, Kayla is mortally wounded while leading the captive mutants to Professor Charles Xavier and safety. After Logan kills Weapon XI, Stryker arrives and shoots Logan in the head with an adamantium bullet, rendering him unconscious. Before Stryker can shoot Kayla, she grabs him and uses her mutant power to persuade him to turn around and walk away until his feet bleed, then succumbs to her injuries. Logan regains consciousness but has lost his memory. He notices his dog tags read "Logan" on one side and "Wolverine" on the other; he pauses upon noticing Kayla's body but does not recognize her.
In a mid-credits scene, Stryker is detained for questioning by MPs in connection with the death of General Munson, whom Stryker murdered to protect his experiment. In the theatrical post-credits scene, Logan is at a bar in Japan with the waitress asking if he's drinking to forget. He then answers : "No, I'm drinking to remember". In the home media post-credits scene, Weapon XI's hand crawls out of the rocks and touches his still living head.

Cast

  • Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine:
A Canadian mutant and future X-Men member. Jackman became producer of the film via his company Seed Productions and earned $25 million for the film. Jackman underwent a high intensity weight training regimen to improve his physique for the role. He altered the program to shock his body into change and also performed cardiovascular workouts. Jackman noted that no digital touches were applied to his physique in a shot of him rising from the tank within which Wolverine has his bones infused with adamantium.
Casting directors cast Sivan as the young Wolverine after seeing him sing at the Channel Seven Perth Telethon, and he was accepted after sending in an audition tape. Kodi Smit-McPhee was originally cast in the role, when filming was originally beginning in December 2007, but he opted out to film The Road. McPhee later played Nightcrawler in X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix.
  • Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed:
Logan's mutant half-brother and fellow soldier, who becomes his nemesis Sabretooth. Jackman and Hood compared Wolverine and Victor's relationship to the Borg–McEnroe rivalry in the world of tennis, in that they are enemies but they can't live without each other. Creed represents the pure animal and embodies the darker side of Wolverine's character, the aspect Wolverine hates about himself. These characters are two sides to the same coin. Tyler Mane, who played him in X-Men, had hoped to reprise the role. Jackman worked with Schreiber before, in the 2001 romantic comedy Kate & Leopold and described him as having a competitive streak necessary to portray Creed. They egged each other on set to perform more and more stunts. Schreiber put on of muscle for the part, and described his character as the most monstrous role he ever played. As a child, he loved the Wolverine comics because of their unique "urban sensibility". Schreiber had studied to be a fight choreographer and wanted to be a dancer like Jackman, so he enjoyed working out their fight scenes.
Schreiber was originally in negotiations for the part, while Brian Cox, who played the character in X2, wanted to reprise the role. He believed computer-generated imagery, similar to the program applied to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the opening flashback of X-Men: The Last Stand, would allow him to appear as the younger Stryker. Huston liked the complex Major Stryker, who "both loves and hates mutants because his son was a mutant and drove his wife to suicide. So he understands what they're going through, but despises their destructive force." He compared the character to a racehorse breeder, who rears his mutant experiments like children but abandons them when something goes wrong. His son is shown to be frozen at the Weapon X facility and the reason Stryker starts the Weapon XI program.
  • will.i.am as John Wraith:
A teleporting mutant. This was will.i.am's major live-action film debut. Although he initially did not get on with the casting director, he got the role because he wanted to play a mutant with the same power as Nightcrawler. He enrolled in boot camp to get into shape for the part. When filming a fight, he scarred his knuckles after accidentally punching and breaking the camera. Quinton Jackson was offered the role but turned it down.
Wolverine's Native American mutant love interest and pawn of Stryker. She has the powers of tactile hypnosis which allows her to control or convince others to do the things she wants them to by physical touch. However, Victor is immune to telepathy. Describing her role, Collins said "I had to play off all the guys and their testosterone-heavy abilities. But I learned that the female powers of persuasion easily trump fangs and knives and guns." Michelle Monaghan turned down the role because of scheduling conflicts, despite her enthusiasm to work with Jackman. In an article by Indian Country Today, the casting of Lynn Collins as the Blackfoot/Niitsítapi comics character Silver Fox was cited as part of a return by Hollywood to an era of 'redface', a very old trend of casting non-Indigenous people as Indigenous.
A mutant with a nearly-indestructible layer of skin. In the film's early sequences, he is a formidable fighting man, but years later, due to a poor diet, has gained an enormous amount of weight and trains as a boxer to lose weight. Logan taunts Dukes about the whereabouts of Stryker and when he calls him "Bub", Dukes mishears this as "blob" and starts fighting him. A fan of the X-Men movies, Durand contacted the producers for a role as soon as news of a new film came out. The suit went through six months of modifications, and had a tubing system inside to cool Durand down with ice water. David Harbour auditioned for the role, but was turned down for being too fat at the time.
  • Dominic Monaghan as Chris Bradley:
A mutant who can manipulate electricity and electronic objects. It was originally reported that Monaghan was going to play Barnell Bohusk / Beak.
A Cajun thief who has the ability to convert the potential energy of any object he touches into kinetic energy, forcing it to explode. The size of the object determines the magnitude of the resulting explosion. He is also skilled in the use of a staff and happens to be very agile. Due to the nature of his power, he displays supernatural durability, being able to take Wolverine's elbow to his face and return to fight moments later. When asked about his thoughts on the character, Kitsch had said, "I knew of him, but I didn't know the following he had. I'm sure I'm still going to be exposed to that. I love the character, I love the powers, and I love what they did with him. I didn't know that much, but in my experience, it was a blessing to go in and create my take on him. I'm excited for it, to say the least." Josh Holloway was initially cast in the role but was dropped after the studio wanted someone ten years younger for the role. Chris Hemsworth came close to playing the role, but lost out to Kitsch.
A mutant member of the Weapon X program and a superhumanly accurate assassin with enhanced agility and reflexes, expert tracking abilities and lethal sniper skills. Producer Lauren Shuler Donner says on the DVD commentary that Agent Zero has no scent which makes him difficult for Logan to sense. An X-Men fan, Henney liked the role of a villain because "there are no restrictions playing it, allowing you freely to express it, so you can act how you want to". He described the film as more realistic and cruder than the X-Men trilogy.
  • Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson:
A wisecracking mercenary with lethal swordsmanship skill and peak athleticism who is later transformed into Weapon XI. Initially believed to have been killed by Victor, Weapon XI is a genetically altered mutant killer. He has powers taken from other mutants killed or kidnapped in the film, including the power to shoot concussive energy beams from his eyes, healing factor, teleportation, and retractable blades in his arms. He is referred to by Stryker as "the pool, the mutant killer: Deadpool" because the compatible powers of the other mutants have been 'pooled' together into one being. This interpretation of Deadpool is lacking his traditional red suit and mask, and also includes a mouth sewn shut. Reynolds portrays Weapon XI for close-ups, standing shots, and simple stunts while Scott Adkins is used for the more complicated and dangerous stunts. Originally, Reynolds was only going to cameo as Wilson but the role grew after he was cast. Reynolds played a different version of the character in Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and Deadpool & Wolverine.
Additionally, Tim Pocock portrays the young Scott Summers. Max Cullen and Julia Blake portrayed Travis Hudson and Heather Hudson, an elderly couple who take care of Wolverine after his adamantium bonding. The Hudsons are heavily adapted from the comics' James MacDonald and Heather Hudson. Tahyna Tozzi portrays Emma, a mutant with the power to turn her skin into diamond, who in the film is Silverfox's sister. The film depiction of Emma was originally intended to be Emma Frost. However it was noted that she does not exhibit the character's traditional telepathic abilities. It is later revealed by Bryan Singer that this character is actually not Emma Frost, but instead a mutant with similar abilities. January Jones portrayed the actual Emma Frost in the next film, X-Men: First Class. Wolverine's parents also appeared in the film; Aaron Jeffery portrayed Thomas Logan while Alice Parkinson portrayed Elizabeth Howlett and Peter O'Brien appeared as John Howlett. The film includes numerous cameo appearances of younger versions of characters from the previous films, including Jason Stryker. There was a cameo for a young Storm, which can be seen in the trailer, but it was removed from the released film. Patrick Stewart also makes an uncredited cameo as a younger Professor Charles Xavier who appeared to have not yet lost the use of his legs. Asher Keddie played Dr. Carol Frost. Poker player Daniel Negreanu has a cameo. Phil Hellmuth wanted to join him but was unable because he committed to an event in Toronto. X-Men co-creator Stan Lee said he would cameo, but Lee ended up not appearing in the film as he could not attend filming in Australia.