Wolverine!

I went to see Wolverine today, and for what its worth, I did enjoy the movie. It is your typical summer popcorn flick. There was some good and some bad. But I would say in the pantheon of X-men movies, it fits somewhere below the original X-men and well above X-men 3.

The good:

Hugh Jackman. He is Wolverine. He captures his animalistic nature and pulls off another great performance.

Supporting Cast. They are all well in their rolls. Liev Schriber as Sabertooth is an unusual choice, but I think it works and he does a great job. Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson. We needed more of the Merc with a Mouth. His onscreen presence is fleeting and we needed more. The only supporting cast member I did not like was the guy who plays Striker. He didn't have the same presence as Brian Cox did in X-2.

Special Effects. This is a double edged sword as some of them were really good, but others were just plain bad. However, the de-aging of Patrick Stewart while not great is not as bad as people say.

Story. Call it what you will, but the overall story was not bad. It wasn't great, but it did its job to move things along.

The bad:

Special Effects. In some cases it looks as though they mailed it in. I mean, it is that bad. There were instances where they used green screen and should have just used a set or something.

Sets. I mean they looked like sets in this movie, not locations. I want to believe you are there, not in the backlot of some location.

Changes. I mean we are talking about some of the best known characters in the Marvel collection. Don't change things. There is no need. Changing Deadpool to be Weapon XI, just plain dumb. Killing all the team members, dumb. Emma Frost, dumb. I mean they needed to stick to the source on this one and they could not go wrong.

All in all, I give it a B for what it was and what it tried to be. Had they stuck to the story and did it that way, I bet they get an A across the board.