Half in the Bag Episode 59: The Wolverine vs. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

half in the bag whatever happened to meg Ryan oh yes who died stick it in your slot your wet slot well yes that's what I intend to do except why is the slot wet I'm just there to deliver my package what oh this is a sex phone line I'm sorry I thought I was calling the post office okay I'm sorry for the misunderstanding you'll still have to charge me $2.99 per minute all right ma'am you have a nice day okay thanks bye so Jay how's your summer going oh pretty good but you know I've been so busy here at work I haven't had time to see too many movies mm-hmm did you get a chance to see we're the Millers now what about the new hit animated Disney Pixar film that's wholly original called planes now what about the new hit animated film that's wholly original called Smurfs 2 now what about that new matt LeBlanc film called Elysium now what about the new hit film two-gun now now what about fast in the Furious part seven now Oh what about that new now in our dough DiCaprio film the great gets been no but you know what I did see The Wolverine you mean the first one Wolverine x-men origin no no they made a new one it came out the summer they're made another one they did oh that's right I just saw it I mean trying to find you over a year it's an honor to meet the Wolverine that's not who I am anymore Wolverine or though Wolverine is the second attempt to make a movie just about Wolverine except for the first three x-men movies oh snap oh no you didn't you ain't all that and a bag of potato chips wasn't there a critic that said that the first Wolverine movie was all that and a bag of potato chips now I could go on and on about this film because it was indeed all that and a bag of potato chips in this movie Logan travels to Japan to say goodbye to a Japanese man his character wouldn't care less about saying goodbye to while he's there he discovers some kind of sinister plot about something action happens romance happens there's fighting and shooting and then all is resolved at the end when blow Wolverine throws a giant robot off a cliff so Jay what did you think about x-men origins The Wolverine oh no we'll get to that too x-men origins why we happen to have a copy of it right here oh yeah we actually this is actually an arbor district libraries copy I don't know how we ended up with it I don't recall ever going to the Ann Arbor Library but I've done a lot of crazy things in in drunken blackouts yeah yeah I think I've gotten completely wasted and ended up at the Ann Arbor District Library and just binge bought DVDs too well you know who always ends up at libraries when they've had too much to drink Rip Torn getting back on track what did you think of The Wolverine I actually like this movie good all you do is like Marvel movies and hate on DC I do yeah like you you loved Thor and Captain America and Iron Man 2 and you hated The Dark Knight Rises and the Dark Knight oh is warring even a Marvel character I don't know these things I don't know comic books I have no allegiance to any particular comic book brand but no I like the movie a lot it's is very restrained for a summer movie for the most part it kind of turns to schlock at the ends but a lot of the movie is played it's serious but not like Christopher Nolan dark brooding Batman serious it's kind of like a complete 180 from the last Wolverine movie which I just recently saw in preparation for this discussion I never saw it before but it's kind of like going from Batman and Robin to Batman Begins in a way yeah let's um let's just cut right to the chase this review is going to talk about the Wolverine and x-men origins Wolverine and we're going to compare and contrast not because movies should be compared and contrasted to one another it's because the Wolverine is essentially a second attempt at making a Wolverine feature the first one was an origin story obviously this one is not an origin story so it's not really a remake or reboot or anything like that because obviously it stars um what's his name Theodore Miller who is the Australian man who's in these films everyone my name please check out this brand-new launch trailer from the Wolverine can you really not remember his name I'm not gonna tell you don't look at the Box Hugh Jackman I just look at his face oh Jesus Christ obviously this one star suit Jackman in both so it's the same character it's not like the the Mark Ruffalo switcheroo x-men origins is still canon I assume I there there's things that don't coincide with the other movies exactly timeline timeline wise yeah but we're gonna compare these two and critically and overwhelmingly I think people like this new one a lot better people don't seem to like x-men origins Wolverine but I'm in the minority in that so I I will um I will take the counter position but as far as the Wolverine goes I'm on the fence on it mmm I I thought it was a well made movie very straightforward on the first action scene in it is like a shootout at a funeral and it's pretty simple the only part where it turns floppy is when they're riding on the high speed train but even that yeah I guess we should say there's a sequence certainly after that shootout where yeah it's Wolverine another guy fighting on top of a bullet train but even that it wasn't like I was thinking of the The Matrix Reloaded when they're jumping around and flipping everywhere on top of the semi and and this one it's there's more of a logic to it like he's Wolverine a lot of time he's just sitting on top of the Train like waiting for the right moment there's more of a strategy to it it's not just crazy flipping around and jumping and shooting I I found myself not caring all that much about what was happening on-screen and and so I wasn't pulled into the movie technically fine you know performance wise but it's like and I think this film was based on a series of comic books like it wasn't just a script that someone wrote right it's based on an actual story from yeah and when I saw the trailer like I always think in terms of marketing and and like a committee around a table and and people can say that we're wrong about this and they'll say it was in the comic book or whatever but I see Wolverine and a 10 foot tall robotic samurai warrior and he's fighting them and I'm like okay robot Iron Man series has been successful we have to shove that in here well and that's kind of where my brain goes well that's what that ending felt like with the giant samurai robot monster thing it reminded me of the end of Iron Man 1 or it's like in this the the the samurai thing is made out of adamantium right and so it's like the end of Iron Man oh now Iron Man has to fight a bigger Iron Man now Wolverine has to fight a bigger adamantium monster your grandfather called me a ronin samurai wanna master Qwest no reason Allah was he right I don't know I guess we'll get into spoilers here if you haven't seen the movie by now it's been out for like four weeks so you know that's your own problem but you know the old old Japanese man I see this is where like I'm watching this movie and it's a simple movie made for children about a superhero it's not you know and I'm sitting there watching it I'm like I don't understand what's happening and maybe that's just me but the old man he wants Wolverines powers I guess to to turn himself younger and heal himself right because he's on his deathbed um and then uh the January Jones character she her name's Viper I think because venom is a different character her name is Viper she's a she's a lizard lady and she also can steal your powers I guess kind of like rogue and she she sucks an orange glow into his mouth and it's like ah and he's a guy then after that he loses his ability to heal and then later on we discover that the real reason he lost his ability to heal was because there was like a matrix spider thing attached to his heart and then later we discovered that the old man lives inside of the robotic samurai suit I guess to keep him alive he's until he could get to Wolverine yes and then he in order to steal Wolverines powers he had three drills conveniently placed on the robot Samurai that drilled into Wolverine's claw holes and that sucked his power out of his claw hole there's something oddly sexual in that imagery - yeah and so it's like okay well Wolverines power natural mutant abilities is rapid healing and he also can grow bone claws out of his hands the adamantium is not as natural power he gets that in a science experiment which is which is shown in this film as well as in x-men - also an x-men x-men origins Wolverine is the reboot of x-men part 2 so Wolverine gets his bones covered in adamantium and that makes his rickety bone claws turn into razor-sharp claws for summer somehow I don't know how but um so so the old man lives inside of a suit which happens to look like a samurai it couldn't have just been a like a suit it had to been a samurai suit made of adamantium for some reason he didn't want to cover his own bones with adamantium he just wanted to live inside of an adamantium suit I because he thought it was gonna be temporary but why build a suit I haven't made out of adamantium unless he was expecting to fight the Wolverine but anyways the suit is equipped with three drills that are meant to drill into Wolverines and claw holes to seal his power I thought the other girl stole his power by sucking orange glows into his mouth but instead but maybe that orange glow was a way of shooting the robot into his heart that's what I took yeah as happening so really the old man he just wanted to be have immortality and he just wanted Logans healing abilities so what is the adamantium have anything to do with anything x-men Snicket what they did to me what I am can't be undone Wolverine goes over there right and he wants to help the old man or wants to say goodbye to him right that's fine and then he kind of falls for his granddaughter and the only reason he falls for is because she was mistreated and then she runs away yes and then they immediately care about each other and then he immediately cares about her instead of just going to [ __ ] this and going home yeah that's a Wolverine we've done but he's running after her and he's trying to protect her and then um and then this like they fall in love and and I I just I just don't I don't get his motivation I don't care really about this whole little adventure so it's yeah I liked the I liked the setting I liked the action and sparse use of action and that's the stuff I really liked and I like Hugh Jackman is is Wolverine so for me that's what carried the movie some movies you get hung up on it some movies are about the plot this really wasn't no but it wasn't about anything else either there's about Wolverine that's a thing and that and that's that's where I like x-men origins better oh my god a little introduction on x-men origin this is this is this might be I don't know this is this is just a terrible film spoilers it's crap I don't know what happened after Bryan Singer departed you have you have the original x-men trilogy right x-men one is is is a fine little film it's what kicked off the superhero movies 99 that's how old it is yeah it's almost 20 [ __ ] years old holy [ __ ] um the x-men the first x-men movie little cheap low-budget thing the most exciting thing that happens is is Wolverine fights Sabretooth on top of the Statue of Liberty and then the someone is tied up somewhere it's so cheap but it's like okay this is good the second one and and so it's almost it's very comparable to the Star Wars trilogy I'm sure you got the first one a little low budget that low budget comparatively speaking but a little smaller budget action movie it does well it sets the stage x-men 2 is the umpire strike back of that series it's it's very well done it's it's classy its restrained its it's elegant it's it's exciting it's it's the best of the three the third film not so good it has all the action you could possibly want with a mutant action movie but it's The Return of the Jedi of the three it's trying to throw too many things in there yeah and the characters get lost in the shuffle character motivations get lost in the shovel and that's when they got the rented director Brett rapper oh good old Bret red yeah cuz Brian singer wanted to go off and make an even worse movie called Superman Returns and he took Cyclops with them so then after that everything went downhill these movies started to have the production value of like a television show this movie and whatever x-men first class yeah the some of the visual effects in these movies are shockingly bad I had not seen x-men origins Wolverine until preparing this discussion and I was amazed I I would say I liked this movie too in the sense that I thought it was terrible and amusing the effects in this are just awful there's a CG Patrick Stewart that shows up and then all the little mutants run towards him and the shot of them running away from the camera is just the worst thing I've seen in a major release and yeah and then he his mouth moves andele and it looks like mr. clean yeah like it's a whoa it's so bad looking and then there's also the the famous claw scene this was shocking to the scene in the bathroom his claws come out and it looks like Who Framed Roger Rabbit right yeah there's one shot where the claws come out which is like okay that's a computer graphic that needs to be because they're not gonna come out that fast with a physical prop but then the next couple of shots are him just kind of standing there holding them it's like don't you have the prop ones and they're even in frame like how hard would it be just to get a physical prop and put it in frame but they and they and it looks like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and then the I think the worst shot in the movie is gambits goes up on a fire escape and Logan's oh yeah and then it's like a Looney Tunes yeah it's like a little bit like he's chopping at the at the ladder and it's like cutting apart he's a good good dude it's awful um and then of course um will.i.am is a character in this for some reason I'm pretty sure they cast will.i.am because of his great acting abilities we let it alone con Logan he's just fantastic in that Maria this is special place inhale for the things we did he had to change his name to will I act after this compare these to an entertainment value Jam okay begin uh well it's this movie is entertaining in the bad movie sense the laughing at the cheap effects and the bad acting and the Wolverine is more entertaining as a real movie even if the script isn't the greatest I liked the action in it a lot more than the action in those yeah well I'm not speaking of the script in terms of Wow like why did this character do this this doesn't make sense I think I just I was just a little disinterested in the Wolverine because it was just it was mainly motivation it's like what's happening and why and this it's like okay Wolverine he joins a band of mercenaries doing some illegal things in the beginning he kind of learns of his morality there he goes into hiding he falls in love with this lady and then there's this like rivalry with him and Sabretooth and then it's like they go they go to New Orleans they go here and there's a lot more mutant characters in it there's more variety and I get his motivation in this a lot more it's it's very clear you know it's revenge based but then there's a little more going on possibly the worst executed movie now I thought every single aspect that this film was just incredible I give this movie an A+ well they're going for two completely different things this is going for over-the-top action comic-book ii you know goofiness and the other one seems to be more of a it fails in some respects because you mentioned the lack of understanding the motivation of the character but it really seems to be going for a stripped down sort of simplistic I like how simple the story is that it's just Wolverine he goes to Japan these things happen to him the end it's not like a globe-trotting adventure or anything like that no but I would like that I would like that if the plot was a little more complicated I've always wanted to see like I think it was after the Batman movie started up um where it was like you know Tim Burton's first Batman movie and then it's like once like George Clooney and what's-his-face took over Val Kilmer and it's like I can't we just have like a good Batman story so it always becomes villain of the week like he's got a fight though and and like I want to see Batman dealing with like seedy underworld of crime and corruption without a giant robot at the end well that's what makes x-men 2 so great yeah that movie it's not about some sort of big villain they have to fight at the end it's just about these two sort of opposing ideologies so you have the two main characters that have different views on everything and that's where the drama and the tension comes from when they said something about the Japanese gang Yong Yamoto yeah hero yeah ku Yakuza Yakuza because the thing that's very insensitive it is it yeah this is the the Japanese crime lords Odie's well even better like when they mentioned Yakuza like the Japanese underworld crime lords or whatever it's like oh cool super intricate plot about betrayal and murder in bed and that's just as a guy once again a robot suit now that's the problem that was a problem yes you're gonna make a movie about Wolverine going to Japan getting entangled with the Japanese underworld make it cool for two extremes this one ends with Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting Deadpool back it back but anyway they fight them and they're fighting them on top of a tower of a nuclear reactor yeah and it's like they don't end up there Wolverine just goes up there yeah they just gotta do it he's clotting like what does he do even because he goes let's see if you could fight me up here let's up here like why'd you go up there you have the horrible disadvantage like you know this guy could disappear to reappear in places don't don't go up there just fight them out in the open but it's but it's like it's like that silliness I liked if it wasn't the bad visual effects is what makes this movie just kind of look dumb and corny yeah in both origins and the Wolverine he doesn't say a lot of smartass things he doesn't really have anyone to play off that sort of sarcastic quality that he has as part of an ensemble which is what makes him better in those x-men movies that that's my biggest problem is that I don't mind watching a singular Wolverine adventure but Wolverine is when he's forced to work with a team especially one that Cyclops is in charge of right uh Wolverine is the outcast he's the standalone he's the guy that does things by himself he says bub [ __ ] you I'm gonna go up and do this so when the movie revolves around him it makes him a little less interesting because he has to make those heroic character choices that that he wouldn't normally do yes so there's no there's no interplay there's no tension there's no butting heads it's just Wolverine let's talk about the best part of the Wolverine it was not in the film oh yeah the post-credits scene was far more exciting than anything in the movie spoilers Wolverine is leaving Japan in the airport and all the metal objects start floating around and you know what that means this is when you get goosebumps yeah the magneto is there they pulled him out of hospital I think and propped him up on something so Sir Ian McKellen I have a ripe old age 112 is back as magneto and and then he's like Oh Logan I see you're at the airport and he's like you know he's holding Wolverine in place cuz he can holds a adamantium in place and then Wolverine says what do you want bub and then all the people freeze and you're just like oh no we know what that means oh snap it's Professor X and then Patrick Stewart's back is Professor X somehow he's actually in a wheelchair in real life now yeah now he's not a computer-generated character but Wolverine rightfully asks how is this possible you were turned into [ __ ] dust and then he says don't worry about it well let me ask you this why was that scene far more exciting than anything else in the Wolverine is it because those two characters are way more interesting than the Wolverine yes okay Wolverine is is a piece of a larger puzzle it's like the Boba Fett movie yeah you know I will Breen is a little more interesting than Boba Fett obviously but he's that cool character that it should be used here and there as you know and then when you get too much into him it kind of ruins the the mystique of him not an x-men pun um so so it's like okay I'm done with Wolverine yes he's a tormented character yes he has nightmares he ah done done I'm more interested in learning more about Cyclops all three x-men films are about Wolverine he has two singular films now Bryan Singer's back he failed at making a Superman film now he's back to make x-men Days of Future past which is a comic book series based on an alternate future it's gonna be exciting as long as the whole movie isn't just about Wolverine again yeah yeah which it will be so J which movie is the best of the worst well this movie is the worst it was entertaining and how bad it was but as far as the real movie goes I enjoyed the Wolverine more I don't need to see any more Wolverine movies certainly but if you want to see a more straightforward serious representation of the Wolverine Wolverine ghost to Japan then that's what the new over een is until it turns to garbage at the end I want to see Wolverine goes to Jamaica they're gonna plan a Beetlejuice sequel where Beetlejuice goes to Hawaii so x-men origins Wolverine versus the x-men vs. the Wolverine what are these movies not to repeat myself too much but I got to go with apples and oranges here um it depends on what you're looking for this has a little more visual variety a lot more characters that that that we all know and love there's a cameo by young Cyclops a cartoon Professor Xavier shows up and you see I think you see what's her face the January Jones Kara I think the other white queen is in this even though it doesn't line up with the timeline of first class doesn't doesn't but um the the blob the gambit which is which is a whole nother series that they could exploit for cash sure why not gambit is a pretty popular character I don't know if they'll get a Taylor Kitsch to be him again the guy who plays gambit in this is the guy who was in such films as John Carter of Mars and battleship so his career is over but you know you see him in this and that's sort of a draw for comic book fans to Lots is it a draw flee ruin these characters though I don't think the gambit characters ruined it is silly that he shows up at the end with the little airplane it saves the day I don't know he drank he flies Wolverine to to the location by with an airplane he just happens to have yes and then a little cartoon Wolverine falls out of the plane and tumbles across the water there are real tough choices Jay the real tough choices I might have to go with this thought Wow no wonder the Ann Arbor District Library didn't want their DVD back actually I checked it out six years ago hello I a white and late fees Buddha buddy Samurai sayonara so what's social injustice do you think the new x-men movie will be an analogy for hmm the the we are the 99% hmm gay marriage possibly sure gun control mmm that's a good one yeah abortion well whatever it is I'm sure they'll handle it in the most heavy-handed ham-fisted way possible I'm sure it will be Oh lightning-fast VCR repair we take forever to fix your VCR how can I help you I see I see thank you and was that those mr. fling kid and you'll never guess where he's at

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 953,860

Keywords: redlettermedia, red, letter, media, half in the bag, half, in, bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, wolverine, x-men, origins, movie, review, The Wolverine (Film), movie review, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Film), Wolverine (Fictional Character)

Id: RbHxTaufDDk

Length: 29min 5sec (1745 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/hyperjumpgrandmaster]

I prefer his impression of Wolverine:

”Wuddyawantbub?”

[u/hellsfoxes]

Ah Wolveriiiine... I see... you’re at.... the airport?

[u/HooptyDooDooMeister]

Eh, not really. It's ok.

[u/BlueFootedTpeack]

i don't think i've ever heard a good ian mckellan impression

[u/heyf00L]

And of course they were right about Days of Future Past being centered on Wolverine. But thankfully they didn't stop making Wolverine movies so that we got Logan.

[u/JustLinkStudios]

Yeah it’s really not.

[u/Red-Raptor3]

no one's ever really gone

[u/[deleted]]

It's shit. Check out Peter Serafinowicz's impression.

[u/tidier]

"IT'S THE X-MEN! GET THEM!"