Okay, let's do this one last time, yeah? The amazing Spider-Man! Spider-Man. Spider-Man. Spider. Call me Spider-Man! I want that fog-crawling arachnid prosecuted! I'm Spider-Man. I want him strung up by his web! Your friendly neighborhood is Spider-Man. I want Spider-Man! true believers and welcome to the spider-man book club this podcast is all about digging into the library of everyone's favorite wall-crawling menace and his cinematic corner of the marvel universe
I'm your host, JJ Hodges. Whoa, okay, sorry, I just went through puberty there for a second. I'm your host, JJ Hodges. And joining me today is the newest dad on the block. Well, maybe not newest. But it's BJ Shea, who is back on the show to be gracious with our topic today. Yeah.
Well, probably the newest dad that comes on this podcast, maybe. Maybe on this show. I don't know if anyone else out there. There's a couple others that I'm friends with, I podcast with, where I'm like, where do you... i was like what is going on lately that everybody's you know something in the water yeah i guess um well i'm very excited to talk about uh
our topic today, which is X-Men Origins Wolverine celebrating its 15th anniversary. We might be the only ones that actually care. I think so too. But but that's OK, because it's weird that it's 15 years. My cat knocked over my microphone. It's weird that we're talking about this 15 years later when.
there's going to be a i guess in a way a do-over coming out soon with uh deadpool and wolverine right you know yeah it's it is crazy how especially you think after Logan that you know what a way for Hugh Jackman to go out with the character but everything we've seen from Deadpool and Wolverine looks it looks awesome like I'm really pumped for the movie and like
And Jackson's played the role so many times that it's almost you can't ever fathom anyone else ever playing Wolverine, especially live action. But someday it will happen. But I'm glad that Jackson's kind of getting one last ride. And he's finally wearing yellow and blue. So that I am very excited about. And I got to say watching, you know, as of this recording, the movie is not out yet. We're about a month away from it. But from the trailers, you know, when he's in the sleeveless mode.
I'm just like, that's Wolverine. That's awesome. And credit to Jackman. I'm sure he's had some... shall we say, you know, enhancement help, but to be, you know, more Jack than ever, like he's... more ripped now than he was like remember in x-men one when he had the shirtless cage fight and he was just he just looked like a normal man yeah and then just a normal fit man and then you know cut to
this uh x-men origins wolverine and he is yoked beyond belief and he's yeah in logan he was yoked and now he's yoked now it's crazy um i mean good on him uh you know it makes me think of a story i was from Conan O'Brien's podcast where he was talking about doing lifts on one of those hydraulic presses, you know, where it... you kind of put your knees on it and it and it helps you do your lifts right um and
He was like, and I just, and I get on. And then, you know, to my right, I hear somebody just going. And I look over without any help. Who's just knees are up. No hydraulic press to help them. It's Hugh Jackman. And he turns and looks at me and goes, hi, good night, Conan. How are you doing today? And I left the gym and I never went back. Yeah, seriously. I mean, I credit to.
I mean, she's paid a lot of money to look like that. So good for him. But he's got the world cross trainers. But if you're willing to put in the work, like, I mean, good for good on him. Well, it helps that. you know when he does some of the shirtless scenes in these movies um he does it the dehydration diet yeah so he doesn't have like any water for like a day and a half and it sort of makes him look real shredded which you know don't do in real life. Um,
The only reason he can do it is because he's on a movie set that costs $200 million and there's doctors and physicians and nurses on set to make sure he doesn't pass out and die. Yeah. So don't do that in real life, folks. Don't go. Don't try to look shredded that way. One thing to take from this podcast. Yes. So X-Men Origins Wolverine. So this was the fourth X-Men movie.
And I got to say, I remember going to see it opening night in the movie theater and really liking it at first, really going, yeah, that was good. I really enjoyed it. And then the more I thought about it and then I read. some stuff and and i think i even went to go see it again i was like i i take it back i don't think this movie's very good you know what's what's your uh
What's your recollection of the movie? So I did not see it in theaters. So this is 2009, correct? About that, yeah. So 2009. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know why I didn't see it in theaters. Like coming off the back of, you know, 2008 was the Dark Knight and the MCU and like Iron Man, excuse me. So it was like, wow, like these movies are finally starting to rip and like be great. Finally.
for us comic book nerds and then i think i heard that you know it wasn't that good or whatever so i just i just didn't see it and i ended up buying it like on dvd because this is 2009 so i got on dvd And I can't wait to explain DVDs to my son and wait till I tell him about VHS tapes. He's going to be his mind's going to be blown. I've had that conversation with my daughter. It would be crazy. We used to have telephones and they were connected on wires.
I saw it on DVD and I was watching. I was like, yeah, I can tell why this didn't get good reviews. I still watch it. I think a lot of these comic book movies are like... like especially like there's the great ones obviously but then there's like that mid-tier and then like that kind of like that bad tier i always kind of like uh maybe i'm more a little more nice at these movies i just kind of consider them more fine than like
horrible. You really gotta be terrible to make me call this the worst piece of crap. So I just consider Origins just a fine movie.
It was in that weird era where they really weren't considering Iron Man and Batman and the Dark Knight. They didn't take it serious. They were kind of like... they're just kind of cramming every character in there and like they did so yeah well there is a lot of leftover ideas from the the original x-men movies obviously gambit being probably the biggest example where you know he was supposed to
He's supposed to be in pretty much all three of them at one point or another, and he always got cut, which is kind of strange when you think about it, considering how popular a character he is. But, you know, and even to this day, it's the only movie he's in, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's not in the other ones. So that's interesting. But, yeah.
You know, so there is a lot of like, you know, well, you know, we didn't get to the blob yet. We want to get to the blob, you know, and, you know, we haven't, you know, we really got to do this Wolverine origin. And it's, I got to say that the. I felt like, first and foremost, that the movie was unnecessary in the sense that we got enough of what we needed to get from his story from, I think, the other films. Yeah, especially X2.
Especially that second one. Right. And it's also, you know, if you're going to go from Brian Cox to Danny Houston, and no offense to Danny Houston or Houston, however you say his name, I'm sure he's a lovely man, but... i really don't think he's that great of an actor uh from this and then and then wonder woman years later i'm just like i just i don't either he's hamming it up because he doesn't care he's not taking it seriously
or he's just not that great of an actor. And either way, it annoys me. Yeah. Especially, like, you touched on, like, if we needed it. Like, what makes Wolverine, like, what made him, like, cool, like... you know when when we were kids and watching that inmate series and reading those comics what made him cool was that he had this mysterious backstory right and every now and then you got little crumbs and pieces kind of like the joker right like we never fully know exactly what the jokers
what he was before the joker but we always get like little crumbs here and there and that's what made wolverine so cool but then you get we get this movie where they have to hit all those little checkpoints like what made him like so cool like all the cool stuff he had in the movies like especially the first two were like oh here's his jacket here's his dog tags here's his claws here's that here's this like they had they hit all these little checkpoints where it kind of felt it was just kind of
like the worst kind of fan service almost yes that's a really good way to put it because you know we we didn't need to know where he got his jacket that's not a question anybody was asking from pa ken and at the farm like pocket on the farm exactly um and it's
And don't get me wrong, there's really great action in the movie. And like I said, you know, I like the way you put it where it's like, oh, it's fine, you know. Because I think for the most part, even the really bad comic book movies like the. the 2015 Fantastic Four and Halle Berry's Catwoman. Those are literally two of the worst movies ever made. And that's not just me talking, that's like general consensus. The world, yes. One of the few things the internet agrees on.
Right. So those I'd probably put – I might even – if I were to add a tier below fine, I'd say they're kind of just – fun to watch even just to make fun of a little bit like just like bad b movies you know yeah yeah and that's and there's nothing wrong with that except for the fact that you know we as the fans we're expecting
you know like you mentioned dark knight and iron man we're we're now at a point where we're being at this point we're starting to get spoiled with really great content really great like you know not only are they taking it seriously but it's for the most part fairly faithful to the source material you know i mean say what you will about dark knight it's the spirit of the characters is extremely faithful to the uh
to the source material even if the quote-unquote look of it isn't like you know the joker's not permanent white and all that blah blah blah which i never found that argument to hold any water anyway but you know um But what makes, so it makes it disappointing when, you know, we just had X-Men The Last Stand and that film was just also not great. Although I, the way I always put it is like.
that movie is half good because you know so i would put that in the fine tier right you know because i think the cure storyline is done really well um and i and i like a lot of the stuff that happens in it it's just the phoenix side of it is like it doesn't work at all you know yeah that was the era of like it's always trilogy trilogy trilogy like they never kind of considered like let's just keep making these like let's right
like don't jam in the phoenix storyline with the cure storyline like make those two separate movies but that that was in the mid 2000s like it was like it's three movies and you know walk off and maybe we'll reboot or something right yeah and but um i think what you know what works kind of against the movie again is thinking that you know well we're starting to get you know slightly more
I mean, Iron Man could get away with it more probably than other superheroes. But Iron Man, you know, that first movie, he looks ripped out of comic books, you know, suit wise and everything, which is, you know, like kind of.
mostly unheard of you know like the fantastic four movies did it a little bit and their uniforms like i still think those uniforms look really cool in those two movies um you know batman begins in the other previous 90s batman movies we're taking more liberties with the costumes but iron man shows up and it's like oh well no this is you can do it and it works and it looks good um and then this movie is just it's
There's no... There are no costumes. Right, but it was something like Logan does it deliberately, and it works in Logan's favor. In this film, it's like, you know, you don't necessarily need them to be in costumes, but wouldn't it be cool to... have deadpool not just be wearing like red and black if he was wearing the suit yes you know wolverine didn't necessarily wear yellow but i don't know if they'd given them some sort of uniform when they were the
you know, the soldiers, the Weapon X program or whatever. Because it's just, because otherwise it's like, you know, you're, you're spending all this money and visually.
nothing's really popping out at us you know what i mean yeah for sure for sure and like the just to kind of maybe start from the top of the movie like seeing like wolverine like one of the more like all-time badass characters as kind of like this little this little sick boy like little lord fontaroy boy kind of right right it's like oh like i i that's like one of the
parts like i like i kind of tune in that part of the movie out uh the beginning and i guess it's almost like uh another thing too like one of the one of my favorite parts of the movie is that opening credit scene yes where it's uh logan and um victor creed uh you know throughout time kind of and you see them kind of in different wars like that's one of my favorite parts of the movie
And it's almost like one of my favorite parts is the opening credits, like where are we kind of going from here? But well, you know, I and that's also a lost art is the opening credit sequence, you know. Yeah. But they found kind of a good way to do it where it's like, well, here's here's how we can show time passing without some silly like.
15 years later, 200 years later, let's literally show that... Like a journey through DNA or whatever, like in those early X-Men movies. Right, right. Yeah, so we get to have the... the really fantastic looking opening credit sequence, which arguably that that's, that's the movie all should have made. It's just them doing, going through different wars and stuff. Um, excuse me, but I,
But I totally agree with you. It is one of my favorite parts because we get to see... A lot happens with nothing being said, and that's pretty cool. That's something that... both comic books and films are very good at you know if you're paying attention they you know they'll really sell you visually um and you know
the the only issue that and then and then the like you said oh this is the best part and where is it going to go from here yeah because the movie kind of immediately just gets all clunky when you know it's like there are these mercenaries doing these black ops things. And then suddenly Wolverine's like, well, I don't want to do this anymore. It doesn't make any sense. You know? Yeah.
So one of the all-time famous Wolverine lines is like, I'm the best at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice. And he says that in the movie, but we never see him doing anything.
very nice like he's kind of he's almost very heroic like in that credits like we see him we see you know victor gunning down people but logan's stopping him and then in that uh that mission they have like he kind of doesn't do anything like he's like oh i don't like this i'm taking off and he heads to like you know the colorado rockies or whatever right it's and then he says like to his girlfriend like oh like i'm the best to like what i do but like we never see him like
being the best like at anything and like and even then like to like the Danny Houston characters like you know you're like you're an animal like i'm letting the beast out but like we never see the beast this quote unquote animal and even like those breadcrumbs we get in x2 when um
striker says like you're an animal then and you're an animal now like like that's a bit like that was a badass line a badass moment from that movie and then like wolverine chooses to like save the kid and not be the animal but right and let uh striker die there but like so i was like oh maybe this is what we'll get in origins but like we never got that we just kind of he was always kind of heroic from the start
you know and then he lost his girlfriend and then he was kind of like he was trying to like be that animal but like it just did it just didn't work it was clunky like you said yeah that's and that's really a good point too because a more Interesting storyline would have been him being so angry and animalistic that he.
you know like it's it's not like he quits he's almost forced out or something like he's too much of an animal and then you know um and he and he has to kind of wrestle with that because that's what they're you know the director you know i remember the director gavin hood and hugh jackman kind of saying that in interviews and stuff saying like oh you know this movie's really about wolverine wrestling with you know his
you know, these things in his, in his mind or in his heart or whatever. I'm just like, yeah, but like you're saying, it's like, well, we really don't see that. Like he's, I, you know, he, if he's going to be, you know, I get that he's supposed to be our hero. He's supposed to be our protagonist, but.
in this case like he becomes the hero in the original movies so this is the prequels let's show how he is inspired to not be the monster anymore wants to be a hero We don't want him to be a villain, but you could have made him almost anti-hero-ish and then... then he kind of loses his his memories or whatever right and then that would lead into x-men but we he was almost a hero from the start he's like save the kids i'm saving this person like i'm
I'm doing, I'm heartbroken that like, you know, this old couple that died, like I want revenge for them. I want revenge for my girlfriend. And then he kind of loses his memories and kind of, you know, buggers off at the end. That ending is really just terrible. Yeah, when I watched it again, I expected almost another scene, but it just kind of...
Nothing like I expect him to see in a bar or somewhere, but he just kind of looks at Gambus as I don't know who you are. And then they run off in separate ways and camera zooms out and that's it. It was a very, very strange ending. You know, much has been said about how the film works.
butchers you know Deadpool of course um Ryan Reynolds was very is obviously very critical of it you know he got his prevention Deadpool 2 though so that's cool um but yeah you know it's the it's like you know the movie was trying like you said the worst fan service the movie's trying to answer questions that we weren't even asking and not in a not in a good way right yeah you know because
You know, something like Spider-Man Homecoming has one of the best movie twists of all time, you know? Definitely. And all it is is just Michael Keaton opening the door and then suddenly the whole thing changes. Yeah. that's an example a great example of the movie answering a question that we weren't asking we weren't asking who liz's parents were you know we knew they exist we weren't asking who vulture's family was we know they exist but the fact that they're the same
Probably didn't occur to anybody in any theater watching it, right? No, definitely not to me. So for them to be like, well, we have to explain how he gets the jacket. We have to explain how he loses his memories. you know, in the comics, in the origin comic that the first scene is based on, which by the way, I do kind of agree with you that I think.
You know, while you were saying that, I was like, you know, it really works better in the comic, you know, when he's a sickly boy and then he mutates, you know, it has the bone claws and because that comic. You know, I figure what the main the main female character's name is, who's supposed to be essentially a Jean Grey stand. And she's a green eyed redhead. But she said, yeah, you know, she says.
I think he doesn't remember much of what happened. I think his mind is healing bad things just like his body heals, like wounds and such. And I always thought that was... a somewhat reasonable explanation at least you know and didn't need to be overtly stated um but at the same time it's like i you know him getting shot in the head with an adamantium bullet i'm like I don't get where that would do the memory loss versus just killing him.
yeah like they even say like he like striker even says in the movie they're like will that bullet kill him he's like no but it'll it'll mess up his memories and he won't remember anything like it was such a weird like shoehorned Let's super dumb it down for the audience. They're not going to know. This is going to mess up his brain bad and he won't remember anything.
It was just like, we could have figured that out. We're not stupid. It was the era of kind of, let's explain it for everybody else and not the comic book audience. They weren't kind of taking us. I say it's such an us against them thing, but they weren't taking the diehards into effect. Well, you know, and even then it's, you know, he could have said, oh yeah, it'll kill him. And then when it didn't kill him and it just messed up his memories, that.
might have landed better with me you know yeah yeah yeah i like that too yeah but at the same time you know i mean again this is all like 15 years later we're just you know it's you know it is what it is um i i do want to say that like
A lot, I really liked, and I don't think he gets enough credit, Lee of Schreiber as Sabretooth. Because I remember when they cast him, I thought... oh i don't know about him as as that character you know i always thought of saber tooth as kind of a dumb brute but he's really not you know in the comics and even the animated series like the first movie just kind of made him the stereotypical
big henchman guy whereas in the in the comics and everything you know he's not like a genius or anything but you know he's capable of holding in arcs and and stuff uh story arcs i mean by himself right And I thought that Liev Schreiber really just, I mean, fully committed to the bit, too.
And it looks like he's having like the time of his life playing the character. And that's fun, you know? Yeah. And I feel like a lot of these actors, like they always kind of have more fun playing the villain. Like he probably had a blast as like Vulture. Sure. Like you hear a lot of like wrestling.
or is like they love playing the heel more than like the good guy. So yeah, Lief Schreiber, he definitely, he was very good. And if you can kind of separate it where like, all right, this isn't the saber tooth from the first movie or whatever. It's just. similar powers or whatever but it was it was cool like his like
He looked very like when he smiled, like the way he had his beard, he looked like a creepy animal. And like he was so he was kind of he was pretty badass and was kind of kicking the crap out of.
out of wolverine a lot and you know his his nails were kind of creepy like the way they would kind of extend out and uh yeah i liked him in this in the the shot of him like on all fours charging at logan yeah that's really it really unsettling right like the guys just be like this man move like a little right right it's like no humans aren't supposed to move that way this is freaky you know um
And I think that those two had a really good chemistry. It's just that, and I don't necessarily mind the brother versus brother trope, but I think that the movie, you know, it just, I don't know. If you took a shot every time they said brother... You'd have to be in the hospital for alcohol. Take a shot every time they say brother and take a shot every time Jackman screams Victor at the top of his lungs. You'd be done for it.
You're dead. Hope your affair is in order. But yeah, yeah. And that's another thing where I liked in... in x2 you know he you know striker never calls him logan he always calls him wolverine yeah you know and i i kind of wished at one point he had done that because he didn't really do that in this movie he calls him you know like the
i think the name wolverine is only said a couple of times and yeah it's and it's just it's it's a it's a small complaint but it i don't know i i like it when the you know the you know michael keaton i'm batman it's freaking cool you know like call them who they are call them you know batman superman you know wolverine cyclops you know
It's far more interesting than just regular people's names. Yeah, definitely. I feel like that goes back to the, what do you want, yellow spandex? That goes back to that. You know, and I said in another episode, too, that, you know, I love that X-Men 97, we came kind of full circle with it.
what do you want black leather i'm like oh my gosh great moment like it's it's it's so just to think about how far we've come since that moment where everything had to be black leather because everybody wants to be the matrix or whatever like we don't want to do colorful costumes because that's not cool man but like we but look we saw that first picture of jackman in the blue and yellow and like the internet freaked out like that's all we want that's all we've ever wanted yeah and
And they found a way to make it work, and it doesn't look ridiculous. And I think that was always the thought process. Oh, it'll look ridiculous. Well, look at Batman v Superman. Ben Affleck's Batman costume looks awesome. Yeah. All you have to do is commit to it and take it serious. It will look... it will look great. Like I, I love the Pattinson movie, but I, I kind of want like a blue and gray. I want like a more comic book accurate stuff, but you know,
I still love that movie, but it's not taking away from anything. I like a blue and gray. No, I hear you. It's that type of thing where I think there was that period where it's got to be... you know it's like dark you know batman begins at dark night it's like oh we got to be grim and serious now and you know and movies now have found a better tone where it's like well we can be a little bit more light-hearted and be
And have fun with it as opposed to just being so grim and serious and dark and blah, blah, blah. But for this movie, it was really just, you know... Because it's such a basket case, I can't figure out what tone it wants to go for, you know, and and neither can the movie. Right. Because we have this love story. We have this this brotherly rival we have.
you know this revenge story you know and on top of that it's an origin story for a superhero right and but at the same time the movie doesn't know what to commit to so it just does all of them and they don't fit together as well as as as it should because all those themes are in several other movies including like the first thor movie and the first thor movie's great you know yeah yeah i've heard i've heard this movie compare it to like um
origins like compared to like almost a video game where logan's literally like accomplishing tasks before he can get to like the final battle like he's gotta you know take out agent zero or whatever that guy is he's got to uh travel to vegas and find the blob and beat the blob to find information about the next thing and then he gets to the final level and so you can like if you watch it kind of like oh there's some weird live action video game like it kind of works that way
That's really funny because I didn't think of it that way. I never thought of it that way, but that's 100% true. He's got to beat Gambit and then find information from Gambit to get to the next thing. It is weird. You know, and it's funny because there are movies that have that formula where, but it works, you know, this movie, I think it just doesn't.
you know uh and and really the the biggest issue and i i've realized this like not too long ago was that this was really a victim of the writer's strike from 2008 because they really you know they they couldn't have you know so a lot of movies were rushed into production even with unfinished scripts and you know Hugh Jackman even said like you know we're shooting on Australia the night before we're supposed to shoot
we're getting faxes of the, of the script pages from Los Angeles. And I'm just sitting here going, you know what? Like. sometimes i worry about how much money i spend and am i you know saving enough am i doing okay and then i hear stories like that about these 200 million dollar movies and i'm like You know what? At least I never screwed up $200 million. Yeah. I might have spent more on mobile apps than I should have. Yeah. But you can almost kind of see that like towards like...
towards the end of the movie, like with the Gambit stuff, like there's a weird scene where he meets Gambit, but Sabretooth is there. So Sabretooth kills Will.i.am, but Logan gets in the alley and then... Gambit comes out, says something like Wolverine's looking at Sabretooth. Gambit's behind him. Gambit says something like you want to like you want to fight me or face me or something. Wolverine knocks him out.
And then like a second later, Gambit sprinting on a rooftop with his bow staff and does a big jump and then lands with all like his kinetic energy. After the last we saw him, we just got knocked out from behind. So like you can see like little holes in that script. So that makes like, I totally believe that about the Reddit strike. Yeah. And it's, it's really just kind of, and it's just strange thinking that I have higher hopes for Deadpool and Wolverine, but this one.
hopefully was not also as affected by the right yeah right from last year yeah i feel like they'll figure it out they do so much improv on that on that so um and plus like ryan reynolds is producer so he he has a lot more say than um well then again i guess hugh jackman was a producer on this movie so maybe he just was doing too much at once i don't know doesn't matter that you know the movie is what it is i suppose yeah um and he's still made out with like
25 million or something so yeah and he he still loved as the character so he still made a bunch of wolverine movies after so it wasn't like it killed wolverine or anything no it you know and that's and that's the funny thing is the right after this you know a couple years later was x-men first class and i remember it just
being like, I'm not going to see it. The last two X-Men movies pissed me off. I'm not going to go see it. And then I was reading all these really great reviews and I was like, okay, fine, I'll go see it. And it ended up being one of my favorites. Yeah, that's a really great movie. Yeah. And that's the thing is that the X-Men Origins title here was supposed to be for, it was going to be a series. And the next one was going to be Magneto. And then when this film didn't work.
or you know i guess technically still it was a hit it's financially but like critically and uh so on you know fans and critics didn't like it but uh so they were like we're nixing the idea of the uh
X-Men Origins being the series title now. But they did recycle a lot of the ideas from a previous script about Magneto into first class. And I'd argue that that's all we really needed. I don't think... an entire film of just magneto would have been as interesting you know yeah it definitely works like the x-men i mean they're they're an ensemble like you need them all together to kind of work
Right. And, you know, two of the two of the three Wolverine solo movies work for the most part. I think the Wolverine is pretty underrated. You know, they definitely like Jackman, I feel. And whoever's like behind like the solo movies kind of.
learned the lesson from origins yeah and reworked it for the wolverine and and logan obviously but the x-men are an ensemble and you kind of need them all you don't need them all together but you need like the mainstays and then you can sprinkle in around the fringes to make it work yeah and i think i ironically the
the x-men side of it is some of my least favorite stuff in the movie because you know you have we see young cyclops and we even have a cameo with patrick stewart um and it's like i i don't know i i like the idea of wolverine interacting with different mutants like sure it's called x-men origins but i just took that as as it being part of the the brand as opposed to being um uh you know literally the x-men are going to be in this movie you know what i mean yeah um
So I was like, I don't know. I like all the other mutants that they meet. But then I also remember like this Bryan Singer era where they were like weirdly obsessed with William Stryker. you know i mean obviously he was going to play a part in this film um and oddly obsessed with william striker oddly obsessed with kind of just It's all good. There's the cat. Sorry.
um yeah but the you know and even in the scenes where they show like uh you know all the the mutants in cages and stuff it's it's still characters we already know you know like there's like toad is there i think you know cyclops obviously and it's like you know there's like hundreds of these characters in the comic books like
you know literally just pick up any x-men comic and you'll find a new one this is so silly that you're you know you're only sticking to like this group of like 15 that that you know from the first three movies you know what i mean yeah for sure like It was kind of, especially at that end part too, where Patrick Stewart shows up, early de-aging technology, but they're all...
they're all running to just the most obvious green screen in the history of the world i don't know if you kind of picked that up where it looks it looks very bad it just kind of bunch of like i guess they almost they didn't show like any like you know the the mutants who like have their mutation kind of like on the outside like we don't see like a night crawl or like any blue skin or anything like that they're all kind of just a bunch of random kids kind of
running to the helicopter to this bald man because Cyclops said they should. Right. I feel like Cyclops and Xavier are pretty kind of... hand-fisted into this movie almost like i'm surprised we didn't get i don't think we have we got a scene of young cyclops and wolverine together like they didn't talk like somehow they showed restraint not saying like
cyclops like oh this guy this guy was gonna be this guy's a total or something like something like that right right just kind of anything like that which i which i guess makes sense because when they meet and they would meet in the future and they wouldn't cyclops wouldn't have remembered him or anything like that But I guess credit to restraint on there for the 15 years ago.
i mean barely one half restraint point yeah all the other stupid they did throughout the movie um but yeah you know they again it was that type of thing where you know it has to end with this like big mutant battle and this all these mutants escaping and everything it was like it that that doesn't really fit in the movie either. You know, it's like, it's just to add some action to it because the, the far more interesting story is between, you know, Logan and Sabretooth, right? Yeah. So to do.
all this other stuff and and again having like and even i'd argue the love story and it really doesn't work um you know with with silver fox um because it's just you know you're gonna have this fake out death And when you bring her back, because I remember when they brought her back, I was just like, oh, okay. I thought it was...
I still forget that she actually comes back, but I still always think that it's some weird vision or something, because why would she be at that plan or whatever? I guess her sister's there randomly, but... Yeah, that was weird. The one time, you know, Victor Creed, like we get, like, he's portrayed as like this, you know, he doesn't listen to authority or whatever. But, like, at this one, he did not kill her or anything. Like, he showed restraint there.
went along with faking her death but everyone else you know he's slicing and dicing yeah i don't know it's again the the the movie it again you could take any of the three acts of the movie and if you had made one of those acts the whole movie it would have been fine but because they're throwing so much they're throwing everything in the kitchen sink in right they the it's just there's too much happening it's not and by the end of it you know i don't know i'm just sort of like
I'm more annoyed than anything. Again, I have fun watching it. Hugh Jackman is a blast to watch as Wolverine. There's a reason that we're all jumping for joy that he's doing one more turn.
and he's in the yellow yes we've discussed um but you know we just but this film the film itself doesn't work but there's but the pieces that do work i gotta say a lot of them work really really well like the victor and logan's stuff you know their fight scenes are really great yeah um although it doesn't make any sense at the end when he's like nobody kills you but me brother and he saves him yeah
that was weird you know once talking like going back to like it's like a video game like they have to have this big battle on top of the silo right like why is it like why why climb up there like i i'll never kind of get it just kind of they had it in their mind like this is like some cool action piece like they want i guess they wanted the visual of like deadpool fault like his head cut off and his optic blast going and knocking everything over i guess they wanted that visual
It was kind of a cool visual. Yeah, it's cool to see, but it's random how you get there. I guess the journey to that destination was strange.
yeah so the ends didn't justify the means there yeah yeah so in in context it doesn't make any sense it kind of but it's like but it looks cool it's like yeah but it's not really enough you know like that shouldn't be like well the scene doesn't make any sense but it looks good it should be like oh the scene is amazing and it looks good you know yeah yeah but um you know the
But even when we were talking about Xavier and Cyclops being shoehorned in, I really genuinely feel like if you took Gambit out of the movie, it would still work just fine. you know like logan would still find a way to three mile island you know yeah and i'm a big i'm a big taylor kitsch fan like friday night lights like that's one of my all-time favorite shows so kind of going into it knowing like
oh, I love Taylor Kitsch. He's Gambit. I'm a big Gambit fan. But yeah, he kind of does nothing other than fly a plane there and kind of throws both staff around and save a... chunk of uh silo falling on logan or anything but yeah he kind of was shoehorned part of the shoe and and and also why like he could have been in that scene you know the helping rescue the other mutants and stuff
like gambit has a literally one of the most visually interesting powers of all the x-men and we barely get any of it in this film you there's some cool shots of him like throwing cards and stuff but like When I think about what he can do, like, you know, watching the animated series, it's like, geez, you know, guys, come on. Like, you know, you figured out how to make.
you know patrick stewart look cool just by you know thinking at the audience yeah like surely you can make this look cool too with modern freaking technology which which is also the uh by the way on that for a second uh you know segue um you know as far as the movie not knowing what tone it should have it also doesn't know what year it takes place because it it should be like 1980 something and
It might as well have been filmed in 2008, right? Yeah. I always kind of think about that too. Like what year does this take place? But I guess you have to assume the eighties because of Cyclops really. And I guess they're still trying to, I mean, now like X-Men, like before, like when they're still like owned by Fox or whatever, like X-Men continuity was kind of all over the place. Really? Like you had like.
You had, like, the old timeline, then the Days of Future Pass, and then, you know, they merged, but, like, we're still in the McAvoy era. So, yeah, the time – I guess they're still kind of – At this point, they're still trying to say like, oh, this is a prequel to X-Men one, like which I never I never it never kind of lined up properly for me. Just in terms of the way the movie.
looks like the way you know there's nothing to give away that the technology like they don't necessarily need to have like 80s music playing the whole time or anything like that but you know some of the technology just doesn't match up either it's like But then again, you can say that with the exception of the McAvoy movies, when they firmly place themselves in 62, 73, 83, you can tell. Whereas the original movies...
Who knows? Yeah, it's just kind of whatever year you want it to be. That's what it is, basically. So where do you stand on Bone Claws? That's really funny you ask that because I thought about that earlier and was going to ask you. I apologize. My eye is super itchy. No problem. It's driving me nuts. Yeah, I... I don't know. I guess technically it makes sense, right? Because why would the adamantium on his skeleton just make him claws?
But they also just look weird. Yeah, I've always hated them. I've never been a bone cloth guy. I don't know when they were first introduced comics-wise. I assume they came in the comics first. yeah yeah uh yeah but i've just never been a bone clause like oh he's had these bone claws like way before he's had the metal claws or anything like that it just kind of was kind of just weird to me i've always
The way I've always caught a head candidate to myself was Wolverine's mutant power is his ability to heal. His... him having that power made him like the ultimate you know weapon x candidate where they could experiment on him and like he can have they can graft the adamantium to his skeleton and it's not gonna it's not gonna hurt him because he has this ability
So that's the way I've always kind of put it in my head. But, yeah, I've never been a one-class guy. I totally dig what you're saying, and I don't disagree.
because in the have you you've seen x-men 97 of course of course okay so you know the the episode where he gets the adamantium ripped out of him that is directly from the comic books and i think yeah and i think that's when they introduced the bone claws yeah i think he becomes like more he mutates even more and it becomes more animalistic and i think right because yeah yeah and and then they uh
and then they discovered that the adamantium was halting all that like uh ferociousness or whatever you want to call it animalisticness they find a way to put it back on him um But yeah, I don't know, because I thought that about this and then X-Men Days of Future Past, they did that as well. It's just funny to me because I'm like, I don't know, I just...
It doesn't strike me as as intimidating as the adamantium ones, you know, because, yeah, with the adamantium, he can slice through stuff. I don't think we ever really see him slice through anything with the bones. I mean, he can stab people because they're sharp as hell. But like. With the adamantium, you know, he'll slice and do all these different things. But even, like, I mean, talk about bad CGI when he first pops those claws in Mom and Pa Kent's bathroom. Yes.
They look like a PS3 cutscene almost. I guess the idea was like, oh, we just got these, so they're super shiny, but they don't even look like they're attached to them. No, it's... they're like you know like a few centimeters away from his hands you know yeah it's like they're just floating there was bad just bad cg and and plus the the movie also
tries to do these bits where he messes up the bathroom because he's slicing through everything, which isn't funny. It just looks stupid. And even when he sits, he's like, oh, I put on some weight recently. It's like... okay but like you can't say that and then have that not be a factor in literally every other movie yeah you know yeah okay yeah but he could still fly through the air and you know blow up a helicopter but he's so weighed down from this motorcycle right yeah it makes no sense
and that's another i've another criticism too i've heard of this movie not to like i know what kind of going hard at it but yeah well yeah it deserves it yeah but like he gets the advice from the old man in the barn like this fatherly advice but technically wolverine's like 100 years older than this guy but he's talking he's talking to him like he's giving him like this like uh this you know revenge advice or whatever but so it's it is kind of goofy if you think about it that way
so i was kind of i was kind of laugh at that that's funny i never thought that was very true yeah um you know i i think uh you know like i said this film it had a lot going for it and it should have been the next big hit for X-Men. For better or for worse, it wasn't. But I think it's kind of awesome that the movie is not fondly remembered with fans.
Yet it did not at all derail the franchise, you know, because then we got First Class and Days of Future Past and, you know, and then Deadpool and now they're coming back for Deadpool and Wolverine. It's like, well... how interesting is that that this this film that is not fondly remembered did not destroy the franchise that's really interesting and shows a lot about and and says a lot about how
how much faith obviously fox still had in the brand and how much uh goodwill that the audiences were willing to give the brand yeah you know and then i mean thinking about deadpool like we get that scene in deadpool 2 where like um deadpool kills the origins deadpool and says and look and says uh wolverine or it was like your old one day your old pal wade's gonna come calling and we just thought it was like we just took it as like a joke or whatever but you know it actually came true
You know, I'm very excited for the future of the X-Men in the MCU. You know, it's... I mean... based on x-men 97 alone it's like no they they know what they're doing we're i think we're in good hands now yeah once yeah because i mean the the fox era like they did it was a lot of it was a lot of good hits like i love x2 that's probably my favorite x-men movie i love future path days of future past i love first class but there were some
There were some misses. Last Stand, Apocalypse didn't really hit me the way it should have. Dark Phoenix was kind of like a swan song. I never really have seen New Mutants. Have you seen it? I haven't seen it either. Maybe I'll watch it before. I actually just did a big X-Men rewatch.
and kind of got to new mutants and kind of i'm just like i actually don't want to watch this so uh but yeah so it is like you said like one now that they're kind of back in the mcu's hands you know with feige uh you know i know the mcu has kind of had some big big misses lately things haven't really hit like they used to but you know i still kind of have a lot of i still have a lot of faith in you know feige and
uh the mcu really like they've given us so much good content that you know they've built up a lot of goodwill with me where You know, all right. I didn't really like Love and Thunder or Quantumania or things like that. But, you know, I love I like What If? And I kind of dug some of the TV shows. So I'm excited to see what they do with Fantastic Four and X-Men.
Those are the big toys that they haven't gone to play with yet. I 100% agree. I'm super excited. My only annoyance at that is thinking that I just – I wish – you know, Tony Stark was still around so I could see him interact with the Reed Richards and, you know, yeah, definitely. Like we like now we don't, we don't have cap and Tony like there. It would be cool to see Evans and Robert Downey Jr. stand with whoever they're getting for the X-Men and this new Fantastic Four. Right.
But maybe maybe one day in Secret Wars. I muted myself by accident. I've heard some rumors. I hope the Secret Wars, you know, we'll see. But for now, I'm super excited to see where the franchise goes.
with uh with x-men you know and because for a while we just weren't getting anything x-men so it's nice to be back there you know yeah for sure and like the x-men like that's a lot of like you know we're we're around the same age like we're in that prime spot like for the animated series like that's what a lot of us became x-men fans because of that show and you know it's come back around you know 30 something years later like it's crazy
I know it's it's insane. And, you know, an X-Men 97 is like one of the best, you know, like I said, one of the best things Marvel's done in a long time. And that's fan service done right with that thing. Yeah, definitely. There's bad fan service and good fan service, but Origins and X-Men 97 are two great examples of that. Yeah, exactly.
uh bj this has been such a blast i'm so glad we got to we got to do this today this this was a lot of fun you know and um you know i i thought about it i was like do i really want to talk about this movie and i was like you know what yes because It's a part of the X-Men's history. It's part of Wolverine's history. And, you know, at the very least, it'll be a fun conversation. And it was. So thank you for that.
oh thank you thanks for having me like i i also love coming on and you know talking uh with you uh anything kind of comic related movie related anything it's always it's always fun so thanks for having me Yeah, no problem. You are always invited, sir. And if people are out there in the multiverse looking for you, where can they find you? Mostly on Twitter or X or whatever you want. I still call it Twitter. uh at bj shea 33 um the tbu podcast over at the batmanuniverse.net
A lot of my tweets lately, I don't know when you're going to post this, but have a lot of been Boston Celtic-related NBA champions. So very happy with that. So I'm sure I'm flooding a lot of people's timelines with Celtic-related stuff. uh but i talk you know sports and comp books and maybe everything in between who knows um it's it's always fun talking uh talking comic books with you because i don't really know sports, so we can get along on the other side. Yeah, of course, yeah.
As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Spider-Man Books. You can email me, Spider-Man Book Club at gmail.com. Please write a review. Reviews, subscribe. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, get those buds in ears. And we will end, as we always do, with Will.i.am. Drop the beat now. Oh, no, he can't. He's dead. He died in the movie. So anyway, great power, great responsibility, all that jazz, whatever.