X-Men Origins - Wolverine

X-Men: Origins: Wolverine is the first spinoff of the franchise of Marvel Comics popular mutants. Since Wolverine is among (if not the top) the most popular of The X-Men, it makes sense he would be the first to get a solo film. The movie fleshes out Wolverine's origins which were touched upon in "X-Men 2."

The movie starts in Canada in the 1800s, where young James Howlett manifests his bone claws for the first time. We then get a taste of Wolverine's life through the years as he and his older brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) survive wars, and more, due to their healing factors, which give them an elongated life.

They eventually get recruited to a team of mercenaries containing other mutants which is known as Team X. The team include the teleporter John Wraith (will.i.am), mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), marksman Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), and more.

The team does a lot of dirty work for the US government. James gets tired of this life and eventually quits, but Victor feels betrayed and starts killing the members of the group to draw James out.

James is living in the Canadian mountains as a lumberjack (now known as Logan) with his girlfriend Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). He's warned by Stryker about Victor and ignores him; this leads to Victor killing Kayla and getting into a brawl with James. Logan can't beat Victor, but Stryker offers him a way to beat him. We then see the process which bound the adamantium to his bones, making them unbreakable.

The movie suffers from throwing in too many plots, and some characters that made no sense being in this movie. There are little things that can be overlooked, but the most glaring errors include the adamantium bullet to the head, causing Wolverine's brain damage and giving him his legendary amnesia. He has a healing factor; shouldn't he recover?

Another rough spot: there are a number of characters that shouldn't be there, most glaring among them Cyclops, who appears as a teenager. Victor becomes Sabretooth, but he doesn't recognize Wolverine in "X-Men," and this film should have been used to set that plot point.

While not as good as "X-Men 2," "Wolverine" is vastly superior to "X-Men 3." Jackman was perfectly cast as Wolverine, and now is the only actor many can see playing the adamantium-laced mutant. Liev Schreiber is great as the blood-thirsty psychotic Sabretooth, and Ryan Reynolds plays the babbling mercenary Deadpool to perfection, (so much so that he will get his own spin-off film), the only better incarnation of the character is in the Hulk VS Wolverine animated DVD.

There are two versions of the DVD (not including the blu-ray edition); the standard DVD and a two-disc special edition. The standard DVD has one extra: "Wolverine Unleashed: The Complete Origins" is a behind-the-scenes featurette that runs under 15 minutes. For those who want deleted scenes, commentaries and more pick up the special edition.