Dear Tom Rothman, Chairman of 20th Century Fox,
Why?
Why do you keep doing this to us? Why do you constantly churn out inferior product after inferior product? Why must you constantly ruin comic book adaptations and leave us fans wishing we had never seen your attempt to bring our favorite characters to life? Why do you prefer to make blatant cash grabs rather than making a movie worth watching? Like I said to start, why?
To answer the question I know is on your mind, yes, I am one of those fanboys out there who despises your company. I hate it because of your refusal to respect your fans. I hate it because of what you tried to do to Watchmen,regardless of whether you were right or not. I hate it so much that I made sure you got none of my money, even though I’ve seen Wolverine twice. Notice how I’m not writing out the whole title, because it’s ridiculous. Seriously, why didn’t you just call it Wolverine? Were you trying to connect it to the originalX-Men trilogy, because I’m pretty sure you messed that up with the numerous inconsistencies between this film and that trilogy, which I’m going to innumerate later?
And yes, I am one of those people who watched the workprint. You know, the workprint that after it leaked you told everyone was missing “ten minutes of footage and key scenes”? Yeah, I watched that and I watched the theater version. I didn’t see any extra footage or any key scenes. Thanks for lying to us. It’s these signs of respect that have people talking so well about your studio.
Despite all of this, I wanted so badly to love this film. Wolverine is a fight to the death of my all time favorite comic character with Batman and Rorschach. Seeing him get his own movie (even though he was the main character of the trilogy), along with the prospect of a fleshed out Sabretooth and Deadpool, was a dream come true. I should have known better. After the things you did inX3, a film that I think I’m one of 9 people in the world to defend it, I should have expected you would find a way to ruin my favorite characters.
Before I continue, I just want to say how wrong you did by Hugh Jackman, and I want to make clear that I lay none of the movie’s numerous failures at his feet. The man loves Wolverine. He works out hours on end to get in shape for the role. He shows up at Comic-Con to put in face time with the fans, who he loves as much as they love him. He showed that with a skilled director behind him that he can create an almost perfect incarnation of Wolverine. Any shortcomings of his in playing the character in this film are the fault of Gavin Hood, and of course, you for any interference you added to the production of this film.
There are really so many things wrong with this film, I don’t know where to start. If I wanted to, I could make a list of 100 reasons why this film was so bad. I’ll probably mentioned most of them in hopes that it’ll help me sleep better. Let’s start with the biggest problems and work our way down in size. It’s a toss-up between horrible script and embarrassingly bad CGI. I’ll go with the CGI, since everyone can relate to that, whereas my script problems stem from my fanboy knowledge of comics. I truly can’t believe that the CGI in this film is a finished product. You should be ashamed of the quality. In an age ofTransformers, when Star Trek and Terminator Salvation are coming out in the coming weeks, you give us CGI that looks like a cartoon. The fact that this is the case for a summer blockbuster is embarrassing. This film had a budget of $150 million. Did it all go to Hugh Jackman’s hair?
Good CGI could have made for some enjoyable action scenes, but it could not save an awful script. It’s tough to care about a story where the characters primary motivation is killing Sabretooth and Stryker (played by Danny Houston, who I thought did a good job stepping into the large shoes of Brian Cox) when we know that they both survive to be in later movies. And don’t you dare say that maybe someone watching Wolverine hasn’t seen the trilogy. I refuse to believe anyone would see this film without seeing its predecessors. The pacing was terrible, the dialogue was cheesy, the overall story was stupid, Wolverine was turned into a Chihuahua for most of the film, and there are more plot holes. Did the writers even see the original trilogy? I would rather there been no or loose connection to the previous films, but instead there are massive connections. The problem is that known of these connections make sense. Wolverine and Sabretooth are brothers in this one, they spend the entire movie together, and yet not a mention of anything like this between them in X-Men. It makes no sense. Wolverine can’t remember the events of this film, which includes the adamantium process. Well, in all three films of the original trilogy all he seems to remember is the adamantium process and the subsequent breakout. Oops. SPOILERS: And really, shooting him in the head with adamantium bullets? Was that really the best way they could come up with for him to lose his memory? Please explain it to me. Adamantium is the hardest substance in the world, a substance that is completely indestructible. How does it work then that a bullet made out of adamantium can go through a skull of adamantium? I mean, come on. The comics provide a perfectly good explanation of how he loses his memory. why didn’t you use that?
Allow me to answer my own question. The answer is that you don’t respect the source material. That doesn’t mean that I expect a frame by frame adaptation for comic book movies. I know that is impossible. Watchmen is one of the most faithful adaptations I’ve ever seen and they changed the events of the ending, but they respected the source material and kept the spirit of the ending the same. By making such a faithful adaptation and appeasing to the fans and the mainstream public, Warner Bros gained so much respect from movie-goers. The Dark Knight takes more liberties than most comic book movies in terms of story, but it respects the source material, and in turn, respects the fans. Chris Nolan changed how Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, but he gave us a scene earlier in the movie that alluded to how it happened in the comics. It was a way of saying “Look, I changed the origin story a lot, but here’s a scene of Harvey in court and something bad happening.” It shows the fans how much the filmmaker cares.
Now, I get that the ultimate goal of making a movie is to make money, so changes have to be made. Not all comics have the ability to go mainstream. I get that. What I don’t get is the changes you made to this movie that not only don’t change the movies chances of commercial success (if I was in the mood, I would argue that most of the hurt), they also don’t make the movie better. One of the changes made that I thought was awesome was Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth. That’s not how Sabretooth looks in the comics, but it’s how he acts. It’s how he moves. It’s his spirit and it works. Schreiber was great, one of the few bright spots in the film. It’s getting late and I’m in a caring mood, so I’ll even say that I understand why you did Gambit the way that you did. Yes, it’s character rape. He’s so much cooler and he deserves so much more than he got. You turned a fan favorite into a weird magician with red eyes, but I understand why. Fanboys are up in arms about his portrayal, but to the movie going public, it’s cool. “Oh, he has telekinesis! Look at him fire those cards with his mind!”
Before I go into spoilers for the thing about this film that hurt and confused me the most, allow me to nerd out on a few minor problems that just show the writers have no idea about the source material. Cyclops’ power is concussive, not explosive. It does not cause fire like this movie showed us twice. Also, adamantium is insanely heavy. Stryker should not be able to wield it as easily as he does in the film. I know this are nitpicks, but the writers should have known this. A writer who knows the comics and respects the characters would have written a much better script.
(Spoilers from here on out)
I’m now left scratching my head with what I consider one of the biggest mistakes in adaptation history. Deadpool is one of the coolest characters the Marvel Universe has to offer and has a gigantic cult following. Ryan Reynolds was born to play this role and was probably the best thing the movie offered, despite being on screen for maybe 12 seconds. He was criminally underused. The sad part is, that although Reynolds is gone, Deadpool remains in the movie. That’s because you chose to turn one of the coolest, funniest characters into a dorky albino (redundant, I know) with swords coming out of his arms and his mouth sewn shut. WHAT?! You turned Deadpool into Weapon XI. I would love for you to explain to me how this makes the movie better or more marketable. Reynolds is a marketable star. He’s been hankering for a spin-off and he deserves it. Don’t tell me that a fight scene between Deadpool (the real Deadpool, in his trademark suit) and Wolverine/Sabretooth would be worse than what you did. No, it would have been awesome and audiences would have loved it. It also would have introduced them to the spin-off character. If for some reason, you had to have a guy with multiple powers, because that’s more visually stunning, just call him Weapon XI. Don’t make him Deadpool. Now when you try to market the spin-off, people won’t want to see it. “A movie about that sword-armed albino guy. He can’t even talk. NO way.”
(End spoilers)
I could go on for days about what you did wrong with this movie, but you don’t deserve any more of my time. You don’t deserve anything other than to be fired. A company is dying with you at the helm. The fans deserved better. Jackman, Reynolds, Schreiber, and Houston all deserved better. The characters deserve better. I don’t care what other movies you ruin, just give Marvel back the rights to its characters so we can see our favorite characters the way they were meant to be seen.
Hoping something unfavorable happens to you soon,
Bryan King
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