“without the attention to story and emotional investment…Wolverine ultimately doesn’t rise above its comic-book roots.”

Typical ignorant reviewer. Comics are for kids, no depth, blah blah blah.

The Arizona Daily Star comment is probably the most accurate thing I’ll ever read about this film. I’ll freely admit I downloaded the leaked copy, and the film was just painful to watch – it was punishment to have to sit through it.

I’m glad I’ll be saving money by not seeing it in theatres. If I did, I’d want my money back.

I hate the “rise above its comic book roots” comments because that’s just naive, pseudo-elitist, and clueless. But otherwise I gotta say the mostly poor reviews are generally spot-on. I take no shame in having seen the leaked work print online (why no one at FOX ever did anything to pull it from the site I streamed it from is beyond me… It was easy enough to find), but if I had honestly liked what I saw I’d have already bought my tickets to see it this weekend. But I didn’t, and I won’t.

It was dismal, rushed, suffered from “Hey! Look! A squirrel!” ADD all throughout, was loaded with too many extraneous mutants (watch Blob and try not to think of Fat Bastard from Austin Powers), and the attempts to link the film to X2 just pointed out how inferior this movie is to X2 (not the least of which is how this new, younger Stryker couldn’t carry Brian Cox’s jock). I won’t blame fans for going to check it out, I’m just glad I’ll be saving my money. I think a lot of others will wish they had after they leave the theatre.

As I feared, Hugh Jackman’s performance, and undeniable charisma, is the only saving grace in this film. Well, that Wolverine’s girlfriend is freakin’ hot. But we didn’t get enough of her.

I liked it. Am i the only one who’s stomach churns when viewing Singers camp X1 and X2. The kid obviously loved X-Men and knows his stuff but being homosexual himself he cramed those movies with so much homoerotic innuendo and took the bright colours in the comics and applied them in a homo-rainbow mosaic throught the films. Honestly, Wolverine is as good as it was gonna get coming from a studio. And anyone who says that it was superficial dialogue and plot between expensive action sequences needs to go back and flick through the comics because that’s all they were too, action, talking, action, talking, action, action, end.

@Eden – I always have a hard time getting too caught up in Ebert’s reviews of big movies like this. He tends to be very influenced by the zeitgeist (hence more stars for X3 than X-Men) and he knows that his stature as the Critic Of Record will allow him to retroactively fix any views that aren’t valid with a review in a book or something further on up the road.

Russ, even though I don’t always agree with Ebert (though I do more often than I don’t) I respect him for being a straight shooter and calling ‘em like he sees ‘em. He’s looking at the movie on its own terms. The comics history (or, say, the novel a film is based on) isn’t going to matter to him because he’s probably never read said comic (or least hasn’t since he was kid) or perhaps not the novel either.

He also doesn’t shun any one type of genre. For him, a good movie’s a good movie regardless of the type of film. Not sure what he saw in X3 (which is a film I tired to watch again recently and simply couldn’t do it), but I’ll call that one an anomaly. He’s generally applauded comic book films when they’ve been worthy (the two Nolan Bat-films, Iron Man and Spidey 2 all come to mind), and has generally been brutal when they’ve sucked (far too many to name here). If anything, I thought he was way too kind to the Watchmen movie, but then (like I said) he’s never read the book.

Anyhow, agree with him or not, I think he’s probably the most thoughtful film critic out there. He usually makes me think, and in this case he actually had me questioning how much I honestly like the character of Wolverine myself. I’m still not sure what the answer is. I think I generally like Wolverine in context of the X-Men (I think the Wolverine: First Class comic is one of best comics out there today), but not so much otherwise.

I liked it. The two of us did a matinee for $12 and it was worth seeing the action on the big screen. It was fun and loud, and cheaper than a couple of bar-drinks that simply would have been expelled a couple of hours later. So, $12 was worth a rainy Sunday afternoon matinee catching some cheap thrills. To me, that’s what movies are — Entertainment and Diversion for a couple of hours. For that, it was enjoyable. Worth checking out on the big screen or a DVD rental.