Wolverine: Weapon X

Wolverine Weapon X (fanedit):
A fanedit of X-men Origins: Wolverine - ifdb.fanedit.org/wolverine-weapon-x/

Would like to start and X-men Marathon rewatch with the Jackman Wolverine coming out. I’ve decided to start on the worst film. I haven’t seen this particular film since theatrical release. I was hoping that a fanedit might help. Unfortunately this film is pretty unsalvageable.

The fanedit intention is to cut most of the egregious elements, as much shoddy CGI, crappy humor, Victor and Logan being brothers, mentions of the Dead Pool, while keeping the same basic structure and plot. As far as the intention is concerned it does just that and achieves it.

Unfortunately, the film is still the worst of the excesses of mainstream superhero filmmaking, the action staging is most of the time excessive wire-fu nonsense, the cgi is mostly unbearable, and the fan service is abundant and transitional.

Jackman is awesome, but even Jackman can’t save this.
Continuity errors aside, even the basic conceit of Logan being used as a government weapon should be tragic, instead it’s ham fisted as it’s pushed into some revenge story with Logan volunteering in order to get revenge on his brother Sabretooth for killing his wife. It circumvents any of the philosophy of Wolverine’s tragedy, i.e. is he animal or man, and retroactively makes the other films in the franchise worse because of it. The first half has its moments, the 1800’s opening (there’s some visual shaky editing with obvious removals from this section), the opening credits with the Logan and Creed pair fighting through multiple wars, Creed and Bradley at the circus trailer, and of course Reynolds as Wade Wilson.

Once the major catalyst happens, it’s a hodge podge of almost disparate nonsense. Goofy scenes (the Blob) follow tragic ones (Ma and Pa Kent at the farm house), and it’s all over place. All the supporting characters feel like fan service and rarely have any arc and there’s a lot here, Cyclops, Gambit, Wade Wilson, Blob, John Wraith, Agent Zero, Ma & Pa Kent, and Silverfox.

The climactic battle flows a lot better with the removal of the mind control scenes, but it then does this 180 where Logan and Creed work together and it’s a confusing mess.

The fanedit is fine, in that it sets out what it's supposed to do. The movie is still awful though.

Original film rating: .5 stars
Fanedit rating: 1 star? Maybe?

Let me start off by saying that removing the family tie between Logan and Victor feels neither here nor there for me — tho it feels like doing so sort of started this movie on the wrong foot. Cutting out the shot of young James starting to scream before killing his dad felt jarring in that scene, which had me concerned for the rest of the edit. Fortunately, the pacing of this intro scene was really the only technical issue for me. I think the editor did a great job with this edit — not exactly saving the movie in my eyes but making it much more interesting to watch.

I would have personally removed Emma Frost and Professor X if possible, particularly for chronological watching with First Class, but that’s not really what this editor seems to be concerned with — which is valid enough.

Solid work!

I have watched a few edits by Bailey, and therefore I came in watching with positive expectations. I was not disappointed. I will repeat what some other reviews already stated as positive changes such as removal of the poor CGI, condensing the action, removing Deadpool, and the removal of the poorly contrived Wolverine-Sabertooth as brothers. You also really do not notice if anything was cut as things flowed relatively smoothly throughout.

I also want to specifically point out that much of the “final battle” at the end was condensed. It has been a while since I watched the movie, but it does appear that a lot of the use of the computer mind control was removed, which was a positive change as that was disrupting the flow of the movie and came across like watching video game mind control.

I do wish there was a way to fix the most absurd plot line in this movie, which was the faked death. I know the editor [correctly] kept it in because it was central to the narrative, but it is completely absurd that someone with powers of persuasion had to trick Logan with the fake death. Heck, she could have freed her sister just by touching and persuading Stryker to let her go. She should have been given different mutant powers to make her motivations much more logical.

The other bizarre issue that I think an edit can fix by trimming out a few words pertain to the Wolverine legend told to Logan by Kayla. The scriptwriters incorrectly referenced the Wolverine animal as howling like a wolf even though they are not actually wolves.

Overall, Bailey takes out most the ‘bad’ aspects of the movie and leaves us with a much higher quality and entertaining movie. This is an edit for those who want a more down to earth version.

This edit, Wolverine: Weapon X, is definitely an improvement over the theatrical cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

I agree that there's no good reason to make Logan and Victor brothers. It's not comic book accurate, nor is their family connection ever mentioned again in any other movie in the series.

Taking out the bathroom scene was smart. The movie flows perfectly without it.

And thank god Weapon XI is no longer Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds would be proud.

I really enjoyed this edit! I believe anything is better than the originally released run but this is good and worth the watch!

Bailey has done a great job!