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?

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!

I had forgotten about Wolverine Origins completely. I'm a huge fan of the franchise, I love all of them except Origins, New Mutants and also the Last Stand wasn't so great but not level Origins bad, so I didn't feel that I "needed" to salvage this, I had ten other mutant movies to watch. I accidentally saw this edit when I was scanning Reddit for fanedits not listed here (this is but I didn't know that) and I thought to myself, you know what, why not! And boy am I glad I did!

I haven't watched the "Codename" fanedit previously, so I have no idea how many of the changes/ideas are from there. Guys, this edit is excellent! I seriously don't think that there is anything else that can be done to improve this film. At least not from the parts that should be gone. One might argue for instance that he doesn't like the helicopter action scene, but we go into completely subjective territory then.

The narrative is much more focused, most of the cheesiness is gone, super bad CGI even for back then is gone (you can't get all of them, the movie is old), Deadpool is gone for the most part, you can't get rid of him completely, and we have a very decent Wolverine Origins movie that we can actually enjoy in an X-Men marathon!

Technical-wise the cuts were seamless, you won't miss anything and you won't notice that anything is missing. Only in the beginning where Logan is a kid there is an awkward sequence when his claws come out and he flies to the attacker, but other than that, excellent work!

Unless you absolutely hated the original movie, then this edit is for you and I guarantee you it will be your go-to version in any future X-Men marathons! I know it will be for me!

Thank you Bailey for all your hard work and thanks to anyone who read my review!