John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard:

“[T]he system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

“The eight most successful movies over the course of the year’s first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star. Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It’s not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons. Will Ferrell’s movie tanked. Julia Roberts laid an egg. Adam Sandler couldn’t sell a ticket. Johnny Depp disappointed. Denzel Washington and John Travolta bombed together. Instead, the movies whose successes depended on their strong leading performances were the ones featuring the 57-year-old Irishman Liam Neeson (Taken, $145 million) and the out-of-work TV comedian Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $146 million).
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Just before seeing ”X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” I checked the Tomatometer, hoping against hope that there had been a sudden surge since I had last checked it a half hour previously. No such luck: The ”Wolverine” TM still stood at a dismal 38%. I glumly trucked over to the theater, fairly certain it would suck, just hoping it wouldn’t ”Fantastic Four” suck.

Having now seen it, I have just one question: What are these critics smoking, and where can I get some (ok, that’s two questions)?

To be sure, the first installment of the proposed “X-Men” prequels has its share of flaws, and some of the criticism is more than fair. So let’s get the bad out of way first: (more…)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine sounds like an idea for a direct-to-DVD cash-in project: pluck out one character and fill in the back-story, which is considerably cheaper than bringing back the whole cast for another big-screen adventure. But Wolverine aspires to more than that, of course, and Hugh Jackman as the title character probably takes up most the casting budget anyway:  He’s the main draw for the X-Men movie series, the most dynamic and complicated of the characters, and if you had to pick the one best-suited to pure action sequences, it’s this guy.

Yet Wolverine still feels like an afterthought, a distant cousin to the original franchise, a sidebar that adds little to the main narrative. That’s probably because the picture is a gloomy exercise:  There’s no one to cheer for except Wolverine, and he’s working so hard at being Eyore with Elvis sideburns that it’s hard to root for him anyway. Then again, who can blame him? The character lives in a world populated almost entirely of bad guys. Besides your standard-issue unrepentants, you’ve got good guys who turn out to be bad guys, family members who turn out to be bad guys, trusted leaders who turn out to be bad guys, and lovers, friends, and comrades in arms who turn out to be bad guys, too. There are a few good guys who don’t turn out to be bad guys (I counted two), but they don’t survive long enough to earn a spot beyond the last third of the closing credits. (more…)