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Superhero origin stories seem to be making a big push again through Hollywood. Some are welcomed with open arms by fans, and others like X-Men Origins: Wolverine were so bad, it begs the question why they even made it in the first place. With the fast rise of the X-Men's popularity, and especially Wolverine, it's no wonder the studio jumped at the opportunity. But hindsight is 20/20, and a sloppy Wolverine origin story set the X-Men franchise back quite a bit.
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I want new ones
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What do you want them to say? Wolverine. Some questions in life were never meant to be answered, or even asked
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As Wolverine grew in popularity, some of us felt a familiar tinge of worry
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We knew what would come next, the unraveling of a mystery that was never intended to be answered
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But why do we do this to ourselves over and over again
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Why did we have to give Wolverine an origin story? There is an archetype in media that has really just become a snake eating its own tail
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The dragon. A shadowy figure appears, doesn't say much, looks amazingly cool
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and then sends the plot in wild directions. We, as people, love them
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Without knowing the circumstances that brought them to the exact moment of our introduction
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they become a blank slate for us to project ourselves onto. Wolverine first appeared briefly in The Incredible Hulk number 180
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with his full issue in the following 181. The character's introduction was twofold
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One, to give the Incredible Hulk an antagonist that could stand toe-to-toe with the Green Goliath
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And two, to appeal to Canadian comic book readers. I'm Canadian. Then-editor Roy Thomas had originally asked Lynn Wien to make a character that Canadians could possibly relate to
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If it didn't work out, no harm, as the original idea was never for Wolverine to become one of Marvel's most iconic characters
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But he quickly became so. After his brief appearance in The Incredible Hulk, fans couldn't get enough
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Next appearing in Giant-Sized X-Men, Wolverine then hopped from book to book
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until appearing in his own limited miniseries by icons Chris Claremont and Frank Miller
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It's mostly in line with the ninja obsession of the time, using the setting of Japan to give hints of a backstory
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And that mystery is exactly what enticed readers to follow along with the character It a level of engagement that works perfectly for the monthly serial format Wolverine popularity only increased throughout the 90s Featured heavily in Jim Lee X and the X animated series
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we spent decades of content to let the character remain a mystery
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Then, the live-action X-Men movie came out in 2000. Give me a chance
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I may be able to help you find some answers. With Wolverine serving alongside Rogue as audience surrogates
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Both characters were new to the X-Men and served as reasoning for exposition
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Who the mutants were, why they lived in the mansion, etc. While comics initially encouraged mystery to keep us engaged and pump long-term sales
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films often treat mysteries as something to be resolved. It's an inevitable event to draw in ticket sales
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And with Joe Quesada then serving as editor-in-chief, he was adamant Marvel Comics not be beaten to the punch
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Quesada rushed to put the creative team together in order to get the book out as quickly as possible
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While most characters' origin unfolds organically within their series, Marvel was steadfast on hyping up the mini as an event
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something to be celebrated and paid attention to. Written by Paul Jenkins with art from Andy Kubert and Richard Eisenhoff
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Origin was a six-issue mini-series released in 2001 and 2002. It told the story of James Howland
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a sickly young boy who would eventually mutate into the powerhouse Wolverine
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It is exactly what the character did not need. We're told Howlett was the rich son of Canadian plantation owners
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And look, when you've been told a character is over a century old, it's safe to assume a lot of their origin is steeped in our world's horrific past
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It's another thing entirely when a million-dollar company and its creative team
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drop you into the time period and refuse to acknowledge it. Erase his memory
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I think he heard you. Until Origin, the breadcrumbs we received about Wolverine
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involved his being forced or tricked into participating in the Weapon X program
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At least, that's what we're led to believe. But in Origin the mutation saves James life And that was not the character we had been led to believe in It was not someone to aspire to be But that series was infinitely better than what the ridiculously titled X Origins Wolverine would be
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The title itself is a threat to deliver more of these movies, and we should consider ourselves lucky that we did not
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Origins was released in 2009. The movie attempts to combine several different comic book runs into one film
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Origin, Barry Windsor Smith's Weapon X, and the aforementioned Wolverine Limited series
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While attempting to cram over 300 pages of comics into a 120-minute runtime
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they also try to shoehorn in fan-favorite character, Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds
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Hey, just cleaning up the timeline. The fact is, it just doesn't work
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There's no sort of coherence or through line, with no singular plot given enough time to track
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We see a quick montage of Logan and Sabretooth, here half-brothers, battling in wars throughout history before being recruited by Stryker into the Weapon X program, and then more montages and slow-mo walking away from explosions
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It is genuinely exhausting, mostly because the series it pulls from were spread over three decades with no intent on interconnectivity
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David Benioff has often said his initial script was much more violent and dark
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a story he intended to be a hard R, riddled with violence and gore
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The movie instead works as a hodgepodge of events from the books loosely strewn together
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And honestly, a lot of the material the movie pulled from either didn't work
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or was rushed in order to not be outdone by a different medium. It's a sound business move, but a terrible way to craft a story of a beloved and celebrated character
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Origins are not exactly what we want from our dragon archetype. Boba Fett was first introduced
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in the Star Wars animated Christmas special. People responded so positively that he appeared
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briefly in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi before being eaten by a giant sandworm But small cameos weren enough We were not content enough to let him live in our heads and hearts And just like with Wolverine the corporations were more
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than happy to take our money. Wolverine works because he is a searcher. Searchers are always
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finding a way to come to grips with who they are and why. If we're given concrete answers
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the character finds peace and their journey ends, which is great for the fictional character
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but necessitates constant reboots or memory loss in order to give them new stories
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Released in 2017 and directed by James Mangold, Logan was a chance to set right where they felt like they came up short in 2013's The Wolverine
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Instead of rehashing a loose origin or story from the main character's past
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Logan focused on his death. While still loosely based on a comic, Logan felt more like a reward for our hard guesswork and time
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Logan was a story about the results of the dragon's past. This idea works because there are no contradictions or plot holes
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no tangled webs of continuity or fan theories to navigate. It is quite simply what brought us to Wolverine in the first place
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Someone who is the best at what they do, being the best at what they do
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Origins, the movie or comic, was never going to work. The name itself is antithetical for what Wolverine as a character means to so many people
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Part of his character is his enigma, his absence of an origin
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When that mystery, that allure, is stripped, it's akin to pulling the adamantium from his skeleton
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One of the most essential supports of his being is now gone. As more and more media is produced every year
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we will always have characters like Wolverine, the man with no name, or Boba Fett
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More dragons to show up when we need them the most. But it's important for us to not mirror them
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Sometimes when we're given a mystery, maybe we should relish the idea of uncertainty in the unknown
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Otherwise, we'll become the snake destined to eat our own tail in our search for answers
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