For those of you unfamiliar with Tommy Wiseau, he starred, directed, wrote, and produced The Room, a romantic thriller released back in 2003. It is the sort of film that is so bad and unintentionally funny that it comes back around to being great. Since its release, it has steadily been gaining a cult following, mostly centered on the west coast. After its initial reception, Tommy Wiseau stated that everything about the film was intentional, and that it was meant to be a “black comedy”. Sorry Tommy, no one is really buying that! But he’s been a good sport about releasing one of the greatest worst movies of all time, because, in the end, fame is fame. If you need some more background on The Room phenomenon, then head over to this Entertainment Weekly article.
So what does Tommy Wiseau have to do with Wolverine? Well, I’ll get to that and hopefully it’ll make sense!
As I’m sure many of you already know, a working edit of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked online a couple of days ago to the internet, a good month prior to its official release. This leak was of a “working edit”, which basically means a good chunk of the effects and cuts weren’t finished. I waffled between if I should or shouldn’t watch it, not knowing if I wanted to spoil something I had been looking forward to. In the end, anticipation and a packed bowl got the better of me and I hit play.
I’m pretty goddamn happy that I opted to watch Wolverine in this working state, because it offered me a genuine opportunity to get some enjoyment & yuks out of this film. Lets be clear, X-Men Origins: Wolverine has some pretty hammy to downright awful acting, a ridiculous script, and takes so many liberties with the characters backstories that the whole Deadpool fiasco that flooded the internet a month back not only seems trivial but more and more comical over the course of the film.
If Watchmen and The Dark Knight are the new bars for measuring whether a comic book has been successfully translated into a movie, then X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a failure. But while it may fail at that, this “rough edit” currently circulating succeeds on a wholly different (albeit unintended) level.
Mix the bad acting and clichéd plot with the unfinished CGI effects, temporary backgrounds, stunt wires, and soppy cuts that this leak has in abundance and what you get is a perfect storm of awfulness, which, like The Room, you just couldn’t have intentionally scripted. This rough cut transforms a bad super-hero movie into an absurdest parody that is blissfully unaware, yet somehow tongue-in-cheek, since it’s still trying to translate a comic book. Maybe it’s me, but there is something transfixing and amazing about hammy melodrama followed by a succession of cheesy one-liners as the action turns into Tekken 3 or Mortal Kombat (see above and below screen captures), sans the status bars. That, over and over and over again, is basically what watching this leak is like.
I know this wasn’t intended to be a comedy, and come May 1st, the final version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine will be all nice and polished, but it won’t be half as enjoyable. With all of the absurdity stripped away, all you’re left with is a bad super-hero movie.
If you’re a fan of huge special effects and take your comic book characters & their lore seriously, you will most likely not enjoy this working edit (nor the final version, I reckon). But if like me, you’re big on B movies and unintentional comedy, this leak is a comedic stoner gem.
