We have 10 pairs of Wolverine foam claws and 10 run-of-engagement passes to give away for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” We’ll run this giveaway this weekend and end it Monday May 11 at noon CT.

We’ll pick 10 winners at random then and send them each a pair of foam Wolverine claws and free passes to see the movie at the Phoenix Legends Theater in Kansas City, KS. The passes are only good Mon-Thurs.

Just fill out the form below and good luck!

Tags: claws, foam, free, KC, pair, passes, screening, showing, tickets, Win, Wolverine

Eric Melin and guest host Aaron Weber from Transbuddha.com lock claws over the X-Men prequel starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Does the movie live up to the hype? How does it stack up against the other X-Men movies (especially since “X2: X-Men United” is one of the best comic book adaptations of all-time)? Find out in this bestial review, featuring clips from the movie, and filmed directly following a press screening. For Eric’s print review of “Wolverine,” click here. Also: If you saw the movie, tell us which of its multiple endings you saw! Weigh in here.

Tags: 2009, book, clips, comic, film, fox, hugh, jackman, movie, origins, preview, review, trailer, Wolverine, x-men

Which “Wolverine” ending did you see? Weigh in here.

Watch our on-camera movie review with clips here.

The thing that made Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” and its first sequel so compelling was that the team of superheroes known as the X-Men were not superheroes at all, but mutants. Born with special powers, they were looked at as outcasts and wretches by society. That and the government’s rush to legislate mutantkind were potent allegories for any number of prejudices.

The script for Brett Ratner’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” continued this theme, offering a “cure” for mutants that stripped them of their powers, but the movie also reveled in corny dialogue and moved too fast to be very cohesive. It was a passable, yet disappointing conclusion to the series.

Gavin Hood’s prequel “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is fast too, clocking in at 107 minutes. It seems so worried about maintaining a breakneck blockbuster pace, in fact, that it skips out on drawing any kind of emblematic story or character-building in favor of VFX-filled action sequences that effectively amount to nothing. And even the action is mishandled, because some of the sequences have choppy and confusing editing. Only two of the major set-pieces are remotely memorable.

As a dumb action movie, “Wolverine” has its fair share of eye-popping (and remarkably violent for its PG-13 rating) fight scenes, but a tale that covers this much ground (he and his brother were born in the 1830s) should have a broader scope. Instead, Hood rushes from action scene to action scene without taking any time to set up any one of the large number of new mutants that arbitrarily drift in and out of the movie. Even though each scene takes place in a different locale, there’s also no feel for the settings or what they mean to anybody. Like “The Last Stand,” “Wolverine” is intent on cramming the film with as many mutants as possible to showcase more digital effects.

The closest that the film gets to developing anything in the character department is with the relationship of the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and his brother Victor Creed, or Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber). An inspired opening shows the duo fighting in every war from the Civil War to Vietnam, utilizing their near-instant mending powers, superhuman strength, and animal-like claws to inflict maximum damage on the enemy. It’s a great example of what the film fails to do for the rest of its running time. The montage shows a rivalry developing and a wedge being driven between them that will continue throughout the rest of the movie, which takes place in a roughly modern (apparently Wolverine is responsible for the Three Mile Island disaster of 1979–WTF?) setting.

Once the two meet up with Major William Stryker (Danny Huston), who commands a secret group of mutants for the government, cringe-worthy dialogue and bad acting start to become noticeable. Will.i.am (best known as a member of The Black Eyed Peas) is particularly wooden as John Wraith, a teleporting friend of Wolverine’s, and his one big scene is all but ruined by his stilted and distracting performance. Taylor Kitsch plays the New Orleans thief Gambit with an on-again-off-again Cajun accent that’s about as realistic as his character’s motivation. A scene with a kindly old couple in the woods and a cameo by a certain X-Men leader are poorly handled and best taken in for their unintentional comic effect.

The screenplay, written by David Benioff and Skip Jones, is basically an overheated melodrama and the plot puts everybody where they need to be to set up “X-Men,” but it also contains enormous gaps in logic. Wolverine’s brother calls him Jimmy (his family called him James), but we never hear how he got the name Logan, which everybody else calls him. After learning that Gambit had escaped Stryker’s compound and couldn’t be found, the film cuts directly to a scene where Wolverine finds the notorious gambler in—guess where—a New Orleans casino! Dominic Monaghan plays a character named Bolt, or so IMDb tells me. I wouldn’t really know who he is because he’s onscreen for a minute or so in the background before we’re meant to care about him in another short scene later.

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” has no consistent tone, weaving from failed comedic scenes to ones sucked dry of their inherent drama. Hood also misses out on any chance of drawing any bigger allusions. In keeping with the Holocaust imagery form the Magneto backstory, Stryker could have been more like infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, experimenting on human subjects for what he believed to be the good of his country. That comparison can still be drawn at surface value, but the movie does nothing to explore the twisted morality or any of the ethical issues that arise.

Even Wolverine, that compelling steel-clawed amnesiac from “X-Men,” is reduced to disheartening black and white terms. There’s plenty of talk about his bestial nature, but rarely an actual glimpse of it. Merely having an origin story at all takes much of the mystery out of the character, but neutering his inner conflict in favor of inconsequential fight scenes is an ill-conceived mishandling of him from beginning to end.

What made “X2,” “Spider-Man 2,” and “The Dark Knight” such powerful films was their ability to combine real-world themes with fantastic elements while never losing sight of what makes their characters unique and compelling. “Wolverine” turns its tortured anti-hero into a cigar-chomping cliché and it’s just sad.

Tags: disappointment, film, movie, origins, review, sucks, Wolverine, x-men

Have you seen “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”? Advance screenings are popping up this week at the same time that director Gavin Hood has revealed that the movie has multiple “easter egg” endings. These happen after the credits are finished, and reports on the Web so far indicate that there are at least three different ones, but probably more.

Which one did you see? Weigh in here and let us know where you live and which ending you saw. We’ll even try to catalog the endings as the inevitably become pirated and end up on the Internet.

Tags: credits, deadpool, different, easter egg, Easter eggs, endings, japan, logan, multiple, secret, Wolverine, x-men

Multiple endings? Different Deadpool endings for the new “Wolverine” X-Men movie? Easter eggs? Links to different “Wolverine” endings? As Marge Gunderson from “Fargo” would say: “You betcha.”

I’m going to see an advance screening of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” in about two hours and I’ve been reading a lot of chatter about multiple endings for the movie. From what it sounds like the movie itself will just have one common ending across all prints, but after the credits roll, there will be a different easter egg “tag” featuring one of the many characters in the movie. NOTE: Here’s a link to our on-camera review with clips and my print review.

This is similar, I would imagine, to Samuel L. Jackson’s cameo after the credits with Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man.” Rather than being an integral part of the movie, the scenes are probably just a tease to what’s coming next. They are also no doubt a way to get die-hard fans into the theater multiple times to combat the early leaked version that popped up on the Internet.

It’s also like the movie “Clue” (1985), except that film actually revealed the killer to be a different character in the last reel of the film proper (Which is a really bad idea from a screenwriting point of view–did they also foreshadow and drop clues to each one of the possible killers throughout the movie?)

Tonight’s screening in Kansas City, MO had a Stryker scene on the highway at the beginning/midway through the credits, and a Deadpool/Weapon XI scene (I say this because Ryan Reynolds played Deadpool , but Scott Adkins played Weapon XI) at the very end.

Anyway, several people have seen “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” already. Rather than printing spoilers as to each ending tag, let’s just use this post to catalog the ones you saw and where you saw them. So far, we have three. Please add the character featured and city you saw the film in the comments below! Let’s see if there’s any pattern to where these different versions are going. Once they show up on the Web, we can post links to them too. Here’s what’s been reported so far:

XMenFilms.net: There’s one with Stryker, and one with Wolverine in a Japanese restaurant.

ComicBookMovie.com: As for the secret ending we saw tonight, I’ll only say that it featured Deadpool, but I won’t say anything more, as I don’t want to spoil the ending.

Ashley Willson from Timonium, MD saw Wolverine, but wanted Deadpool.

SillySully7 got Deadpool and says the Stryker ending is probably on every print. I think he’s right.

Neosoul got Wolverine and Stryker, but also wanted Deadpool.

Laura says “Maryland’s Arundel Mills Muvico 24 had the Deadpool ending.”

Carmelita, at the Regal Cinemas in Newark, DE, got the Deadpool ending.

Erick says he’s rumor of a third ending, but saw the Deadpool one, and describes it in detail (SPOILER!)below at comment #16.

Nina saw a different ending in Kansas City, which means that multiple prints are being sent to each market. Good to know: “plaza cinemark, saturday 5/2, japanese restaurant”

Paul Phoenix says: “Saw it at two different theaters, one was a midnight showing at United Artists in Oxford Valley, PA: got the Wolverine Ending. Saw it again in Warrington at the Regal, got the Deadpool Ending. Both also had Stryker walking midway thru the credits.”

Kristin from Madison, MS saw the Deadpool ending on Sunday, 5/3.

Bobbys World saw the Wolverine “Drinking to Remember” secret ending in Augusta, GA on 3-May-09. He also has some interesting comments about Stan Lee’s cameo and the difference between Deadpool/Weapon XI in comment #21 below!

Scott Free saw it at the AMC Tallahassee, FL theatre 19, and sawthe Logan-in-Japan ending. “Damn, I wanted the Deadpool ending!” he says.

Patrick works at the Regal in Garden Grove, CA., and says “We have both endings on our prints (not both on the same print).”

ray461 says: “My wife works at the movie theater, so I get to see all the dry runs on movies. I saw only 2 different endings to this movie. The ‘walking stryker’ is on them all. But I have seen the Logan in the bar and the deadpool endings. I’m not sure if there is a 3rd one or not. I have heard that there is a 3rd, but would like to know for sure.”

Tags: deadpool, Different endings, Easter eggs, japan, Links, movie, Multiple endings, new, origins, restaurant, stryker, Wolverine, x-men