This is a double red band rant. It comes around every now and again, sorta like the third wind or double female climax, but you just don’t really hear about it. It’s too filthy for your ears, too fat to ride the rides, too gangrenous to be handled by Penicillin. Everyone involved in this story is so odorous with putrescence I can’t even choose a side. X-Men Origins: Wolverine shouldn’t matter. It should have come into my life like so many goddamn disposable superhero epics before it and sauntered away without changing one single thing, but thanks to some fucking rogue (pun not intended) film editor or redcoat gaffer douche bag, this film, this inconsequential nothing of a Hugh Jackman payout, now means everything. And that sucks on so many different levels.
I haven‘t seen Wolverine. I know people who know people who saw the film online and those people who are in no way me, my friends, employees of Cinema Blend LLC, family members or other persons who could in any way be linked to me whether by superficial connection, spatial proximity or otherwise told me the movie fucking sucks. I’m not sure if I believe them. Maybe the final version will be terrible, maybe it will be awesome. There’s really just no way of ascertaining the information at this juncture--but I’ll tell you what it won’t be: Watchmen.
Watchmen should have been the first superhero movie to be widely pirated because it mattered. It was the first big-budget costumed heroes bonanza to include rape and unrepentant, sociopath-like murder on both sides of the aisle while keeping an almost Nixonian villainy about the whole film, but for all practical purposes, Zach Snyder’s daring effort will change nothing about the cinematic landscape. It was generally assumed R-Rated, crime-fighting epics couldn’t pay insane dividends, and Watchmen didn’t exactly make Titanic money. It was generally assumed films of great moral turpitude couldn’t please God-fearing folks in the Bible Belt, and many of those same honest, hard-working 10 Commandment fans walked out on Watchmen. It should have mattered and yet, it doesn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things. And now Wolverine matters.
Wolverine is everything Watchmen wasn’t, at least on the surface. It’s a sequel, a PG-13 sequel, probably filled with darkish undertones, as is the recent trend, with high price tag actors like Hugh Jackman. It’s marketed toward teenagers, opening right as the weather’s getting really nice and about a thousand other things carefully contrived in harmony with sucking out every last ounce of profit. Wolverine screams we built it because we knew you and your bored, mindless friends would come. Yet, it matters; yet, it could change everything.
One of three scenarios is about to happen. A) Wolverine will open on Friday to two-thirds and half full theaters, causing Fox and Marvel to freak out and unleash an epic smear campaign against piracy. Millions of dollars will be floated to sketchy Washington lobbyists and big business, old money interests will push Congress to hunt down, waterboard and skullfuck thousands of twenty-somethings illegally downloading content. Security will be tightened hundreds of times over in every major studio, and perhaps Hollywood may start thinking twice about drowning a hundred million dollars on films which need massive opening weekends to break even. B) Wolverine will open on Friday to mostly filled theaters, causing Fox and Marvel to both silently fume and openly speculate about just how much money Wolverine could have made. The film will break even or turn a slight profit over the long haul, and all involved will feel like they slept with an ugly chick but got away with it. A few more security spot-checks will be enacted and this whole piracy subplot will drift away like a Viking funeral pyre or that Uncle Kracker song. C) Wolverine will open on Friday to sold out theaters, causing Fox and Marvel to boast wildly about how the average person isn’t stealing content online and nothing will ever replace the movie-going experience. A stunning profit will be counted and reinvested in more X-Men: Origin films. Dumb executives will pitch ideas about secretly leaking more movies to generate buzz; though, this musing will be ultimately rejected. High risk, hundred million dollar gambles on light, popcorn, PG-13 fare will increasingly become the norm and someday we’ll see side characters like Raiden and Mr. Freeze as the protagonist in their own films, and we’ll all continue trying to make fetch happen. My heart’s aquiver with anticipation.
It should have been Watchmen or The Dark Knight. Hell, I could have even lived with Mystery Men, but Armageddon is going to be fought over a shitty character no one cares about. That’s right. I said it. The world doesn’t give a shit about the X-Men. They’re lame cardboard cutouts, and now one of those lame cardboard cutouts is the litmus test for just how much pillaging piracy can muster. What the fuck? Would people have even shown up for this movie without all the bad online buzz? I don’t know a single person who was excited to see this movie. I’m sure a few of my friends would have gotten high and somehow ended up there as a lazy Sunday plan, but to pretend without universal critical praise and audience adulation Wolverine would have been anything more than Fantastic Four or The Hulk is frankly, laughable, idiotic, and counterintuitive to common sense. This whole thing is like Razor Ramon wrestling for the WWE championship while Bret Hart, Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin eat popcorn from the sidelines.
You know how scum of the Earth wife beaters always excuse their behavior by yelling something like, “Look what you made me do”? Well, for the purposes of this diatribe, I’m the redneck in flannel drunkenly flailing away, and Fox is the victim of my rage. Fuck you, Fox, fuck you for forcing me into this position. I know hitting you is wrong. Your movie was pirated; you’re the victim. You didn’t know someone would mail it off The Pirate Bay, that this would be the movie that mattered, that your ex-boyfriend would show up at the same bar as us---but what are you doing not zealously stalking your hundred million dollar investment during every step of the process, what are you doing spending this much money on giving Wolverine of all characters his own movie and what are you doing walking around in public in an outfit like that? You brought this on yourself. There’s blood on your hands, and even if you, by some fly-by-night miracle, pull it off with your multiple endings and surprise recuts, it doesn’t really matter because you forced yourself into the corner.
But fuck the asshole prick who leaked this to begin with. He’s the real Hitler in this equation. I don’t know who you are, you shady fuck, but betraying the trust you were given with a rough cut of this film is not okay. I know the code of ethics pirates live by. You need to contribute to move up in the world, get invited to better services, get your hands on better copies. I’m sure you feel like a big man right about now. You were the one who leaked Wolverine, the first one to ever really put Baby into a corner. I hope it was worth it, you coward. I hope your self-esteem was temporarily boosted by the other pirates who just used you. Morality may be subjective, but people are either good or bad. They either behave selfishly or virtuously, and the fuck face who leaked Wolverine has to wake up every morning living with the decision he made. That might not be a weight now, but I assure you he’ll be thinking about it when he tells his children why lying and cheating to get what you want is never the right call.
I’m disgusted by everyone involved in this story. I’m disgusted with Fox for trying to pitch a movie to America where a dude with claws drives away from an explosion in his motorcycle (it‘s in the trailer). I’m disgusted with whoever leaked this because it was an epically shitty, selfish thing to do. I’m disgusted with Hugh Jackman for choosing movies like this over ones like The Prestige. I’m disgusted with myself for being so disgusted with the whole goddamn disgusting thing. There’s mud in my hand; I just wish I could throw at more than one place at once.
Some delinquent nothing robbed a soulless something. And now it means everything.
