X-Men Origins: Wolverine

In all of the aeons of human history, few superhero movies are looked down upon as much as today's. Especially by my co-star.

For good reason.

Indeed. People disliked Batman Forever. People scoffed at Green Lantern. People despised Batman Vs Superman. Spider-Man 3, X-3: The Last Stand, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, all of these caused their series to be rebooted.

But of all the bad superhero movies, this one stands out as being the very worst.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Either that, or this is a Hugh Jackman workout video.

This movie went wrong at just about every step it could go wrong at.

The movie starts with a flashback, as I've come to expect these days,and a historically incorrect one to boot.

This area wasn't a part of Canada until the 1870s.

The flashback features two boys, one of which is surly and threatening, the other of which is sickly and bedridden.

The older child is named Victor, which we find out when James' father enters the room (James being the sickly child).

They get interrupted when Victor's father starts hammering at the door, demanding to see a woman named Elisabeth, who is James' mother.

The father and Victor both leave and we hear shouting and arguing, before a gunshot rings out.

And on this day young James Howlett set forth to create a world where no young boy would lose his parents to some punk with a gun.
Whoops, wrong backstory.

The stress of seeing his father dying on the floor causes James' X-gene to trigger, growing claws from the backs of his hands.

Practising his skyward screams I see.

In his rage he stabs the shotgun-wielding man in the stomach, giving him just enough time to confess the truth. James is his son.

After watching everything go down, James' mother takes the shotgun and uses it on herself.

In their panic Victor and James flee the house and never return.

And that's how you reduce a six-issue mini-series into 4 minutes of screentime.

Yeah, this sequence took a few liberties from the comics. It cut out the love interest, a redhead named Rose, as well as combining Dog Logan with Victor Creed.

In the comics it was hinted that the older brother might be Sabretooth, but eventually revealed that Dog Logan was a different character entirely.

It's like a cross between every Canadian and Texan stereotype.

To be fair to the movie, at the time it hadn't been revealed whether Dog was Sabretooth or not. It's entirely possible that the backlash from this movie was bad enough that the Marvel writers decided to do this just to distance themselves from it.

Anyway, the two brothers run from the house and into the opening credits, with a montage of them fighting through multiple wars. They see the American Civil War, WW1, WW2 and eventually the Vietnam War.

They look a bit more recognisable now.

As the decades pass them by, Victor gets more animalistic and cruel, which causes James some concern.

He's especially concerned when Victor drags a young Vietnamese girl into a hut and starts to rape her.

Would you believe this guy actually ends up joining the Avengers?

Victor's superior officer tries to stop him only to get butchered in response. The rest of the soldiers try to stop Victor, with James siding with him out of habit.

They eventually get arrested and court-martialled, with execution by firing squad as their punishment.

But as you know, they both have healing factors, so it doesn't take.

Whilst they're locked up in a cell they get visited by a man named Stryker, whom you may recognise a the villain from X-Men 2.

This guy.

Stryker recruits them both into a super-secret black ops team full of super-powered individuals (And a couple of regular-but-skilled mercs). The brothers readily agree since sitting in a Vietnamese jail cell isn't very interesting.

So are we going to have a short montage where Stryker recruits the rest of his team and introduces them?

Nah, let's just skip straight to their first mission.

Look, it's me. And a whole bunch of other guys that only die-hard fans will recognise.
And one that even they won't.

From left, in order of seating, we have;

Wade Winston Wilson, pre-Deadpoolification,

Wraith, a character made up so that Will.I.Am could have Nightcrawler's powers,

Agent Zero, Bullseye but only with guns,

Bolt, a guy who can power electronics with his mind,

Stryker, the inevitable bad guy,

Fred Dukes, known in the comics as the Blob.

And if you want to know anything about them, tough luck, this movie doesn't have time for silly little things like that, it's got violence to get to.

Violence and physically impossible jumps.

The violence does give us some introduction to these characters and what they can do, though not much.

Also, the director seems confused by how tanks work.

If you looked down a cannon's scope, you would not see directly down the barrel.

I'm also pretty sure the explosion would happen at the other end of the barrel.

The team get into the lift and get very, very annoyed with Wade's constant talking.

This may be the one good thing about this movie, how they handled Wade pre-Deadpool.

He's smart, he's skilled, he's professional. He also never shuts up.

It's just a shame about what they did to his character.

I'm not in the mood to talk about it.

Well, that's ironic.

Speaking of which, you've been uncharacteristically quiet for this review, what's up?

I'm working on something.

Oh yeah? What is it?

It's a surprise.

Well then, anyhoo, as they leave the lift Wade kills a whole bunch of mooks.

He can apparently spin his swords fast enough to deflect the bullets from at least 6 assault rifles.

After everybody's dead and the diamond baron is thoroughly surrounded, Stryker finds what he came for.

A black rock that the guy was using as a paperweight.

Stryker asks where he can find more and if you've read the comics or seen the movies you'll know that this is Adamantium, the unbreakable metal that will be fused to Wolverine's bones.

Of course, they're not allowed to use the words Vibranium or Wakanda, since they didn't have the rights to Black Panther.

So instead of using those words, they go to a random African village and start killing civilians, which doesn't sit well with James.

Victor, on the other hand, is perfectly fine with it.

James walks away as lightning strikes in the background, because that's a cliche that we haven't seen in a movie for a while.

We transition to the Canadian Rockies six years later, where James is living a peaceful life with his girlfriend.

Oh he's a lumberjack and he's okay,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.

At this point, James isn't the only person who's left the team. Bolt is living an equally quiet though less fulfilling life as a fairground attraction.

Why do super-powered people always seem to gravitate towards jobs that show off their powers?
Why couldn't he just get a job flipping burgers and save money on electricity?

His quiet life gets disturbed when Victor knocks at his door. 

Despite the fact that Bolt has never said anything about what happened when he was on the team, Victor has been sent to kill him.

I can understand that he was powering the whole fairground, but why would his death affect the nearby train?

James continues to have quiet moments with his girlfriend, whom the movie hasn't seen fit to name yet. But at work, he gets approached by Stryker and Agent Zero, who shoots the cigar that James is chewing on. It would be quite amusing if the effects weren't so obviously sped up.

Blazing Saddles had better effects for this kind of thing.

Stryker has a job for James, specifically trying to find out who murdered Bolt, mentioning that Wade was murdered too.

Pffft, like Sabretooth could kill me even before I got powers.

Shhhh, that's supposed to be a big twist.

Like anybody cares about spoilers for this movie.

True.

James turns down Stryker's job and drives away.

He picks up his girlfriend and informs her of what happened.

He says the line.

Huh?

You know. The line.

Oh yeah, that line.

"I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do best isn't very nice."

Yeah, they just couldn't wait to jam that in there, could they?

Heh, that's what she said.

They come across some jerks blocking a bridge, so James gets out to ask them to move. The jerks act like jerks and almost start a fight, but the girlfriend diffuses the situation.

The movie offers no explanation at this point, but she does make a joke about having 'The power of persuasion'.

That night the girlfriend (I refuse to use her name until the movie bothers to tell it to us) regales James with a story about the Moon being in love with a spirit named Kwekuatsu (Which I probably spelt wrong) who got tricked by a jealous spirit into leaving the spirit world.

Kwekuatsu apparently means the Wolverine. This will be important later.

Especially since, the very next day, Victor shows up in front of Kayla's car (They finally named the girlfriend).

She's a love interest for Wolverine and she's not in any of the other movies, nobody was surprised by this.

Victor left a nice trail for James to follow leading right up to her warm corpse.

Considering how savage Victor has been shown to be, her corpse is in surprisingly good condition.

James screams to the skies in anguish and tracks Victor to a bar later that night.

James attacks Victor, only to get his arse handed to him. The fight ends with a near-literal curb-stomping, with Victor snapping James' claws.

Since James screams in agony, does that mean that he has nerves inside his claws?

James wakes up in the hospital, where the paramedics took him due to his knife wounds (Which have, naturally, already healed). Stryker is there waiting for him, which results in a friendly chat.

For a given value of 'friendly'.

Stryker says that he didn't know it was Victor committing all of the murders, but then he says that he locked him up and when he inevitably escaped, he swore that he would kill them all.

Don't you just love it when the obvious bad guy contradicts their own statements whilst making those statements?

No, it's lame and stupid.

Stryker says that he can help James get his revenge, but that he'll "Suffer more pain than any other man can endure."

HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.......

*Gasp*

HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....

*Gasp*

HA!

It's almost a shame that Stryker and Francis never met. I'm sure they would have had a lot to talk about.

They fly James to their super-secret laboratory and prepare to bond his bones with the Adamantium they got from Africa.

But first, they make some new dog tags for James.

You have to admit, it's a striking visual.

James' new tags say 'Wolverine' on one side and 'Logan' on the other.

The plothole about James having the nickname of 'Logan' whereas Victor uses the surname 'Creed' is never addressed.

Stryker is joined on a viewing platform by a bunch of generic army Generals, the kind that appear in every movie whenever a military guy does anything experimental.

He also namedrops Weapon X, but ruins it by immediately revealing that it's a Roman numeral.

Remember how big a twist that was in the comics? How it was just one of many attempts to create super-soldiers and that Captain America was Weapon 0?

Here?

Eh, let's just straight-up tell everybody that it's a number, that way nobody will be surprised when Weapon XI rolls around.

Though, to be fair, Weapon XI did surprise us, just not in the way anybody expected.

Anyhoo, they finally get around to bonding James' bones with the Adamantium.

I know that anaesthetics don't work on him, but couldn't they have tried other methods of putting him under? Like hypnosis?

The process hurts like heck, and the movie takes great pains to make it seem like he won't survive.

Err, they do know that this is a prequel right?

Yep.

But anyway, let's talk about the Adamantium bonding process itself. They jab needles into various bones around his body, then literally pump the Adamantium into him.

This makes no physical sense.

First off, the space that they're pumping the metal into is filled with bone. They have no way of controlling where the metal will spill once they've pumped it into him.

Second, they don't even jab a needle into every bone. How does the metal know to jump from his forearms to his wrist bones? Then to his fingers?

With X-23, in the comics at least (I still haven't seen Logan) Laura's claws were physically removed, bonded with the Adamantium, then reinserted into her body (Removing the fresh growths as they did so).

This process, whilst having questions of its' own, makes far more sense than this one.

Turns out that it works though, because movie physics, so Stryker tells Zero to use his DNA for Weapon XI and erase his memory.

Stryker seems to have forgotten that James has superhuman hearing though.

Meaning James heard it.

Methinks that may have made him angry.

Agent Zero immediately tries shooting him in the face, but seems to have forgotten that they just bonded his bones to unbreakable metal literally moments ago.

James stabs a bunch of people as he escapes (Naked, though he wasn't naked when they started the procedure) and jumps off of a cliff.

Stryker orders Zero to hunt him down and take his head off.

How a guy with a pair of pistols is supposed to behead a man who's literally indestructable is a mystery.

James flees through the Canadian wilderness until he finds a barn to hide in. This barn appears to be owned by the Kents.

If her name's Martha I swear I'm shooting somebody.

These two are credited as Heather and Travis Hudson, which really grinds my gears. The Hudsons were major characters in Wolverine's life, at least in the comics. They're founding members of Alpha Flight and are essentially Canadian versions of Captain America.

Here? they're a pair of old people who get less than ten minutes screen time before being killed, just to make James feel guiltier about everything.

But before that, they act nice towards him, giving him clothes and some food. And access to their bathroom, where he examines his new claws.

Which gives us the perfect opportunity to talk about the first major elephant in this movie.

His claws.

And how rubbish the CGI is.

Everybody involved in this movie should retire.

These are from the same team that brought us the original X-Men movie. So let's have a look at those claws for comparison.

You have no idea just how cool it was to watch these on the big screen for the first time.

Yeah, it's terrible. I have no idea why they went with this decision....

Actually, I have an inkling, but I'll save that for later.

For now, let's get back to that bit where I said the Hudsons get killed off just to make James feel guiltier about everything.

That puff of smoke is supposed to be a bullet wound, btw.

The camera zooms out to reveal Agent Zero with a smirk on his face. Stryker gives the order to explode him as an attack helicopter fires missiles into the barn.

But James escapes by riding out on the Hudson's motorcycle.

Do they use explosion-resistant wax on it or something?

Stryker sends a small army out to fight James, but he manages to take them all down on his own. He even manages to take down the helicopter using nothing but his claws and an exploding jeep as a launchpad.

What is it about mutants using explosions to propel themselves into the air?

My main problem with this entire action scene though, is the motorcycle. When James first sat on it, you could hear the suspension struggle under his weight due to his metal skeleton.

And yet he's doing 180 degree turns and ramping over trees with no problems. The tires at least should burst the first time he so much as hits a pothole.

But anyway, he practically punches the helicopter out of the sky.

Miraculously Agent Zero survives the crash, though James makes sure it doesn't stick.

I think this entire movie may have been made just for this one visual.

Meanwhile, Stryker is chatting to another military guy, who hands him some Adamantium bullets, saying that they're the only things that can take James down.

"And you didn't give these to Agent Zero because...?"

I should discuss this. The main property of Adamantium is that it's indestructable. Which means that nothing can so much as scratch it. So if you make bullets out of them, you end up with indestructable bullets. When something indestructable collides with something else that's indestructable, what do you think would happen?

They would bounce off of each other. They would both be undamaged from the impact.

It would be like attacking a tank with an aluminium baseball bat. The bat would bounce off of the tank without causing damage to either.

This movie is stupid and we haven't even reached the worst part of it yet.

Which I, for one, am not looking forward to.

Elsewhere, it's time to introduce another character in yet another subplot.

Stryker has been looking for a young mutant and has just found him.

What is it about boy scout characters wearing red and blue?

This is Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, one of the most iconic members of the X-Men.

He serves very little purpose in this movie.

Back to the main plot though, and James has gone to see Wraith to find out what happened after he left the team.

Only an hour into the movie and we're getting to know one of the headline stars.
Don't get attached to him though.

Wraith has been spending his time helping Dukes try to lose weight. After the team disbanded, Dukes got dumped by his girlfriend, which he didn't take well.

He started over-eating and, thanks to his superpowers, he can't seem to shift the added mass.

Reminds me of a couple of my ex-girlfriends.
Having read your comics, I know you're not joking.

Wraith tells James that after he left, Stryker had them round up mutants. Wraith doesn't know where they were taken, but since Dukes and Zero were close, Dukes probably does.

But as James tries to ask Dukes about it, he calls him 'Bub', which Dukes mishears as 'Blob'.

This joke would have been a lot better if James had ever used the word 'Bub' in this movie before this scene.

It's almost like it's a lame excuse to have two characters fight each other.

I have to admit that this fight is actually rather entertaining.

Everything's going Dukes' way until he decides to try headbutting James. Due to having a metal skull, Dukes hurts himself more than he hurts James.

This is what makes James realise that no matter how tough he is, he can't grow fat on his forehead.

Apparently James prefers wrestling over boxing.

Meanwhile, back at the B plot, Summers is attacked by Victor after school.

Oh, and Stryker's there, because it turns out that Victor never stopped working for Stryker.

You mean the bad guy from X-Men 2 is also the bad guy in this movie? I'm shocked.

This of course means that Stryker was lying to James the entire time. Something James never noticed, despite the fact that we saw him use his super-senses to act as a lie detector back in the African village.

Y'know, the main reason these reviews take so long to write is because you insist on pointing out so many plotholes.

But that's the whole point of having a review blog.

Dukes tells James about all of this and even gives him the name of a young mutant who managed to escape.

Remy Lebeau, aka Gambit, aka one of the more popular members of the X-Men whom fans have been clamouring to have in a movie.

So let's have us a look at the film version of this character.

Oh God, he's a hipster! Kill him! Kill him now!

Remy is a card hustler and his first response to being accosted by a stranger is to ask if he owes him any money.

So far, so good.

But let's get a better look at him.

Pop quiz, what's wrong with this picture?

In the comics, Remy Lebeau's defining physical trait are his unique eyes.

They are rather unusual.

This may not be the worst travesty about this movie, but it is indicative of the lack of care that went into it.

And there's a reason for that.

But that's a rant for the end of the review.

While James and Remy sit down to chat, Wraith decides to cover the back exit in case Remy makes a break for it during the inevitable fight.

However, he gets distracted.

And here we thought James would be the one to get into trouble first.

Victor mentions having killed Dukes off-screen.

So I hope you weren't attached to literally anybody in this movie, because unless they're in a prior movie they ain't got much chance of surviving.

Wraith and Victor fight for literally less than a minute before Victor predicts Wraith's next move and rips his spine out.

Well, his presence in the movie was entirely pointless.

Meanwhile, James tries to persuade Remy to take him to the island where Stryker is conducting his experiments, but naturally manages to mess it up and start a fight.

Once again, I'm forced to admit when something is cool.

Gambit knocks James through a wall, which by sheer happenstance just so happens to land him in the alley where Victor is collecting a blood sample from Wraith.

So now we have those two fighting... Again.

Ummm, ow?

During the fight, James comments that Victor is getting slower. Surely it should be James who's slower than before? Due to the extra weight? This fight should really be going about as well as it did earlier.
Doesn't matter anyway, since Remy shows up to the fight just as James is winning.

It's the modern superhero mantra.
"If you don't know what's going on, just attack everybody."

Somehow the explosion propels them to opposite ends of the alleyway and Victor takes off.
James starts to chase him, even yelling his name, but Remy starts beating him with his staff.
Despite knowing who Victor is and clearly hearing James yell his name.
Seriously, I don't understand why Remy's doing this.
After fighting for a little bit, James points out that he's tying to kill everybody that Remy hates.

Which should have been obvious when you interrupted his previous attempt to kill him.

Meanwhile, at the Weapon XI Project, one of the Generals is talking to Stryker about their mysterious plans. Specifically, Stryker explains what Weapon XI actually is. It's an attempt to create a single soldier with the powers of multiple mutants.
And we get a glimpse of what this will look like.

So far so good, except for those stitches across his mouth.

The General has found out Stryker's secret about his son being a mutant. He says that Stryker is too close to this and attempts to shut him down.
He does this whilst on his own.
With no security.
In a secret installation filled with super-powered people loyal to Stryker.

Did anybody in the audience not predict this? Anybody?

Meanwhile James and Remy are approaching the island.
(No scene of James mourning Wraith, or even acknowledging his death.)
The secret facility is hidden beneath 3-Mile Island, which was a nuclear reactor. It suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
This movie is set in 1979.
I'm sure James will keep property damage to a minimum.
Remy drops James off nearby.

Has James even figured out whether or not he can swim with metal bones?

On a related note, I hope you enjoyed seeing Gambit in this movie. Because that's all we're getting. Remy doesn't even help with sneaking into the base.
Because when you put the world's greatest thief into a movie immediately before the scene where you sneak into a base, you use him as a taxi driver.
Gods I hate this movie.
Meanwhile, back inside, Stryker's people are grafting the last few powers into Weapon XI.

They just kidnapped Cyclops and they're grafting powers onto this guy. I wonder what power he'll have?

James sneaks into the facility and spots Cyclops being dragged into a cell.
Completely ignoring this, he finds Stryker and they chat.
Stryker reveals what they've named Weapon XI.
Deadpool.
Since he's pooling mutant powers together to make a mutant killer.
So it's more like the Utimate variant of Deadpool.
Excpt nobody liked that version, which is why it appeared only once.
So this is exactly like that version of Deadpool.
Stryker says that it took years of searching to find mutants with powers that could coexist in one body. His son was the first piece of the puzzle, whereas James was the last.
(Though they apparently had space in that puzzle to fit Cyclops in, somehow.)
Stryker did ask, but James refused because he wanted the quiet life. So Stryker decided to set him up to seek revenge.

"What a tweest!"

This reveal makes no sense. Not because I don't believe that Stryker could have planned it. But because James shouldn't have fell for it. With his enhanced senses, he should have been able to tell that she was still alive.
Also, the plan was incredibly flawed. What if he had decided to bury the body before seeking his revenge?
Or burn it?
And why did they even need him for this anyway?
All they're doing is using his healing factor to help Deadpool's body hold together under the stress of using all of his powers. So why couldn't they have used Victor's DNA? They have the exact same powers.
Even better, if all they needed was his DNA then why didn't they just get Kayla to retrieve that? She lived with him for years.
Even better, she has literal powers of persuasion. She can control people by talking to them whilst touching them (A power shared by all women, at least when it comes to me) so why couldn't she just persuade him to help Stryker when he came to ask?
And it's not because he wanted to test the Adamantium bonding process, because I've already pointed out a safer, if slower, method of doing that. Where they remove the bones one-by-one and bond them separately.
This movie is hoping that you'd be too shocked by the reveal that you won't question it.
James up and walks away, utterly ignoring the whole 'Mutant-killer' problem.
I should probably mention that Kayla went along with the deception because Stryker has her younger sister, a girl with diamond-hard skin.
But, before we can process this completely, Victor interrupts them, angry that Stryker let James leave.
Seems fair, considering Stryker just gave a speech about how they couldn't just let James walk away.
Stryker tries to talk him down, but Kayla points out that he's betrayed literally everybody else and will betray him too, so Victor grabs her by the neck, causing her to scream.
Which James hears, forcing him to re-enter the building screaming Victor's name.

I could point out that there's no way he could have gone from outside the building to here within the time shown, but I'm more distracted by how unnatural this pose looks.

James and Victor have a badly-edited, badly-choreographed shaky-cam fight that flings them both through the window.
James decides not to kill Victor to prove that he's not an animal, knocking him unconscious instead. Which is a decision he made purely because Sabretooth already appeared in the regular movies.
Kayla arrives and begs James to find her younger sister, saying that she truly loved him as well.
So James and Kayla go to the completely-unguarded cells and release all of the prisoners, which requires the flipping of only one switch.

So you're saying that she never thought to just unlock the doors and get the super-powered people to help her escape?

James unlocks all of the cells and leads the captured teenagers to the exit, but is stopped in his tracks when Deadpool shows up.
And....
Well, they tried.
A little bit.
Kinda.

Actually no, they didn't. At all.

This is the worst travesty of this film. Despite his meteoric popularity in the comics, somebody at Fox didn't think that Deadpool would be any good on the big screen, so he meddled and made a whole load of changes.
Changes like sewing his frigging mouth shut.
Let me reiterate.
He sewed shut the mouth of Deadpool, aka The Merc With The Mouth!
No wonder Ryan Reynolds spent ten years trying to persuade Fox to let him correct this mistake.
Oh, it gets better though.
He rips off Wild Wild West.

I can't be the only one who sees this, can I?

James tells Kayla to get the teenagers to safety.
Wait wait wait! Hold up one cotton-picking minute.
Yeah Wade?
Are you not going to talk about the physics-defying nature of those samurai swords?
Are you not going to mention how he shouldn't be able to bend his elbows when they're retracted? Or about how daft it is to expect us to believe that he has tendons inside his arms big enough to snikt them?
No.
Why not?
I'm actively trying not to think about them, in order to protect my remaining brain cells.
You're a ghost possessing my brain. You don't have brain cells to worry about.
This is so stupid that I'm not willing to risk my ghost brain cells.
let's just get to the bit where they fight each other.

Nope, beccause we've got some crappy special effects to get through first.

Now some guards show up.
They seriously expect me to believe that not only do all of the bullets hit Emma Frost here (Oh looky, a new character introduced an hour and twenty minutes into a 1:42 minute movie). Not only do none of the other kids get hit, but they don't even hit her clothes, so we don't have to worry about her outfit being too sexy for a PG-13 movie.

My mistake, it did hit her clothes, it just didn't damage them.

Emma uses her body to shield Cyclops whilst he aims towards the guards.
Whom he shoots with his eye-beams.

Meaning this movie made Cyclops into a killer before he turned 18.

For some reason Kayla decides to stay behind and entrust the teenagers to her sister.
Why she made this decision right at that moment is neither explained nor important, because it's stupid and I can't wait for this stupid movie to end.
Meanwhile, James is leading Deadpool away from where the teenagers are likely to be.

I've got no idea how he climbed up there so fast.

Deadpool teleports up there (Since he was clearly given Wraith's powers) and kicks his arse, pinning him to the floor with his swords.
I'm assuming that the swords are made of Adamantium too, since they're slicing through the concrete like it was jelly.
Deadpool is given the order to decapitate James, but is stopped by an unexpected development.

Wait, what?

Victor apparently regained consciousness and climbed the tower, purely to save James from Deadpool.
His reasoning?
"No-one kills you but me."

Writer - "But that makes no sense."
Director - "Eh, just make Deadpool appear and start the fighting again. No-one'll question it."

James and Victor go back-to-back in order to fight him and they start to gain the upper hand.
So Deadpool teleports to the other side and fires his eye-beams at them.

Pictured: Something that spits on the comic books.

It gets worse.

This is stupid.

For some reason this causes James' claws to start glowing with heat, despite the fact that Cyclops' eye-beams are concussive force.
Meaning no heat.
Just impact.
Oh, and he decapitates Deadpool.

For the record, this has happened in the comics. He usually just waits until someone sticks his head back on for him.

After watching his perfect mutant-killer get kicked off of the tower, Stryker decides to actually use the Adamantium bullets (Which I've already pointed out shouldn't work).
His assistant points out that he'll still heal, but Stryker counters by saying "His memories won't."
Which is something he has know way of knowing.
Victor and James are both forced to jump off of the tower, since it's crumbling after being hit by an errant eye-beam.

That impact crater should be filled with a lot more blood and internal organs.

Part of the tower is about to crush James, but Gambit finally decides to show up and help.
James tells him to find the teenagers who're trying to escape and they split up.
Gee, thanks again Gambit. Really puling your weight here.
James finds an injured Kayla among the rubble, but just as she's confessing her love for him Stryker shows up.

They have a nice chat.

Huh, you'd think Jean Grey would mention the bullet holes when she x-rayed him in the first movie.

Stryker goes to shoot Kayla as well, but she grabs his foot and tells him to walk until his feet bleed. Then keep walking.
I can confirm that it is possible to walk until your feet bleed, even when wearing socks and nice shoes.
Then Kayla dies.
But don't worry, Gambit finds James and wakes him up. But, because this movie is stupid and needed James to lose his memory, he loses his memory. And since he introduced himself to Gambit as 'Logan', that's what Gambit calls him.
Meaning that this is how he forgot his actual name.
Oh, and the teenagers are saved by a badly-de-aged Xavier.

Patrick Stewart already looks identical to his 30-years-ago self anyway.

And this movie finally, blissfully, ends.
With more questions than it answered.
Namely, why the heck didn't Sabretooth recognise Wolverine as his younger brother in the later movies?
Not that it ultimately matters though. This movie and all X-Men movies before it get completely retconned out by Days Of Future Past anyway.
So, where did this movie go wrong?
That's the wrong question to ask.
The correct question to ask is who's responsible.
It was a man named Tom Rothman.
Tom Rothman was the CEO of 21st Century Fox for a good long time. He oversaw movies such as Titanic, Life Of Pi, Cast Away and Ice Age.
What his Wikipedia page won't tell you however, is just how much this guy hated superheroes.
Y'see, he didn't believe that superhero movies could ever make any money. So when his studio was called upon to produce the original X-Men film, he deliberately tried to sabotage it. He slashed the budget and moved the release date forwards by several months, reducing the amount of time they had for post-production.
He sacked the director of X-3 because the director had a scheduling conflict. He ordered multiple characters (Such as Cyclops and Xavier) killed off for the same reasons. He was fully in charge of the Fantastic Four movies. He created Elektra.
And he spent his last ten years at Fox stopping Ryan Reynolds from making Deadpool.
In short, don't let this guy get anywhere near a superhero movie.
It gets worse.
He's now in charge of Sony's movie studio.
Hope you guys enjoyed Tom Holland, because we aren't going to be having him around for very long.

Now, what on Earth has Deadpool been up to this whole time?
I've been calling in a favour.
Oh yeah?
Yeah, I'm sick of you dragging me through all of these horrible movies, so I'm getting you out of my head.
And how are you going to be doing that?
Remember Agent Preston?
The supporting character from your comic who got killed but her ghost got stuck in your head? And the only way to get her out was to bind her soul to an LMD? That Agent Preston?
Yes.
Never heard of her.
Bugs Bunny you ain't.
I kid, I'm actually very happy to be free of you. But how long's it going to take?
Depends. In the comics I had to ask Dr. Strange to do it.
So I can be out of your head as soon as I review Dr. Strange?
Yep.
Tough luck then, my next review's going to be Suicide Squad.