Abstract: The title of the film, a plateau of signifiers with seemingly arbitrary grammar and word ordering, is entirely appropriate, indicating a narrative without a strong purchase on character, morality, logic, or much of anything.
Some way through the wearyingly vague plot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the titular character forms an unlikely alliance (or rather, re-alliance) with a high-ranking US military official who has offered him the tools with which to avenge the death of a loved one. ‘I come with you,’ conditions Wolverine, ‘I’m coming for blood. No law, no code of conduct – you point me in the right direction and you get the hell out of my way.’
Hardly a new sentiment – the Hollywood summer blockbuster seems built on twin narrative foundations: on the one hand a craving for bloody revenge, on the other a desire for acceptance as both a member of a group and respect as an individual. Ethan Hunt is an effective member of an elite government spy agency; framed, he proves himself as capable on his own terms; at the close of the film he both destroys the people who harmed him and is re-accepted into the Impossible Mission institution that formerly rejected him.
Yet the words ring hollow in Wolverine’s mouth. Why? (Readers who do not wish the excitements and surprises of this Marvel origin story enunciated before they watch the film for themselves best look away now.) Born in the middle of the nineteenth century, this man has lived his life in warzones, fighting on the morally correct side in the American civil war and both world wars. Vietnam, however, offers the breaking point, when he and his similarly immortal brother Victor come to blows over how much violence precisely is too much. A later sojourn the two undertake as part of a secret government program ends similarly; once again, Logan (Wolverine’s erstwhile moniker) criticises, saves a life imminently jeopardised, then walks away, ignoring entirely the situation and its consequences until they come knocking on his door six years later. Victor returns and apparently murders Logan’s wife, drawing the mutant into a violent feud. Many ineffectual ‘oh, this is actually what’s going on’ denouements later, Victor and Logan are fighting side-by-side, Logan’s wife is up and swinging, and the villain to be overcome is the previously mentioned military officer.
This is all very convoluted, as though the writers considered revelations and reversals to be synonymous with drama and involvement. What should be most concerning for an attentive viewer are the moral implications of such shifting alliances. The military official, Stryker, is played by Danny Huston. He is a bad man. He plays bad men. He is hissable. Wolverine is played by Hugh Jackman. He’s muscular, charming, funny, blue-collar. He hosted the Oscars. His mission to avenge the death of his beloved is justified – Victor is a violent, animalistic killer.
Yet the death of the wife was staged. Discovering this, and in tandem with the appearance of another threat, Logan and Victor forgive each other their trespasses. Neither’s character has changed; rather, a specific event was misinterpreted. Stryker, manipulator-in-chief, has meanwhile quietly been given motives for his dastardly deeds: Stryker's own son is a mutant, and killed Stryker’s wife. Thus, Stryker wants to win a vaguely defined war that will soon break out between humans and mutants. Never mind that the film at no point makes any efforts to establish the relationship between these two groups, or even establish that there are groups at all (the word mutant is not used until well into the film, many of the mutants we do see have undetermined powers of moving really fast and jumping really high, and Logan himself is perhaps the least aesthetically mutable and most human-like of all mutants). Stryker murders the General who comments on his matricidal household – he reacts emotionally and violently to a defined historical event.
This is exactly what Wolverine does, promising ‘no code of conduct’ in his mission for revenge. Hollywood exceptionalism allows the protagonist to be special, to break laws, interrogate suspects, operate outside a codified system of correct action. Everyone else must follow this code, but the chosen alpha-masculine figure is allowed – nay, must – operate beyond the moral standards of everyone else. As the saying goes, this time it’s personal.
Stryker too operates outside the code of conduct. He is acting pre-emptively ‘to save countless lives.’ He is acting illegally and immorally because the legal and moral gains will more than reset the balance. His logic, given the information the audience are about his history, seems sound. He did not even order the murder of the lovely Mrs. Logan like we thought he did.
Wolverine pursues Victor and plans to cut his head off. His quest is personal: it is important enough to operate beyond the law. Yet his wife is alive, and when Logan discovers this he realigns his priorities almost instantly, and saves Victor’s life during their nuclear-cooling-tower-topping kung-fu shenanigans. Wolverine’s thirst-for-blood is not only sanctioned, it is easily adaptable. Rather than suffer an existential crisis when he discovers his motives are groundless, he just carries on fighting.
The film may be unremitting dross (and indeed, it is), but that does not excuse it from being so ethically muddy. Stryker’s special ops team of mutants, who operate outside the law and are criticised by Logan because of this, merely offer a standardised version of the later Wolverine’s own self-justified mission. In a cosmopolitan and democratic environment if one person is exceptional, then we all are. If his emotional crisis justifies lawless bloodshed, so does mine. The tone of the film, jumping as it does from one dramatic arrangement to another, should work to undermine this exceptionalism, but fails. Despite revealing the malleability of character and events, both of which can be lied about or misinterpreted, the arbitrariness of moral particularism is never grasped by the characters. Perhaps this is because they do not live in our world, but some strange digital creation of blue screens, wobbly effects, and blurred edges, as though the comic book world tried to break into the real one, but got stuck in some interstitial space of digital communication in which economic, rather than creative, imperatives predominate. Or maybe that is the real world, and it is this fuzziness that allows for such irresponsible laziness in moral definition to be pedalled as summer entertainment.
