X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a 2009 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Wolverine. It is the fourth installment in the X-Men film series, the first Wolverine solo film, and a spin-off/prequel to X-Men (2000). The film was directed by Gavin Hood and written by David Benioff and Skip Woods. Hugh Jackman stars as Wolverine, alongside Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, and Ryan Reynolds. The film's plot details Wolverine's childhood as James Howlett, his time with Major William Stryker's Team X, the bonding of Wolverine's skeleton with the indestructible metal adamantium during the Weapon X program and his relationship with his half-brother Victor Creed.
The film was mostly shot in Australia and New Zealand, with Canada also serving as a location. Filming took place from January to May 2008. Production and post-production were troubled, with delays due to the weather and Jackman's other commitments, an incomplete screenplay that was still being written in Los Angeles while principal photography rolled in Australia, conflicts arising between director Hood and Fox's executives over the film's direction, and an unfinished workprint being leaked on the internet a month before the film's debut.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released on May 1, 2009, by 20th Century Fox. The film received mixed reviews from critics. It opened at the top of the North American box office and grossed $179 million in the United States and Canada and $373 million worldwide. Two subsequent films, The Wolverine and Logan, were released in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Beginning with Deadpool (2016), Reynolds would star as a new version of his Origins character, Wade Wilson (as the titular character). Later, both Jackman and Reynolds would star together in the 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine.
Plot In 1845, James Howlett, a boy living in the Northwest Territories, witnesses his father's murder by groundskeeper Thomas Logan. Rage activates the boy's mutation: bone claws that protrude from his knuckles, and he impales Thomas, who reveals that he is James' biological father before dying. James flees with Thomas' other son, Victor Creed, James' elder half-brother, who has sharp claw nails and a healing factor mutation like James. They spend the next century fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, the increasingly violent Victor attempts to rape a Vietnamese woman and kills a senior officer who tries to stop him. James returns to Victor and rushes to defend him. The pair is sentenced to execution by firing squad, which they survive. Major William Stryker offers them membership in Team X, a group of mutants including marksman Agent Zero, katana-wielding mercenary Wade Wilson, teleporter John Wraith, super-strong and invulnerable Fred Dukes, and technopath Chris Bradley. They join the team for a few missions, with James using the alias Logan, but Victor and half of the group's lack of self-control and empathy causes Logan to leave.
In 1979, Logan works as a logger in Canada, where he lives with his girlfriend Kayla Silverfox. Stryker and Zero approach Logan, reporting that Wade and Bradley have been killed, revealing someone is targeting the team. Logan refuses to rejoin Stryker, but after finding Kayla's bloodied body in the woods, he realizes that Victor is responsible. He finds Victor at a bar but loses the subsequent fight. Stryker explains that Victor has gone rogue and offers Logan a way to become strong enough to get his revenge. Logan undergoes a painful operation to reinforce his skeleton with adamantium, a virtually indestructible metal. Stryker orders that Logan's memory be erased so he can be used as their personal weapon, but Logan overhears and escapes to a nearby farm, where an elderly couple takes him in. Zero kills the couple the following morning and tries to kill Logan, but Logan takes down Zero's helicopter, killing him as he swears to kill both Stryker and Victor.
Logan locates Wraith and Dukes at a boxing gym in Las Vegas. Dukes, who has ballooned in size due to a guilt-induced eating disorder, explains that Victor still works for Stryker, hunting down mutants for Stryker to experiment on at his new laboratory, located at "The Island". Dukes also mentions Remy "Gambit" LeBeau, the only one who escaped from the island and therefore knew its location. Wraith and Logan find Gambit in New Orleans, and then both fight Victor, who kills Wraith and extracts his DNA. Agreeing to help release mutants that Stryker has captured, Gambit takes Logan to Stryker's facility on Three Mile Island. Logan learns that Kayla is alive, having been forced by Stryker into surveilling him in exchange for her sister's safety. However, Stryker refuses to release her sister and denies Victor the adamantium bonding promised for his service, claiming that test results revealed Victor would not survive the operation. Stryker activates Wade, now known as Weapon XI, a "mutant killer" with the powers of multiple mutants.
As Logan and Victor fight off Weapon XI, Kayla is mortally wounded while leading the captive mutants to Professor Charles Xavier and safety. After Logan kills Weapon XI, Stryker arrives and shoots Logan in the head with two adamantium bullets, rendering him unconscious. Before Stryker can shoot Kayla, she grabs him and uses her mutant power to persuade him to turn around and walk away until his feet bleed, then succumbs to her injuries. Logan regains consciousness but has lost his memory. He notices his dog tags read "Logan" on one side and "Wolverine" on the other; he pauses upon noticing Kayla's body but does not recognize her.
In a mid-credits scene, Stryker is detained for questioning by MPs in connection with the death of General Munson, whom Stryker murdered to protect his experiment. In the theatrical post-credits scene, Logan is at a bar in Japan with a waitress asking if he's drinking to forget. He then answers: "No, I'm drinking to remember". In the home media post-credits scene, Weapon XI's hand crawls out of the rocks and touches his still living head.
Cast
Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine: A Canadian mutant and future X-Men member. Jackman became producer of the film via his company Seed Productions and earned $25 million for the film. Jackman underwent a high intensity weight training regimen to improve his physique for the role. He altered the program to shock his body into change and also performed cardiovascular workouts. Jackman noted that no digital touches were applied to his physique in a shot of him rising from the tank within which Wolverine has his bones infused with adamantium. Troye Sivan as James: Casting directors cast Sivan as the young Wolverine after seeing him sing at the Channel Seven Perth Telethon, and he was accepted after sending in an audition tape. Kodi Smit-McPhee was originally cast in the role, when filming was originally beginning in December 2007, but he opted out to film The Road. McPhee later played Nightcrawler in X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix. Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed: Logan's mutant half-brother and fellow soldier, who becomes his nemesis Sabretooth. Jackman and Hood compared Wolverine and Victor's relationship to the Borg–McEnroe rivalry in the world of tennis, in that they are enemies but they can't live without each other. Creed represents the pure animal and embodies the darker side of Wolverine's character, the aspect Wolverine hates about himself. These characters are two sides to the same coin. Tyler Mane, who played him in X-Men, had hoped to reprise the role. Jackman worked with Schreiber before, in the 2001 romantic comedy Kate & Leopold and described him as having a competitive streak necessary to portray Creed. They egged each other on set to perform more and more stunts. Schreiber put on of muscle for the part, and described his character as the most monstrous role he ever played. As a child, he loved the Wolverine comics because of their unique "urban sensibility". Schreiber had studied to be a fight choreographer and wanted to be a dancer like Jackman, so he enjoyed working out their fight scenes. Michael-James Olsen as young Victor Danny Huston as William Stryker: Schreiber was originally in negotiations for the part, while Brian Cox, who played the character in X2, wanted to reprise the role. He believed computer-generated imagery, similar to the program applied to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the opening flashback of X-Men: The Last Stand, would allow him to appear as the younger Stryker. Huston liked the complex Major Stryker, who "both loves and hates mutants because his son was a mutant and drove his wife to suicide. So he understands what they're going through, but despises their destructive force." He compared the character to a racehorse breeder, who rears his mutant experiments like children but abandons them when something goes wrong. His son is shown to be frozen at the Weapon X facility and the reason Stryker starts the Weapon XI program. will.i.am as John Wraith: A teleporting mutant. This was will.i.am's major live-action film debut. Although he initially did not get on with the casting director, he got the role because he wanted to play a mutant with the same power as Nightcrawler. He enrolled in boot camp to get into shape for the part. When filming a fight, he scarred his knuckles after accidentally punching and breaking the camera. Quinton Jackson was offered the role but turned it down. Lynn Collins as Kayla Silverfox: Wolverine's Native American (Blackfoot/Niitsítapi) mutant love interest and pawn of Stryker. She has the powers of tactile hypnosis which allows her to control or convince others to do the things she wants them to by physical touch. However, Victor is immune to telepathy. Describing her role, Collins said "I had to play off all the guys and their testosterone-heavy abilities. But I learned that the female powers of persuasion easily trump fangs and knives and guns." Michelle Monaghan turned down the role because of scheduling conflicts, despite her enthusiasm to work with Jackman. In an article by Indian Country Today, the casting of Lynn Collins as the Blackfoot/Niitsítapi comics character Silver Fox was cited as part of a return by Hollywood to an era of 'redface', a very old trend of casting non-Indigenous people as Indigenous. Kevin Durand as Fred Dukes: A mutant with a nearly-indestructible layer of skin. In the film's early sequences, he is a formidable fighting man, but years later, due to a poor diet, has gained an enormous amount of weight and trains as a boxer to lose weight. Logan taunts Dukes about the whereabouts of Stryker and when he calls him "Bub", Dukes mishears this as "blob" and starts fighting him. A fan of the X-Men movies, Durand contacted the producers for a role as soon as news of a new film came out. The suit went through six months of modifications, and had a tubing system inside to cool Durand down with ice water. David Harbour auditioned for the role, but was turned down for being too fat at the time. Dominic Monaghan as Chris Bradley: A mutant who can manipulate electricity and electronic objects. It was originally reported that Monaghan was going to play Barnell Bohusk / Beak.