Starring: Huge Aackman. "Huge" to his friends.
I cannot begin to describe how disappointed I was when I found out that Wolverine was not going to be a musical.
This is a colossal mistake. After all, it has all the ingredients of a classic Hollywood musical: Mutants. Wolves. Conflict. And a gigantic hairy Huge Aackman.
I was convinced this was going to a West Side Story for the next generation, a brutal metaphor for our existance, with "animals" battling for survival, as gangs of "Wolves" fought it out with "Sharks" in a bizarre and inexplicable land-sea crossover, with Huge Aackman spinning, diving and ducking at the heart of it all like some delightful and not at all gay Puck in a wolf suit.My vision of a madcap tap-dancing pelt-wearing Huge Aackman flashing adamantium-clawed jazz hands has been shattered forever.
His many fans have made it clear that they would rather he did musicals than action hero flicks targeting 12 year old boys. Just listen to the fans applaud as he takes the stage at the Tony Awards in 2004, reinterpreting his role as The Boy from Oz, wearing nothing but gold lame trousers and a leopardprint top, flirting shamelessly with P Diddy who squirms with delight at the attention.Or at the Oscars, as Huge Aackman flails about in a tight fitting Man Tux and tails. Read their sweaty little comments on Youtube as he grinds his firm buttocks into Barbara Walter's skeletal thighs to the point where, for the briefest of moments, she is reminded what it means to be a woman. The fans want the inner Hugh to sing and dance and generally camp it up until he Aackmans all over them.
And, obviously, the comic book nerds have been begging for a musical adaptation of X-Men for years.
But does Marvel appreciate this groundswell of nervous excitement? Do they answer the giggling masturbatory call of Aackman's surprisingly mostly female fanbase? No. Instead the first superhero musical adaptation we get is Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark featuring music by U2's Boner and The Edger. A musical about a boy wearing pyjamas who climbs walls and fights crime. (Let's just call it what it is, shall we? Peter Parker Pan.)
So Wolverine will not feature Huge Aackman wearing a sad little loincloth, singing about discovering the wolf inside the man.
We will never get to see an insane whirlwind of well-choreographed dance violence as Aackman clicks his adamantium claws while facing a violent, albeit tongue in cheek enemy, played to perfection at various points in the show's run by David Hasselhoff, Richard Gere and/or Tilda Swinton.
We will never enjoy the pleasure of a surprise duet with Barry Mannilow, singing "Looks Like We Made It" and drowning the audience in their hairy innuendo.
Without the dancing wolves, the scantly clad, bullet-nippled, backing cast and Tony Award winning musical score, what are we left with?
Huge Aackman in sideburns, that's what.
The fact that this is a filmed version of some kind of comic book prequel to the X-men, which was itself a pretty cool idea that was eventually stretched thinner than Bea Arthur's skin and ended up inspiring things like Heroes, The Incredibles and David Attenborough's The Life of Mammals, doesn't change anything.
Basically, Wolverine without dancing and classic show tunes is just another teenage werewolf film. Which is entirely pointless since everyone knows there is only one believable teen wolf and that is Michael J Fox in the film about a teenager who turns into a wolf, called Teen Wolf.
And that's just tragic.
Shatner Scale: Miss Congeniality
Worth seeing: Not unless you enjoy disappointment. Or Huge Aackman not dancing and singing.
Posts
2 comments:
I haven't seen this either.
Jeepers! Is the Boy from Oz real? A spoof? What is it? What was it?Surely somewhere down the line Jackman and Barrowman will have to team up for a musical ideally called "The Jack and Barrow Man"- two cockneys, stepping in time with their old bamboos.
Post a Comment