I take back anything I said or implied about Gambit being a miserable addition to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, because he’s clearly the most interesting part of the official trailer. (Which you can see below, or in HD at MySpace, but you’ll have to friend the movie’s page to get HD access.) Whether you like the character or not this clip makes the on-screen version look like a good translation, at least with respect to how he moves.
Everything else in this trailer had me rolling in the aisle when it ran in front of The Day The Earth Stood Still last week. The weak kicker, the choir and resultant lofty tone, the bone claws, the mutant parade. Especially the parade — if tying many other mutant backstories to Wolverine actually works, that’s great. But it was a cheap gimmick when Marvel tried it various times on the page, and it looks like nothing else now.
And I hate the fakeout opening, where we’re meant to be fooled into thinking we’re watching a ‘real’ movie instead of one about Wolverine. I make that distinction because I think Fox does. If they did not, this could have been closer to The Dark Knight. Instead we’re getting X3 all over again.