X-Men Origins: WolverineSave

The film opens in 1845 rural Canada. James Howlett — a sickly six-year-old child suffering from a fever — is the illegitimate son of a wealthy Howlett family landowner. His half-brother Victor Creed (the future Sabretooth) lives nearby; Victor is the legitimate son of the Howlett groundskeeper. When James's biological father is murdered by Victor's adoptive father during a domestic conflict, James's mutant claws emerge for the first time in a panic attack — they extend from his knuckles as bone protrusions. James, devastated, runs into the woods with Victor. The two half-brothers begin a 130-year journey of survival.

The film's opening title sequence — approximately 4 minutes of compressed historical footage — follows the Howlett brothers as they survive every major American war from the Civil War (1861-1865), through World War I (1917-1918), through World War II (1944-1945), and into the Vietnam War (1971-1975). Both brothers' healing factors keep them perpetually young across the 130 years. Their personalities diverge gradually: James becomes increasingly reluctant to kill, Victor becomes increasingly bloodthirsty. By the Vietnam War sequence, Victor's behavior has become uncontrollable; he kills a superior officer during a firefight. The U.S. military court-martials both brothers. They are scheduled for firing-squad execution. Their healing factors save them.

Cut to: 1979. After the Vietnam court-martial incident, both brothers are recruited by Colonel William Stryker (Danny Huston, in younger-version-of-the-X2-character mode) for a clandestine mutant-warriors task force called Team X. The team includes: Wade Wilson / the future Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), John Wraith (a teleporter played by will.i.am), Bradley (an electrokinetic), Agent Zero (a marksman), and Fred Dukes / the future Blob (Kevin Durand). The team operates out of a covert military base. Their missions include political assassinations, hostage extractions, and counter-insurgency operations. The team is essentially a mutant-augmented Black Ops unit.

Logan eventually leaves Team X disgusted by Stryker's methods. The specific incident: during a Nigerian mission, Stryker orders the team to massacre a civilian village to retrieve a small piece of mutant-related material from a local mine. Logan refuses. He walks away from the team in the African desert. Victor, ideologically aligned with Stryker's methods, stays with the unit. The two half-brothers are now ideologically estranged for the first time in over a century. Logan retreats to the Canadian Rockies to begin a quiet life as a logger.

Cut to: present day (canonically 2009). Logan has been living a quiet life in the Canadian Rockies with a schoolteacher girlfriend named Silver Fox / Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins) for several years. He works as a logger; he is using the name 'Jimmy Logan.' He has not used his mutant abilities in years. He has been deliberately suppressing his identity to live a normal life. One morning, Logan returns to their isolated cabin to find Silver Fox murdered by Victor Creed (now using the name Sabretooth). Logan is devastated. He travels to Stryker to demand the adamantium-bonding procedure that will give him an unbreakable skeleton — the only physical augmentation that will give him a chance against Victor's superior superhuman abilities.

Stryker has been waiting for Logan to come back. The Weapon X program — Stryker's clandestine adamantium-bonding research — has been ready for years specifically for Logan. The adamantium-bonding procedure is excruciating; Logan is submerged in a tank of liquid adamantium that is then forced through his bones via a complicated metallurgical procedure. The procedure takes approximately 6 hours of on-screen time, depicted in horrific medical detail. Logan survives. Stryker, having drugged Logan during the operation, tries to wipe his memory afterward using a neurotoxin-laced adamantium-bullet injection.

Logan escapes the Weapon X facility before the memory-wipe procedure completes. He has the adamantium claws and skeleton but has retained his memories. He is also, for reasons not adequately explained, an utterly different actor's-physique than he was an hour earlier in the film — Hugh Jackman's body has been substantially more muscle-augmented for the post-adamantium sequences than for the pre-adamantium scenes. The continuity inconsistency was widely cited at release as evidence of the film's troubled production.

Logan begins hunting his half-brother Victor and Stryker's broader operation. He travels through North America gathering intelligence about Team X's surviving members. He encounters several of his former teammates — John Wraith, Bradley, Fred Dukes — most of whom have been quietly retired and are reluctant to help. Stryker, meanwhile, has been planning a new project — Weapon XI, a mutant-DNA-merged super-soldier intended to be the ultimate Mutant Killer. The intended subject for Weapon XI is Wade Wilson / Deadpool, who has been kept in a coma at Stryker's island facility.

Logan tracks Stryker's operation to a power plant facility in Wakanda (briefly seen as a hidden African nation — predating the canonical Marvel Wakanda introduction by approximately 9 years). The Wakanda sequence is the film's most-celebrated single setpiece; the African-set cinematography, the practical local landscape work, and the multi-mutant power combat sequences were widely praised at release. Logan encounters Gambit (Taylor Kitsch, in his only canonical Fox-era Gambit appearance) — a cajun-American mutant with kinetic-energy-charging abilities. Gambit reluctantly helps Logan locate Stryker's island facility.

The Three Mile Island climax. Stryker has converted the abandoned Three Mile Island nuclear power facility into his Weapon X laboratory. Logan infiltrates the facility. He locates Wade Wilson in his comatose state. Stryker's surgical team has performed extensive modifications: Wade has been given Cyclops's optic-blast abilities, Wolverine's healing factor, Banshee's sonic scream, and other mutant powers — a kind of mutant-DNA-cocktail combination. Stryker has also surgically sewn Wade's mouth shut to prevent the canonical Deadpool 'Merc with a Mouth' personality from interfering with Weapon XI's combat operations.

The climax is on a nuclear reactor cooling tower. Wolverine and Sabretooth temporarily ally to fight Weapon XI / Deadpool. The Logan-Victor combination team-up is the franchise's only canonical scene where the two brothers cooperate as allies. The fight is approximately 12 minutes of choreographed combat against the multi-power-merged Weapon XI. They decapitate Weapon XI by simultaneously slashing his head with both their adamantium claws (Logan's regular claws plus Wade-Weapon-XI's now-elongated single adamantium blade). Weapon XI is dead.

Wolverine confronts Stryker at the base of the cooling tower. Stryker shoots Wolverine with adamantium bullets — the only ammunition that can wound a Wolverine. The bullets are infused with a memory-wiping neurotoxin specifically designed to erase Logan's recall of the Weapon X operation. Logan collapses. Stryker leaves him for dead. Logan wakes up amnesiac in an evacuated hospital, having no recollection of his past, his brother, his girlfriend Kayla, or anyone else from the film. The Three Mile Island federal-emergency-response personnel are completing the evacuation as Logan walks out of the hospital lobby.

The film's epilogue. Kayla Silverfox — who was canonically alive throughout the film's runtime (Stryker had used Silver Fox's faked death to manipulate Logan into requesting the adamantium-bonding) — is shown alive at the film's hospital scene. Her actual canonical status: she had been working as a Stryker double-agent throughout her relationship with Logan. The reveal is meant as a tragic emotional payoff but was widely criticized at release for its narrative cynicism. The film closes with amnesiac Logan walking away from the hospital, having no memory of the events of the entire film.

Commercial and critical aftermath. X-Men Origins: Wolverine grossed $373 million worldwide on a $150 million production budget — modest commercial success but critical disaster (Rotten Tomatoes 38%). The film leaked online in unfinished form approximately one month before its theatrical release — the first major-studio leak of a finished superhero film. Variety reported the leaked version had been viewed over 100,000 times before official release. The leak forced 20th Century Fox to release a statement defending the leaked version as an 'unfinished work.' The film's continuity was retroactively erased by X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014); the character of Deadpool was canonically restored to Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool (2016) with the mouth restored.