Sabretooth Is Not An Animal (But He Needs To Be)

Rondo of Blog - Published: January 23, 2023

So I’ve been thinking a lot about X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009, Gavin Hood) since my beloved Cluster and I rewatched it a number of times recently. Wanted to write down some thoughts I’ve been having about it.

Particularly about Victor.

[Spoilers for X-Men Origins: Wolverine]

One of the most enduring parts of this film that sets it apart is that, beyond going over Wolverine’s backstory (not really gripping on its own), it gives us one of the most fully-realized depictions of Victor Creed that I think has ever been committed to film (or any media format, for that matter).

I hesitate to call him the antagonist of the film (that role rightfully belongs to William Stryker, even as Wade gets the climactic battle), but he’s maybe the one character audiences spend the longest time hating as we follow Logan through this miserable past.

When we meet him in the film, he’s in the room where a young James Howlett is battling some sort of ailment - that ‘Jimmy’ is quick to note Victor also had to deal with when he was younger. It sets up a parallel between the two immediately, and just as quickly shatters what connection could be made there as James’s father enters the room brimming with compassion for his son and indifference to Victor.

It’s in this opening we’re shown the first two things Victor hates about Jimmy. He’s weak in such a way that reminds him of his own weakness, and then he has the nerve to be loved in a way Victor’s never been loved.

What unfolds shortly after happens very quickly, and includes one of the film’s cheesier acts of violence (it just looks a bit silly how James charges at Victor’s father), so it’s easy to miss the subtext. I’ll try and go over it as best as I can, because the film itself doesn’t fully do it justice.

James races out of his room to find his father shot by Victor’s, his mother weeping and screaming at the sight. He rushes down the stairs to meet his father, who tragically can’t even let out a single final remark to his son. The overwhelming grief pushes Jimmy to the onset of his most memorable mutation - sharp claws, which he very quickly uses to exact his revenge on Victor’s father… shortly before he reveals himself to be Jimmy’s biological father.

Jimmy’s now lost the father he knew and the father he never knew he had, and it’s at this time his mother chooses to react in horror at her son’s mutation, all but cementing that he has indeed lost his mother as well. He runs off into the night, traumatized and afraid, only to be chased after and caught by Victor - who, Jimmy presumes, has caught up to him enraged at the loss of his father… but how does Victor feel?

Jimmy initially protests that he “didn’t mean it,” only for Victor to emotionally and angrily assert, “YES YOU DID.” He adds shortly after that he believes his father deserved it, and that Jimmy simply gave him that.

I don’t think Victor was angry when Jimmy killed his father - if there was any jealousy over it, he never lets on about it - no, Victor gets upset when Jimmy finally does what Victor has clearly so wanted to do… and is sorry about it. Even going so far as to try and take it back.

He yells at his crying younger brother that he did mean it when he murdered his father because now, for the first time in Victor’s life, he feels like he’s finally met someone who’s the same as him.

In a display of probably the most sympathy Victor shows anyone in the whole movie, he tells Jimmy that they have to look out for each other and asks if he can run when they notice there were authorities coming after them. He can, so they run together through the night in a scene that seamlessly transitions to their military service together.

As the credits roll, we watch them fight side-by-side, war after war. They fight the Confederates, they fight the nazis, it’s easy to feel pretty great about both of those things, buuut over time it becomes clear Victor’s getting a liiittle too much out of the bloodshed itself.

But through it all, even as James becomes increasingly impatient with Victor’s bloodlust, they stick together as brothers. Even when James is positive that Victor’s gone too far and is trying to reign him in, he never turns against him - and they head right to the business end of a firing squad, which… goes about as well as you’d expect, for the firing squad, given who they are.

They’re recruited by William Stryker soon after to become part of his Team X, and when we cut to the team fully-assembled in a helicopter it’s clear they’ve been on several missions at this point and a rapport has developed between them all.

Victor is very clearly living his best life even as he has to put up with Wade’s bullshit, while James just tries to make sure Victor doesn’t gut anyone he doesn’t have to.

We soon learn they’re on a mission in Lagos, Nigeria to find a rare metal (Adamantium, basically), and as the mission plays out we watch Victor relish in it as James becomes increasingly uncomfortable with how morally-dubious their actions are.

It makes an amount of sense - when they were fighting the Confederates, they were fighting a bunch of assholes trying to keep their economy running on the backs of slaves. When they were fighting the nazis, they were fighting the fucking nazis. But in Lagos, the cynical and violent nature of their presence becomes a bit too difficult to ignore.

This comes to a head during a scene of interrogation that escalates from threats to gunfire in a matter of moments. Stryker wants to know where they found the metal, the Nigerians they have held hostage only say that it came from the sky and that it’s sacred. Stryker, ever the ‘holy’ man, turns away as he orders Victor to enact grisly violence against the man they were interrogating in particular.

Victor is all too happy to oblige - a mood that is thoroughly-spoiled when James catches his arm and stops him before he can get to his second victim. James tells him not to even think about what he was about to do, and it’s here we see Victor at perhaps his most vulnerable in the entire film.

James asserts that they “didn’t sign up for this,” which (as anyone paying attention so far could tell you) couldn’t be further from the truth on Victor’s part, and orders his older brother to put the man he was about to murder down - which he does, begrudgingly.

“What’re you doing?” Victor asks, “We finally got a good thing going here, don’t you screw this up.”

James insists it’s enough, “it’s enough, we’ve done enough,” though obviously they’ve gone too far several times over - a fact which Victor is happy to remind him as he asks,

“Who do you think you are? This is what we do.”

Once again, James is the extension to Victor in his eyes, and there’s nothing in this world Victor hates more than when Jimmy plays the role of his conscience. He needs him to be just as bad, he needs them to be the same, but James has had enough.

“I’m done,” he says, “you comin’?” When Victor stays motionless, in the face of this rejection of what he’s based his whole life around, James turns his back on his older brother and begins to leave.

“Jimmy!” Victor calls after him, “We can’t just let you walk away.” James responds by scornfully tearing his dog tags off and tossing them at him. Victor looks almost like he’s going to cry.

But James doesn’t look back again, no matter how many times Victor calls after him.

This breaks Victor’s heart. Worse, it reminds Victor that he has a heart to break. He would never admit it, but the pain of losing Jimmy is what drives Victor to the lengths we see him go to over the course of the film to get back at him. In his eyes, after all, Jimmy hurt him first.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the confrontation that erupts in the aftermath of Kayla Silverfox’s apparent death.

Logan demands to know why he did it, which Victor deflects with an irreverent comment about how Logan never called or wrote to him. Logan goes to kill him, but Victor’s at the top of his game and mops the floor with him.

At one point, in the midst of this grief-fueled battle, Victor pointedly asks Logan, “was she worth it?” It’s the one time, between all the irreverence and the disaffected attitude he puts on, that Victor lets the real hurt show through.

Logan didn’t just abandon him, he left him and became happy. He found a life as a lumberjack, met a schoolteacher and started living with her as her lover, and not once (before they came back to him) did he ever seem like there was an animal inside him that he was rejecting and trying to keep caged inside himself.

We later learn Kayla was an undercover agent of Stryker’s all along, but that Logan left Victor and chose Kayla never ceases to make Victor’s blood boil. Their love began on false pretenses, but it was real to Logan and it really was real for Kayla… and Victor can never forgive him for it.

The fight ends on Victor asserting that the two of them simply aren’t like the humans. Logan retorts that he is nothing like Victor, only for him to reply that he is - he just doesn’t know it yet.

It’s not that they’re nothing alike, and both of them must realize that on some level, but Victor copes with who he is and what he’s made of his life by telling himself that Logan is the same - and trying to convince Logan to believe it too.

All it manages to reveal by the end of it is that they are similar - they both have a soul. Victor spends the whole film trying to run from his and tear Logan’s out while he’s at it, while Logan protects his own and reminds Victor that he’s got one too.

Victor’s got the same capacity for weakness, for love, and for remorse deep down inside… and that scares him more than a firing squad, a lethal adamantium-injecting procedure, and even the prospect of his own death at the hands (claws, rather) of his younger brother ever could.

Because, as the film goes to such lengths to convey about Logan, Victor is not an animal. He’s just terrified of being a man.

Originally-published on January 23, 2023