A Beautiful Use Of Negative Space

I think Matt gets at the biggest problem with Wolverines "Orgins" be it in comics or in the film:

Wolverine isn't a character whose origins we're curious about. Wolverine is a character whose origin is that he has no memories and we don't know where he's from other than that at some point he was mixed up with a shady covert ops program that bonded adamantium to his skeleton. That's the origin. That's the character.

I think we actually are curious about his orgins, but that's the appeal--it's in what you don't know.  How, exactly, does Wolverine know Sabretooth? How did he get admantium bones? Why is he so prone to rage? That negative space is where you put your imagination. This could be generational--I read comics mostly in the 80s, and these were still questions. But I think in story-telling, period, there something be said for letting the consumer wander.

I never wanted to see a Gwen Stacy clone--the reach she evinced from the grave, the way she altered the Spiderman character was so profound. But the financial upside of filling in the space, of bringing back characters, of revealing orgins is simply to much for some editors, I think. It's certainly too much for Hollywood.

On another note, sometimes I feel like Yglesias never left this space. All my links are belonging to Matt.