It is very ironic that the first blog I post up will be about the new Wolverine film. Although I am a huge X-Men fan, Wolverine is probably my least favorite character. I do see his appeal but I think the mysterious aspects of Wolverine from the Claremont days of the X-Men book have gone away. And the fact that Marvel just shoves this character down our throats in every single comic book they publish makes him lackluster for me.
SPOILERS!
The Wolverine is loosely based off of the classic (and first) Wolverine mini-series by Frank Miller back in 1982. A couple of logistical stuff have been shifted in time a bit. In the comic the main villain was Mariko’s father but since the film makers wanted the villain to have been around during the bombing of Nagasaki, he had to be turned into the grandfather.
This movie is very good. Good action and very decent acting. The bullet train scene was super suspenseful and had my hands sweating! The story is pretty simple and doesn’t get to convoluted in on itself (wait until the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past for that).
Wolverine gets a de-powering in the film which helps a bit. I actually did an oh-no-flinche one time when he got shot so at least it got me emotionally involved in seeing him not die. Then we see Wolverine regain his power which pumps a lot of momentum back into the story.
The one thing (if only one thing) that might have saved this flick from being “ok” to “badass” is if they had Wolverine delve into samurai culture a little bit (which I’m not personally a fan of, but it could have given the film a “grander” sense). Wasn’t this suppose to be the Wolverine/Japanese movie? I mean, the film takes place in Japan but we hardly see any kick as ninja/samurai fighting skills from Wolverine. Just his normal claw-shit-up-berserker stuff. Besides being “given” a sword and then him immediately returning it and learning not to stick your chopsticks upright into your food, that was it for Wolverine’s Japanese culture immersion!
The one character that you would think would totally rip it up with his fighting style would be Silver Samurai. But it turns out that he was just a robot! A big, stumbling robot with a flaming sword! This story could have taken place anywhere else besides Japan!
And can we please have an American film without a blonde person being gratuitously placed in it? The character of Viper has always been dark haired (be it dark black or dark green) but I guess the movie producers decided that this film was too brunette looking — hello, we’re in Japan — and so they had to go and change her into a blonde. That was probably my biggest eye roll moment of the entire film.
Overall, it was a good action film and if you had seen the first three X-Men films (never see that horrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine one) you should follow the story with ease. However, this film — for me — was just a sampler tease to get to X-Men: Days of Future Past. I love X-Men and I love time travel/alternate reality stuff so I can’t wait to see how they handle that story.
I would rate this film as a solid 3.5 snikts (out of 5).
Later bub,
P.J.
The Nerd Table 