Review: The Wolverine
I am just a sucker for comic book movies, (which probably stems from reading too many Wizard magazines as a kid) so of course I ran to see The Wolverine opening night. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from the film, and i’d say it met those expectations. Clearly we like making films about the dude with anger management issues!
The first thing I always check before recommending a comic book film to anyone is, can they understand / enjoy it without knowing the source material? I’d say more or less, yes – The Wolverine passes that. Partially because Wolverine is mostly painted as a dude with claws, healing factor, and some serious attitude issues even though they always paint him as being in the right. At just over two hours, the movie felt a little long when just dealing with Logan’s personal life, but it ends with a nice conclusion of Logan returning for Days of Future Past!
The plot of the story is that Logan is hiding in the woods in Canada because he’s continuing to have hallucinations over his guilt for killing Jean Grey. Yukio (Japanese mutant with the power to see people’s deaths) tracks down Logan, and convinces him to come to Japan to say goodbye to a dying man that he saved years ago from the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, by covering him with a small metal plate and hiding in a pit 20 feet under ground. Don’t try to let the science get in the way of enjoying the film; it’s not as bad as India Jones surviving an atomic bomb by hiding and a refrigerator!
Shenanigans ensue when Logan inevitably falls for the girl he shouldn’t, she gets threatened, he has to save her, and then the larger pictures comes to show that Logan was actually the target all along. We’re introduced to Mariko Yashida and the Silver Samurai, which is where I start to get a liiiiiitle neck beardy about how they differ so damn much from the comics! Mariko didn’t bother me too much (the daughter of the man Logan was coming to Tokyo to say goodbye to), though she seemed a little too meek for my tastes.
The Silver Samurai… is a whole different thing. If you’re not familiar with the comics, then this just seemed like a big suit of armor being used as a means to an end. SPOILERS AHEAD! In the movie though, not only is the suit not on Kenuichio Harada, It’s not even silver. I mean, it’s chrome looking, but they say it’s made of adamantium. Really? They made it a plot point that Yashida was going broke researching medical treatments and stockpiling adamantium – but in the comics the suit is silver, and the sword is heated because Kenuichio’s mutant powers, not because of a super science adamantium suit.
Also… the bad guy is trying to steal Wolverine’s healing factor. How does one steal your genetic mutation? We’ve seen them suppressed, and stolen with mutant powers, but not before with scientific robots. This movie left questions after the suspension of disbelief was lifted. END SPOILERS
So aside from neckbeardy arguments about how this movie is different than the comics (Fox has made it clear that they work in their interpretation of the original source material time and time again with the X-Men franchise), it is still fun to watch. Just be prepared to be watching a movie where the drama is about one man and one family, and not world ending consequences. Also lastly, stick around after the credits for a small intro for Days of Future Past!
