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The X-Men series
is one that has never really distinguished itself in a major way, in
spite of the fact that it's one of the first film series to be based
on a Marvel property. They're not bad movies at all (well, The
Last Stand is kind of lame), but with so many characters being
juggled around over the course of the run time, the average viewer
might find it difficult to feel heavily invested in what's going on
or who's doing what, with one notable exception. As far back as the
first installment, it was obvious which character the filmmakers
preferred, and that character was Wolverine. He seems to be every
X-Men fan's favorite, garnering several of his own spin-off
series and ironically standing as the most recognizable, lone symbol
of an ongoing story about a group of gifted individuals working as a
team.
Hugh Jackman was a
brilliant casting choice; his seamless combination of physical
ruggedness and subtle personal vulnerability gives the character an
onscreen depth that would have been absent if the producers had gone
with a more straightforward tough-guy performer. Next to Ian
McCellan's Magneto, he was the best thing in the original trilogy.
Too bad it wasn't until 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine that
he got a chance to be showcased on his own. For my money, that's
where they should have started. The rest of the X-Men come off as
shallow and bland next to Wolverine's hard-bitten, unpredictable
ferocity, and it's not like the general, non-comic obsessed public
doesn't have at least a passing familiarity with him after years of
his image showing up on t-shirts and lunchboxes. Hell, before Tim
Burton's Batman came
out in '89, a lot of people had completely forgotten about the Caped
Crusader, and now you can't go a day without seeing some
Batman-related article of clothing or knick-knack.
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The Wolverine,
interestingly, is not a sequel to X-Men Origins;
instead, it seems to be a sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand,
a connection you'd think the producers would want to avoid.
Wolverine has recurring hallucinations involving the powerfully
psionic Jean Grey, the love-interest he kills at the end of Last
Stand. She's played by Famke
Janssen, the same actress who played her in the trilogy, further
cementing an association with an inferior movie. This doesn't hurt
The Wolverine too
much, but I'm surprised they didn't decide to go with a quasi-reboot
and leave the other movies out of it. The main reason might be that
X-Men: Days of Future Past
is slated to be released in the next couple of years, preventing The
Wolverine from being a true
stand-alone project.
This
time out, we spend a lot more time with the character, even more than
in Origins, and as a
result, he comes off as far more complex, layered, and sympathetic
than in previous movies. From the opening shot of B-52 bombers
swooping in on the city of Nagasaki in 1945 as an imprisoned
Wolverine watches, you realize you're dealing with something a little
more thematically rich than what has come before (I say that fully
knowing that X-Men
opened with a young Magneto in a Nazi concentration camp—it just
works better here).
He
saves a Japanese soldier from the heat of the atomic blast, an act
that will have important consequences later. In the present day,
Wolverine is alone and plagued by nightmares, living in the woods and
rocking a serious mountain man beard. A young Asian woman with pink
hair lures him to Japan, where he meets again with the soldier he
saved decades earlier, now an old man on the verge of death. He has
become a wealthy industrialist, and promises Wolverine he has the
means to erase his mutant healing ability and grant him a mortal
life. Wolverine is intrigued, though he never actually says yes to
the proposition. While he sleeps, an evil scientist with the mutant
ability to produce deadly toxins from her body secretly implants a
spider robot thing in his chest cavity, suppressing his instant
healing and making him vulnerable to bullets, knives, and aluminum
baseball bats.
Taking
away Wolverine's ability to heal is a good way to go. By weakening
him, there's the sense that he could be in some real danger, and the
audience is left to wonder just how badly he's going to be injured
before he's able to heal again. Suspense is limited, because anyone
who's seen an action movie before knows he's not really going to die,
or even be denied his mutant powers for very long. But it works for
the amount of time they elect to use it.
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The
Wolverine has a strong first half, and there's an extended action
sequence starting at a funeral and ending on top of a speeding bullet
train that's as good as superhero fights get. The problem I had was
with the overall execution of the story. There are a lot of great
elements here, from Yakuza to ninjas to an adamantium Silver Samurai,
but with the exception of the gangsters, these elements feel
underused. There's a part toward the end that promises to be a
knock-down, drag-out fight between the hero and a clan of ninjas, and
it's all over before it has a chance to begin (though it does end
with a cool reference to Kurosawa's Throne of Blood). You go
to see a movie like The Wolverine specifically because you
want to see him get in a wicked fight with ninjas; the result is kind
of a letdown. The rest plays out exactly as you would expect, which
is less a criticism than it is a comment on the trap nearly all
action movies fall into. The hero confronts the bad guy, they fight
to the death, the hero wins, and there you go. After decades of
climaxes that all go exactly the same way, it's hard to muster up
very much enthusiasm, especially when the final fight amounts to real
actors running around in a CG cartoon, as in every other giant
blockbuster from the last ten years.
I
recommend The Wolverine, with reservations. It drags a bit in
the middle, and doesn't realize its full potential. Still, it has
some choice moments and solid performances, and by the time it's all
done, we're left with a Wolverine who seems much more human and
personable than in any other X-Men movie, in the best of the
X-Men movies so far.
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