The Wolverine fails in almost every area. Michelle’s Review

The Wolverine 2013

What is it about Wolverine? He is a fantastic character in very small doses but take him out of team situations and try and expand on his back-story everything sort of falls apart. Wolverine is a great character because he is a soldier, a killing machine, someone with high standards, a strong moral code and a mysterious past. Whenever writers try and fill in that gap and add additional layers, it just doesn’t work.

While many people hated the first Wolverine film – in some cases rightly so, I enjoyed the heck out of most of it. It delivered just about everything that I would have wanted to see (including that amazing opening 10 minutes), sure the 3rd act was a complete mess, but the first 2/3rds were pretty strong.

Screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank stuffed this movie with an over abundance of plot and angst but nothing that made much sense and Director James Mangold (who has a spotty track record that includes two great films – 3:10 to Yuma and Walk The Line) plodding, flat direction did not help. The entire exercise felt more serious and morose than it needed to be. The Wolverine never recovers from a weird opening sequence where he saves a Japanese WWII prison camp commander from dying from the Nuclear blast at Nagasaki (how did Wolverine even know what was going to happen?) – my immediate question was why save this guy and you just knew it would come back and bite him in the butt.

Yes Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is a tragic character when the layers of his past are peeled back. He is an immortal who has lost everyone he has ever cared about – usually in a very gruesome fashion.  I loved that the movie did touch on the events of X-Men 3 and his killing Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) the supposed love of his life.

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I understand it was hard for him to kill her, but I never got the idea that these two were actually in love. She was already married, so any feelings he had for her were always one sided and as shown on film, it was just schoolyard flirtation so it didn’t feel like all the angst was really earned.  Not to mention Janssen and Jackman had zero chemistry. Jackman had zero chemistry with everyone in this movie.

This movie is one giant tease, there are moments where I kept thinking, “ok, this is going somewhere and that this was going to end up being an origin story for Lady Deathstrike one of his deadliest enemies.” I was really curious (and dreading) to see how this character would work on the big screen and how the final battle would go. It would be akin to Superman battling Zod, how do you end a fight when both Wolverine and Deathstrike have the exact same powers and can heal.

Why have Yuriko (Rila Fukushima) have such a strong presence if that’s not the ultimate end point?   Now this will not be so bad if the inevitable 3rd Wolverine movie focuses on her downfall and becoming Deathstrike. I understand why they chose not to go there with this outing because it is I did like some of her interactions with Wolverine but I never quite understood the connection to Mariko ( the primary target).

If I understand it, Mariko’s father found Yuriko as a street kid and brought her into the family where she becomes a protector of sorts. They also butchered another Wolverine villain by turning the Silver Samurai into some weird, hulking, stiff “robot.” as the treacherous Viper had potential, but they didn’t do much with her character.

While waiting for the Marvel Press Room at SDCC, we media types had a great discussion about Man of Steel and once again someone accused me of being a purest who doesn’t like change. It isn’t that I don’t like updates and re-imagining, actually, I love it when it is done right and is logical, but the changes in Wolverine made no sense – and again I have no particular affinity for the character – beyond what I know (like) from the cartoons, previous movies and his guest appearances in books that I read (I love his relationship with Spider-Man).

A movie like Wolverine generally doesn’t require Oscar level acting if the movie strived to be an action movie. Instead all involved wanted to “elevate” the material and failed miserably in almost all aspects from the incredibly dark and drab look of the movie that isn’t helped by awful 3D to the overly complicated script and badly staged action

The problem with The Wolverine is from start to finish there is no there, there. I went to see a movie called The Wolverine, not a movie about a weird, political in-fighting amongst a prominent Japanese family.  There were several times when I seriously considered walking out of this movie but then something would happen to keep up the false hope that something cool would happen.  Why, oh why, is it impossible to do a great (or even good) Wolverine film? Guess I’ll have to get my Wolverine fix by replaying the amazing game based on the last movie. Lunge and plunge, baby.

Final Grade D

5 Comments

  1. I love reviewers that lack the ability to think logically, and prove it by the 3rd paragraph. “My immediate question was why save this guy?” Seriously? You didn’t understand the reason Logan saved him? Ummmm…. Did you miss the part where Yashida selflessly released the prisoners?

  2. Jean Grey wasnt married to Scott in X1 and X2-thats pretty ignorant, right?

    1. I’m fairly sure they were and even if they “weren’t” they were certainly committed to each other so it doesn’t invalidate my comment, so I think you come across more ignorant.

  3. this must be the only critic who liked origins better than this-that movie was a mess! this one was pretty good-except for that awful actress playing Viper!

  4. So, you only respond when you can call someone ignorant?

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