The Wolverine

So I know this movie came out in theaters earlier this summer, but I was at a relative's over said weekend and was not able to post my thoughts right away. I may or may not have be drunk as well...

Luckily the DVD came out like last week or whatever and since I was bored tonight, I decided to rent the movie and do a review of it. I like to end things on a positive note, so lets get the bad stuff out of the way first.

Also since this movie is now out on DVD I'm not going to bother being careful about spoilers.

Also keep in mind this is the extended version of the movie, so somethings might be different (I sure remember them differently in the theater anyway)

Negatives

-The weird CGI bed was incredibly distracting in scenes when it was present. I don't know why they put it in.

-Viper. I didn't feel like she was needed in this film at all - at least a mutant. The movie is about Wolverine's isolation and unlike previous X-Men films has almost no mutants in it at all except Wolverine and Viper (Yukio is a mutant, but her powers are sort of displayed off-screen and not in your face). Its something Fox has had issues with in the past, throwing mutant after mutant in the audience's face and this kind of felt like that on a smaller scale. I think a genius doctor with technology would have been more than believable way to advance the plot instead of the somewhat silly character we got.

-Logan and Mariko romance. This is easily my biggest negative of the film. I didn't buy this romance at all, both from a story telling perspective and a chemistry perspective between the two actors. Just compare the scenes between Logan and Jean to the scenes between Logan and Mariko - the difference is NIGHT AND DAY. Moreover, I didn't feel like a romance was necessarily for Logan's character development - I felt like he was all ready coming out of his shell and putting his past behind him on protective instinct alone, there was no need for it to develop into a romance. Frankly just came off like a rebound fling to me - ESPECIALLY in the end when he leaves Japan, despite his claim to love her so much. And while obviously the audience knows why he's leaving (for sequels) the character himself has no direction yet.

-This sort of ties in with the Logan/Mariko romance, but the pacing of the movie is pretty whack. The first 45 minutes or so up through the funeral and train scenes moves along very nicely, but once Logan and Mariko move off by themselves, the movies just drags on and on and on. Even up through the scene where Logan rips the device out of his chest and fights Mariko's dad was just bleh. And the movie never really recovers unfortunately.(Side note, anyone else notice how regular samuari swords can somehow block adamantium claws now? :P)

-Originally this would have been a bigger negative, but I think its changed from Theatrical to Extended version - the Ninja scene. Wolverine shows up for Mariko and starts fighting ninjas. Originally I remembered this being pretty stupid, with Wolverine running down the street get shot at by arrows (and its still ends that way) but I didn't remember most of the fight - which is actually not that bad. Again I think more scenes were added in the extended version because I don't remember it that way. But its actually a decently done fight between Wolverine and the ninjas - although some of it was a little over the top and cliche with Yukio running over a couple of them with the snow plow, I couldn't help but think of the Austin Power scene where the dude gets run over by the steam roller lol

-Lastly, the climax of the movie overall was somewhat disappointing. "Silver Samurai" was also pretty meh - although I understand why they did it they way they did.

Positives

-The opening sequence in this movie is absolutely genius. We see Wolverine in a Japanese POW camp on the August 9, 1945 - with B-29s overhead and the dropping of Fat Man on Nagasaki. It serves as an absolute brilliant introduction to the film's plot.

-Famke Janssen's appearances in the movie were awesome, serving a way to portray to the audience how much shit Wolverine is currently dealing with. And she's still smoking hot at 48 years of age too.

-Huge Jackman's performance as Wolverine was mostly brilliant. It's probably his best as the character of all the X-Men movies to date.

-I really love the Yukio character, especially in relation to Wolverine. Wolverine is a character who (imo) always works best when he's got at least some sort of young sidekick with him like Rogue or Jubilee. Younger characters bring out the best in him, weather its bringing out his protective nature or kicking his ass when he needs some motivatoin, Yukio does it all in this movie.

-Both the funeral and train fight scenes were pretty cool. I didn't keep a count, but Wolverine probably killed like 10-20 guys :P

-The post credits scene is probably the single best part of those movie, which sort of says a lot for me personally. It is utterly amazing to see Magneto and Professor X again and gets you pretty psyched up for DoFP

Overall

The Wolverine is certainly a better stand alone film than Origin was, there's no doubt about that. But I can't help but feel that this film is only further evidence that X-Men should not get solo films - they just don't work that well in my opinion. The best thing about the X-Men are the team dynamics. Fox needs to understand balance going forward, we don't need solo X-Men movies, but we also don't need mutants thrown at us left and right.

Still, its not a bad movie, its just not great in my opinion either. Hugh Jackman carries the film well though, as mentioned so I'd definitely say go watch it - especially if you're an X-Men fan. For me personally though having now seen it twice, I probably have no need to watch it ever again.

I wish this website had half stars, because I'd like to give this a 3.5/5.