X-men Month - Mini Review: The Wolverine

The Wolverine was the 2013 entry and the x-men franchise and served as a kind of filler event between first class and 2014’s X-men: Days of Future Past (we’ll get to that next week) production began immediately after the release of X-men origins wolverine and it went through several drafts and directors as is not unusual for the X-men movies to do.

Produced on $120m budget, this movie had a decent run with around $420m at the box office and was better received critically than its predecessor with a 70% rating on rotten tomatoes and a 6.7 on IMDb.

What are my thoughts on the movie? Let’s dive in.

We open at the Japanese prisoner of war camp where Wolverine saves the life of a Japanese soldier, Yashida, from American bombers. Many years later Wolverine is still lamenting the death of Jean and presumably the disbanding of the X-men, or at least him no longer being a part of it.

He's confronted by Yukio, a mutant with some limited pre-cognitive abilities who in the comics is more of an assassin. She takes him to confront Yashida who is dying and wants Wolverine’s healing factor. Whilst there he meets Yashida’s son Shingen and granddaughter, Yariko, who is to inherit Yashida’s empire, much to her father’s dismay.

Yashida dies but the funeral is attacked by Yakuza gangsters, intent on kidnapping Yariko. Wolverine becomes her protector but soon realises his healing factor is being blocked. His fight uncovers a larger conspiracy as multiple players including the deadly Viper come to light.

The first thing to say is the X-men movie that feels least like an X-men movie. The politics it delves into in this are not the same racism allegories we see in the main X-men movies. Here there are some political ideals regarding inheritance, business, honour and valour but it’s ultimately not as in the forefront as you’d see in a normal X-men movie.

That is absolutely not to say it’s a bad movie. In fact if the old formula had been getting stale this is nice break from the formula, not having Magneto play apart (aside the end credit scene) also helps this movie stand out from the others (and I know he wasn’t origins either but…)

The big problem that’s posed with Wolverine is how do you add tension to a fight with a man who’s nigh indestructible and has super-healing. The obvious answer is to make his combatant have something similar, in this case the Silver Samurai armour, but that only accounts for one action scene. For a good half of the movie and 3 big action scenes, Wolverine’s super-healing is repressed and the one big action scene where he does have healing he’s vastly outnumbered and they have toxins that can knock him out. In other words, this movie does an excellent job adding tension to the action.

The other good thing about this movie is Wolverine’s clear-cut character arc. Wolverine is haunted by his decision to kill Jean Grey back in the Last Stand (we are now 7 years from that by the way) and she visits him in his dreams, it’s only his decision to let go at the end that brings that to an end.

Viper and the Silver Samurai are interesting villain choices for this. Unlike in the comics she is very much a mutant, with snake like abilities as well as immunity to toxins (sound familiar, Poison Ivy?) but she serves an interesting purpose as more of a wildcard, the problem she really doesn’t come into her own in this role.

The Silver Samurai is Yashida, wearing a massive life support samurai suit with the ability to chop off adamantium apparently. He’s certainly a formidable opponent for Wolverine, as he should be but the build-up for his reveal was minimal since they wanted to keep his identity a surprise. Fair enough I suppose but I prefer surprise final villains to be ones we already recognise.

The ultimate issue for me with this movie is the sense that’s it’s really kind of redundant. Spoilers about both this movie and Days of Future Past to follow. Wolverine undergoes 2 major changes first the loss of his adamantium claws, and the return of bones, pretty sure they’re back for Days of Future Past (in the future scenes anyway) and Yukio becoming Wolverine’s bodyguard, which doesn’t even last for 2 years when the tease scene happens. And unfortunately because the next movie is ultimately rebooting all movies except First Class, none of this will ever be addressed, which is a shame because it had some potential.

Speaking of the tease scene, oi, copying Disney much? It seems like DC is the only one not doing this now, and that’s because their super-hero films haven’t yet had that kind of success.

Rating 75/100

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Images/clips used in this review are from The Wolverine and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use