I get that nobody really cared for Gavin
Hood's 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine', but I didn't dislike it all
that much. But to be honest with you, I've been kind of
underwhelmed by all the X-Men movies until 'X-Men: First
Class' showed up. Now in the summer of 2013, Hugh
Jackman laces up his claws once again for 'The Wolverine' and
I was told that this was Wolverine done right. Or at
least better. Eh…
So this movie takes place sometime after the events of the
movie 'X-Men: Last Stand', which hopefully you've seen or
you'll be completely spoiled to hear that Logan (Jackman) had
to totally kill Jean Grey / Dark Phoenix (Famke Jannsen) at
the end of that movie. It's alright though because Jean
was totally wrecking stuff, like the Planet Earth, so it was
all for the greater good. Still, Logan is all tortured
and stuff… though that's really nothing all that new… but he
is homeless and living in the woods while being tortured and
stuff.
Eventually Logan is approached by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a
real live anime character, down to the very clothes she wears,
who also happens to be a samurai warrior, has been sent by her
boss to bring Logan to Japan. Logan saved this cat back
when they nuked Nagasaki and he just wants to thank him.
And give him a special gift.
Logan and Yukio make their way to Japan, meets old man Yashida
(Hal Yamanouchi) who is being kept alive by all kinds of
technological wizardry, and presents Logan his 'gift' to him,
which Logan wants no parts of. While at the Yashida
compound, Logan also meets the old man's supermodel
granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) who is none too impressed
with what she sees. She even calls him a
'caveman'. I don't what that means to you, but to me
this means love can't be too far away.
There are all kinds of issues at the Yashida
compound, mostly dealing with Yashida's jerk of a son Shingen
(Hiroyuki Sanada) who wishes his dad would hurry up and die
already, and who wishes his supermodel daughter would kind of
die as well. He has his reasons. The byproduct of
all of this Yashida conflict is that Logan invariably finds
himself thrust into the middle of all of this family
melodrama, which ultimately leads Logan and Mariko being on
the run from a legion of crazed Yakuza hitmen. This
issue is exacerbated by the fact that Logan has kind of
stopped healing, something I'm pretty sure you can thank
Yashida's mutant infused Doctor Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova)
for. Her name isn't really Doctor Viper, more like
Doctor Jones or something, but I can't remember what she
called herself.
Eventually, the jerk of a son, the evil venom spitting doctor,
the supermodel daughter, the supermodel daughter's ninja
ex-boyfriend (Will Yun Lee) and his ninja clan, the nutty
Yakuza hitmen, and Logan's draining invincibility, will all
meet to sort all of this nonsense out. Via giant samurai
robot. It's complicated.
Like many people who have watched all of these various X-Men
movies, and this goes far beyond those of us with a healthy
knowledge and respect with the stories as they actually
happened in the comic books, we are amazed at how erratic
these movies are, even with their own history, from one film
to the next. There's no real continuity between these
various X-Men movies, despite the fact they all fly under the
same studio. That's a little disappointing, but that's
more of a personal issue and doesn't have much impact on what
I thought of this movie.
In regards to 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine', we can say without
too much fear from recrimination that James Mangold's 'The
Wolverine' is the better movie. We probably had a
greater appreciation for the grander scope that the previous
Wolverine attempted, but ultimately fell short of, but this
film was more of a soulful, introspective super hero
movie. This is appreciated, of course, but in a summer
of bombastic blockbuster fare, 'The Wolverine' probably
would've been more at home were it given a breezy, cool, late
fall release.
The best thing this film has going for it, to no surprise, is
Hugh Jackman. Back in 2000 when this relatively unknown
actor was given the role, the faithful howled almost like
nutty Batman fan, but at this point can anyone imagine anybody
else playing The Wolverine? Though I figure one day soon
somebody else is going to have to take it over as the forty
five year old actor will eventually get tired of eating right
and doing crunches. Rage, sensitivity, insensitivity,
passion, remorse, bitter sadness… Mr. Jackman and his
Wolverine has this all covered in a way only an actor of this
caliber, in a movie of this type, could execute.
It's just that the movie itself never rose up to the level of
output that Jackman was consistently delivering. It felt
as if, at least to me, that Mr. Mangold was dead set on
creating a character based movie, which worked, but the action
sequences that ultimately had to be inserted to make this a
legitimate superhero movie, just didn't feel like they were
integrated into the movie all that well. Taken by
themselves I supposed they were okay, except maybe the big
fight with the silver robot at the end which was really kind
of silly, but the prerequisite action left much to be
desired. And some of the other performances outside of
Jackman were also somewhat lacking. Hiroyuki Sanada, an
actor I would call Jackman's equal if not his superior was
grossly underused, Tao Okamoto is really easy to look at but
not all that interesting to watch act, with Rila Fukushima's
Yukio being one of the more interesting characters that we
wouldn't have minded getting to know better, but alas she was
largely put to the side for most of the movie in favor of the
taller, prettier, Tao Okamoto. The movie suffered for
it. There was also this odd scene where the character of
Viper shed her skin to reveal… the character of Viper.
What was that all about? It was like when Frank Drebin
from the Naked Gun ripped off his suit to reveal another suit
he was wearing underneath. It was actually kind of
funny, though I didn't think it was meant to be. We
could also whine about how they messed up the character of
Viper in relation to the Marvel Canon, I mean that Nick Fury
movie with David Hasselhoff got her right better than this one
did for Petes sake, but we're not gonna get all into that.
It's always a pleasure to watch Hugh Jackman dawn the claws,
even in the much maligned 'X-Men Origins' movie, and while
this is a marked improvement, I still don't think The
Wolverine has been given the treatment, as of yet, that he
deserves.
