Movie Info
Movie Name: The Wolverine
Studio: Marvel Entertainment
Genre(s): Comic Book/Action/Adventure/Martial Arts
Release Date(s): July 26, 2013
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Travel in Japan has its drawbacks
Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is dead and Logan (Hugh Jackman) is in mourning coping with his role in her death. Logan is contacted by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), and he learns that a man he saved during the bombing of Nagasaki is dying. Ichirō Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi) claims he can offer Logan the death he’s longed for in exchange for his mutation which can keep him alive. When Ichirō dies, Logan learns that Ichirō’s daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) is now a target of the Yakuza. Logan finds himself on the run to protect Mariko from a mutant killer named Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova)…but discovers the death he longed for might be coming for him.
More Yukio please!
Directed by James Mangold, The Wolverine is a marvel comics superhero movie. The movie follows X-Men: First Class in 2011, but it is more of a follow-up to X-Men: The Last Stand from 2006 than a sequel to the previously released X-Men Origins: Wolverine of 2009. The movie was greeted with mostly positive reviews and is widely considered an improvement over the previous entry.
I really wanted to like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and started out liking that film with the origin of Logan and Sabretooth. Unfortunately, the movie collapsed into a mess of a plot and far too many characters to keep focused. Here, the film is more focused with fewer characters and is stronger as a result.
It’s the Wolverine/Transformers crossover you never wanted!
The story of The Wolverine has a lot of basis in the Chris Claremont and Frank Miller Wolverine limited series which was released in September of 1982. It told the story of Wolverine’s romance with Mariko and his time in Japan. The character of Yukio first appeared there, but the basis of The Wolverine combines other storylines including one’s involving the Silver Samurai and his long-time partner Viper.
The only problem with this combining is that I don’t feel the samurai aspect of the film mixes well with the technology part of the film. I liked the samurai stuff far more than the quest for Wolverine’s healing factor. The Yakuza enemies are all rather bland, but logical (still it would have been nice to see the Hand, but were tied up in the MCU). The end of the film of course leads to a big smack down, and I wish that the Silver Samurai hadn’t been “Iron Man”-ized by turning him into more of a robot.
Exfoliating!
The acting for the film is quite good. Hugh Jackman owes this style of Wolverine, and I can’t imagine anyone else playing him (though I don’t know how he’d do with an “all-feral” Wolverine). I enjoy Rila Fukushima as Yukio and would love to see more of her, but Tao Okamoto leaves me a little flat as Mariko. Svetlana Khodchenkova was too much as Viper who generally was just a green-haired professional assassin in her original incarnation (but she would make a great Moondragon). Janssen’s return as Jean Grey also got some flack for the gratuitous nature of her appearance, but I’m ok with it because it is Wolverine’s idealized version of her. It is also worth sticking around to see two old X-Men favorites show up to greet Wolverine in a post credit scene.
The Wolverine shows a step-up from the previous Wolverine, but it also is not quite as good as X-Men: First Class. The movie does have flaws, but for the most part they are rather minor. The movie is rather surprisingly violent for a PG-13 movie and had some stronger language that made me look twice at the rating. The Wolverine does serve as a bridge of sorts between X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Hugh Jackman returns for a final Wolverine solo film in Logan in 2017.
Related Links:
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
