Movie Review: The Wolverine

Movie Review: The Wolverine

Maybe the difference between Iron Man 3 and The Wolverine is that, as much as I tried to clear my mind, I went into Iron Man 3 with expectations. I didn't have specific expectations but I had some expectations about the way Tony Stark was going to be perceived and the way that Iron Man himself would come across. As a result, I couldn't help being disappointed by seeing Tony Stark play "Tony Stark," a caricature of the snappy but heartfelt character from the the first movie in the series. Audiences picked up something in Iron Man about Tony Stark that resonated, something fun but real. It was then misinterpreted as simply "fun" for the next two movies and it weakened his character as a result. I went into The Wolverine expecting an over-the-top Wolverine movie that may have been campy fun or may have been endlessly painful. X-Men Origins: Wolverine had both of those aspects. There were moments where the action, as over-the-top as it was, was fun and exactly what people going to a Wolverine movie wanted to see (when your main character heals, the stakes of each fight have to be raised). Overall, though, the movie had plenty of moments that were really bad and shoe-horned in characters that normal moviegoers didn't need to see and that fans of the comics weren't going to be happy about. My friend Phil runs a Youtube channel and recently reviewed this movie for himself and he touched upon a lot of the same stuff I'm going to be talking about. However, the biggest point he made is that this is a Wolverine movie.


The movie is set in Japan where Wolverine returns after being a prisoner of war in WWII. He was kept on the outskirts of Nagasaki when the bomb was dropped there but saved the life of one Japanese officer, showing off his healing factor and (then) bone claws to the man as they waited out the explosion and the aftermath in a deep rock well. Years later, with the Japanese officer on his deathbed, Logan returns to say his goodbyes but quickly gets wrapped up in several different plots for and against the family. It's an interesting story with multiple twists and turns and enough beats to keep an audience interested. More than that, though, it does a solid job to establish Wolverine as his own character. Sure, the burden isn't really on this movie to do that, as Wolverine is perhaps the most popular character from the very popular set of X-Men films but it's nice to see him away from other superheroes for a bit. Even Origins found Wolverine fighting alongside a group of mutant mercenaries only to inevitably break free a slew of mutant children and have a climactic fight beside his mutant sort-of-brother against another mutant. Here, there are three "superpowered" characters in the movie and everyone else is just skilled in some way or another, leaving Wolverine more on an island. Fans of Wolverine comics, though, will recognize many of the names in the movie as specific to Wolverine, with Mariko and Yukio heading up a movie that also features the Silver Samurai prominently. Frankly, the fact that the movie is almost completely in Japan is rather specific to Wolverine, who spends plenty of time there in the comics. More than all of that, though, this is a Wolverine movie because the main character is Wolverine. Wait, that's not as dumb as it sounds just...just hang on, it'll come around.

Wolverine is a very specific character. Sure, everyone is, but that doesn't necessarily stop movies from making their lead character a parody of him or herself, especially after he or she has appeared in so many titles (for the record, I thought The Avengers benefitted from Tony not being over-the-top Tony). Here, though, Wolverine maintains everything that makes him unique, from his attempts at removing himself from society and breaking from his past to his reluctance to get involved in another plot to his dedication to the people he cares about. Every bit of it is Wolverine at his core, in addition to the normal surly demeanor. A Wolverine movie doesn't work without Wolverine at its center and The Wolverine knows it so it doesn't ever try to make it about anything else. Every facet of the plot is about Wolverine and the life he leads and the decisions he makes. Of course, another important aspect of Wolverine is in the action he brings to the table. The fight scenes are all impressive and nicely choreographed. Fans of ninjas and everything that makes fast-moving kung-fu movies won't be disappointed (it's not exactly kung-fu but it's about as close as any Marvel movie will get until SOMEONE MAKE AN IRON FIST MOVIE). Even the most campy, over-the-top fight, a three person fight as they struggle to stay atop a bullet train, looks cool and is certainly as fun as it sets out to be. The inevitable fights against the three main villains live up to the rest of the movie, with no fight lowering the stakes from any previous fight. Still, the movie isn't all action as we see Wolverine get wrapped into another love affair, one that will be recognized by fans of the comic, who probably anticipated it from the moment they heard this movie was set in Japan. Wolverine and Mariko travel the country together to evade the people who need evading all while forming a relationship of their own. It's a well-paced relationship with nothing too out of the ordinary for a movie but it's a nice structure nonetheless. You really understand the building blocks of the relationship and you can see the movements from point A to point B without any real leaps.

This movie isn't on the same level, necessarily, as movies like The Avengers and Captain America: The First Avenger but it would have been hard to get to that level, particularly after the precedent X-Men Origins: Wolverine set for the Wolverine franchise. Still, this movie comes out looking pretty good when it's all said and done. It's a good plot with plenty of great character moments for Wolverine, Mariko, and Yukio, among others. The action is very strong and a lot of fun and there are enough moments of levity to break some of the gritty tension here and there. The villains are intimidating enough, even if Viper, seemingly a mutant version of something resembling Madame Hydra, lacks any real sort of motivation beyond "bad guy." Her inclusion doesn't ruin the movie by any stretch, though it does make it harder to appreciate her as a villain when even every other villain has a pretty concrete motive (though I might argue that the final villain Wolverine faces, not to give out any spoilers, comes off a little weaker by the end). It's a fun movie, perfect for fans of Wolverine and of action movies in general. It's certainly not without its flaws but I can't imagine anyone went into this one awaiting the Criterion Collection version. I was going to say that it was fair to judge this movie on a different set of standards than I judged Iron Man 3, since both of these movies had a precedent set by their series and one improved the series while the other, in my opinion, devalued it. While I do think that's still true, I don't even know that I need to temper this review in that manner. The movie is fun completely on its own merits and, more importantly, it stays true to the character we've grown to love in every previous X-Men based movie. Don't forget to stick around after the first set of credits to see a special scene that should get you excited about the next movie we'll see out of Fox's Marvel wing (spoiler: it's the new X-Men movie).