The Wolverine was an okay movie. It was certainly better than the last Wolverine movie, which we discussed back in 2009. It doesn't quite reach the level of the mythical "good popcorn" movie—that is, an exciting action film with explosions and a plot that makes sense and characters with explicable motivations—but it's okay.
I took![]()
garnetlocks to last night's preview showing (brought to you, well me, by Virgin America, so we didn't have to wait on the riff-raff line) and whispered to her as the 3d film began, "I heard this was based on a true story." And indeed, the movie begins with the bombing of Nagasaki! POW Wolverine sees a Japanese soldier free some GIs from a pen to give them a chance to run for it, and in turn saves the soldier's life. They outrun the bomb's shockwave, hide in a well, and Wolverine absorbs all the heat and fire, which he can because he's a superhealy mutant.
Anyway, Nagasaki was hit by a nuclear bomb. See, an historical event! True story.
Even more anyway, we cut to Wolverine sleeping under a rock somewhere in Alaska many decades later. He's very upset after the events of X3. He dreams of Jean Grey, whom he killed, every night, and wakes up screaming, as you would do if you were in love with a dead woman with all the charisma of a nightstand from Ikea. Maybe the Nordli, or the Nyvoll. Some hunters kill his friend, a bear, and then a manic pixie dream ninja comes to fetch him.
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This girl is in the movie...
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...because this boy is in the audience.
The fellow Wolverine saved back in WWII, Yashida, is now a zillionaire with cancer and a very attractive oncologist. He has an offer for Wolverine: he'll take Wolverine's healing power away from in and in exchange...Wolverine gets to die of old age, or perhaps even die from eating sardines from an expired tin, just like normal people. Amazingly, Wolverine doesn't immediately take the guy up on this generous offer. As an aside, I'd like to offer you, my dear readers, the opportunity to send me all your money, which I will spend. In exchange, you get to learn something about budgeting and hustling to pay your bills.
Yashida has a son, who is the sort of asshole who does kendo sparring as his father dies in the next room, and a granddaughter who is super-cute, engaged to the Minister of Justice, and ready to throw herself into the sea at the slightest provocation. If this movie taught me anything about Japan, it is that there is a katana available is every room, and that everyone is very eager to die except for one old man. Who does die...or does he! And then the granddaughter is kidnapped by yakuza...or is she! And then the oncologist turns out to be a super-villain...or is something else going on with her? No, no nothing else is going on.
Wolverine springs into action with his now familiar bloodless knuckle-knife fights, but there's a problem. He's not healing as fast as he once was. You may remember the idea of a superhero either losing his powers or losing control of them from virtually every other superhero movie. There's a lot of that in this film—stuff from other movies, but just a teeny difference. The Wolverine has some good action sequences. Nothing innovative, but the quantitative changes are enough. There's a fight atop a moving train, but this time it's a bullet train going 300 miles per hour, so everyone is just mostly clinging on for dear life. Instead of one bit when the train approaches a signal or tunnel, there are seven or eight. It's actually quite thrilling. There's a climactic fight with a huge villain on the rim of a giant hole as in every other movie, but then everyone falls down the hole and keeps fighting anyway. (A second hole, in the form of a cliff, opens up later for the real finale.) Wolverine and the granddaughter, fresh from a dead grandpa and yakuza gunfights, fall into bed together, but the bed's a futon! See, shit's totally different now. A sexy blonde lady ends up being a total slinky baddy, but she's also a philosophical weirdo!
Anyway, then a lot of fighting happens, Wolverine gets better, and with the help of the two women pals, kills everybody. Fuck yeah and such! There are, of course, problems with the film. There's a now-inevitable archer character who heads up the "Black Clan", but all he and his pals do is make trouble for Wolverine to extend the third act. Were were they when...well, at any point when they could have been useful for their master's secret goal. The big deal is that the old man designs some Silver Samurai armor to a) keep him alive for a few more days b) beat up Wolverine and c) cut off Wolvie's claws to d) get to the bone marrow. But the Viper had already sapped Wolverine's powers by inserting a little doodad in him when he slept. Why not just take the bone marrow when Wolverine slept? We've seen that his claws pop out all the time when he sleeps! Why not just send the twenty-fifty members of the Black Hand to pin him down when he slept? The granddaughter asks Wolverine, "Who's Jean?" after hearing him shout her name in his sleep...but how does she know that Jean is a woman of whom she should be jealous. "Who's Gene? Is it Eugene Wiener, your old friend from your days playing stickball in Newark?" is just as good a question. Why does grandpa leave the company to his granddaughter instead to some bullshit fake identity he can claim once he regains his youth? Why does granddaughter try to kill herself, but then fight yakuza and struggle so hard to stay alive? Why does the Viper decide to slip into this little number at the last moment?
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Oh yeah, because this guy's in the audience.
The Wolverine is one of those movies that is ruined by thinking too much. But at least it is sufficiently diverting, with well-choreographed fight scenes amenable to 3D, that it doesn't actually force you to think, "What? Wait! Why are these stupid people doing these things?!" until the very end.
I took
garnetlocks to last night's preview showing (brought to you, well me, by Virgin America, so we didn't have to wait on the riff-raff line) and whispered to her as the 3d film began, "I heard this was based on a true story." And indeed, the movie begins with the bombing of Nagasaki! POW Wolverine sees a Japanese soldier free some GIs from a pen to give them a chance to run for it, and in turn saves the soldier's life. They outrun the bomb's shockwave, hide in a well, and Wolverine absorbs all the heat and fire, which he can because he's a superhealy mutant.Anyway, Nagasaki was hit by a nuclear bomb. See, an historical event! True story.
Even more anyway, we cut to Wolverine sleeping under a rock somewhere in Alaska many decades later. He's very upset after the events of X3. He dreams of Jean Grey, whom he killed, every night, and wakes up screaming, as you would do if you were in love with a dead woman with all the charisma of a nightstand from Ikea. Maybe the Nordli, or the Nyvoll. Some hunters kill his friend, a bear, and then a manic pixie dream ninja comes to fetch him.
This girl is in the movie...
...because this boy is in the audience.
The fellow Wolverine saved back in WWII, Yashida, is now a zillionaire with cancer and a very attractive oncologist. He has an offer for Wolverine: he'll take Wolverine's healing power away from in and in exchange...Wolverine gets to die of old age, or perhaps even die from eating sardines from an expired tin, just like normal people. Amazingly, Wolverine doesn't immediately take the guy up on this generous offer. As an aside, I'd like to offer you, my dear readers, the opportunity to send me all your money, which I will spend. In exchange, you get to learn something about budgeting and hustling to pay your bills.
Yashida has a son, who is the sort of asshole who does kendo sparring as his father dies in the next room, and a granddaughter who is super-cute, engaged to the Minister of Justice, and ready to throw herself into the sea at the slightest provocation. If this movie taught me anything about Japan, it is that there is a katana available is every room, and that everyone is very eager to die except for one old man. Who does die...or does he! And then the granddaughter is kidnapped by yakuza...or is she! And then the oncologist turns out to be a super-villain...or is something else going on with her? No, no nothing else is going on.
Wolverine springs into action with his now familiar bloodless knuckle-knife fights, but there's a problem. He's not healing as fast as he once was. You may remember the idea of a superhero either losing his powers or losing control of them from virtually every other superhero movie. There's a lot of that in this film—stuff from other movies, but just a teeny difference. The Wolverine has some good action sequences. Nothing innovative, but the quantitative changes are enough. There's a fight atop a moving train, but this time it's a bullet train going 300 miles per hour, so everyone is just mostly clinging on for dear life. Instead of one bit when the train approaches a signal or tunnel, there are seven or eight. It's actually quite thrilling. There's a climactic fight with a huge villain on the rim of a giant hole as in every other movie, but then everyone falls down the hole and keeps fighting anyway. (A second hole, in the form of a cliff, opens up later for the real finale.) Wolverine and the granddaughter, fresh from a dead grandpa and yakuza gunfights, fall into bed together, but the bed's a futon! See, shit's totally different now. A sexy blonde lady ends up being a total slinky baddy, but she's also a philosophical weirdo!
Anyway, then a lot of fighting happens, Wolverine gets better, and with the help of the two women pals, kills everybody. Fuck yeah and such! There are, of course, problems with the film. There's a now-inevitable archer character who heads up the "Black Clan", but all he and his pals do is make trouble for Wolverine to extend the third act. Were were they when...well, at any point when they could have been useful for their master's secret goal. The big deal is that the old man designs some Silver Samurai armor to a) keep him alive for a few more days b) beat up Wolverine and c) cut off Wolvie's claws to d) get to the bone marrow. But the Viper had already sapped Wolverine's powers by inserting a little doodad in him when he slept. Why not just take the bone marrow when Wolverine slept? We've seen that his claws pop out all the time when he sleeps! Why not just send the twenty-fifty members of the Black Hand to pin him down when he slept? The granddaughter asks Wolverine, "Who's Jean?" after hearing him shout her name in his sleep...but how does she know that Jean is a woman of whom she should be jealous. "Who's Gene? Is it Eugene Wiener, your old friend from your days playing stickball in Newark?" is just as good a question. Why does grandpa leave the company to his granddaughter instead to some bullshit fake identity he can claim once he regains his youth? Why does granddaughter try to kill herself, but then fight yakuza and struggle so hard to stay alive? Why does the Viper decide to slip into this little number at the last moment?
Oh yeah, because this guy's in the audience.
The Wolverine is one of those movies that is ruined by thinking too much. But at least it is sufficiently diverting, with well-choreographed fight scenes amenable to 3D, that it doesn't actually force you to think, "What? Wait! Why are these stupid people doing these things?!" until the very end.