The Wolverine

“I’ve stated that Superman is my hero, but ultimately I am a Marvel girl. The primary reason I’m Marvel is X-Men. I read the comics and books and played the video games and had trading cards and action figures and watched the cartoons. I was in high school when the first movie came out, and I can’t even begin to explain my excitement. Some aspects of the movies have been subpar, but getting to see characters I know and love on the big screen has been worth it (mostly).

So when I say that The Wolverine was a bit of a disappointment, I don’t say that lightly. It wasn’t bad, and it certainly beat it’s previous spin off Wolverine movie, but it didn’t feel very X-Men-y. I did my homework, and I found out that it’s loosely based on a Frank Miller comic series that did have Wolverine in Japan. For me, though, most of the movie felt like it could have been just any old character. At first, I did find it interesting that this was the first time that one of these films didn’t make a big deal about “”mutation”” in general. Yes, Logan’s particular ability (healing) was central to the plot point, but we hardly talked about anyone else having similar conditions. And I get that they were trying for a theme of isolation and loneliness, but it just didn’t work. Except for a very small handful of trademark moments, he didn’t even seem that Logan-like to me. Adding in the dream sequences with Jean Grey didn’t do so much to connect the movie back to the X-verse.

Plot was rather straightfoward. Nothing special. I liked Yukio and Viper, supporting characters on either side, both of whom were ridiculously bad ass chicks. Except for some of Yukio’s insane fight moves, nothing really wowed me. We actually lost visual at my screening about halfway thru for a few minutes. As I was pondering my options if they didn’t fix it, none of them sounded good to me. I did not wanna go to the next door screen that would have been just past the beginning, since I really didn’t feel like reliving the first hour would be worth my time. But I really didn’t wanna hafta go back and the next day either. Thankfully, they fixed it, rewound the broken part, and continued on.

My homework also told me there’d been a bit of a game of musical directors. Honestly, I kinda wish some of the earlier names attached woulda stayed attached. Perhaps Del Toro or Aronofsky could have made this a bit more interesting.

Okay, maybe there was one other thing that excited me: the mid-credits scene (FYI, there’s no post-credits, just mid). There’s some set up for the next one that made me really happy. It did instill some hope for me in the franchise. I guess the spin off thing just hasn’t quite found its footing

The Wolverine – \m/ \m/ \n