The Wolverine: still far from sugo-i!

I was not a loyal fan of Marvel comics since I convert to manga many years ago. Still, I had learnt enough to get upset at what they had done with X-Men franchise. The first movie was good, subsequent ones bombed. Then they decide to squeeze the franchise and came up with X-men origins Wolverine and that was definitely an abomination. Look at how they portrayed Gambit or Deadpool. (Come on, this is Gambit we are talking about). The good news is The Wolverine this year is better than the first one.


Good news. Hugh Jackman is really good as Wolverine. The only other actor which seems to fit the character nicely is Patrick Stewart as Prof X (not just the lack of hair). He did his job and boy, does he really worked out. The other actresses was average at most. Tao Okamoto as Mariko is sweet in her own ways. Rila Fukushima, on the other hand, felt comfortable is certain scenes but was really awkward in others.

The story is simple, Yashida was a man Logan saved many many years ago during the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. Now, before he takes his last breath as he was dying from medical illness, he seek out Logan to say good bye and offer him mortality. Now, things will not look like what they seems. In the process, Yashida's granddaughter Mariko got targeted by the yakuza and Logan was dragged into the whole affair.

This is rather a good attempt to inject some layers to the complexity of Wolverine's character and personality. The whole show want us to believe that beside his animal side, there is much humanity left. Yeah, we all know that from the beginning. They had yet to go beyond that. The rest of the characters were purely 2 dimensional. Mariko's character still comes across thin though the script tried to portrayed her as someone who finally found her calling after being a fragile lady in the beginning.

The show tried to be more dark, but somehow, it is not as close to Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy at all. Someone will argue that this is rather an escapism superhero movie. Someone will ask us to oversee the holes in the plot, forgive the lack of character development, forget the cheesy script and story line at times. I did that. And still the movie did not appeal. The action is just OK. The martial art fighting scenes was nice, but tad too few. The fights are raw, and it ended up more like a street brawl rather than elegant. There are some nice moments, the earlier chase scene is good but other than that, they are forgettable. I would expect more mutants involvement, in the end, there was one mutant with healing powers, one mutant who can sort of tell how other people dies and one last mutant with some powers associated with poison. I do agree with some reviewer that this movie lacks a good villain. This did not feel like a mutant movie at all, it felt more like a movie about Highlander who cannot die with anger management issues. I am not a Wolverine purist neither am I a true X-Men fan, but I was rather annoyed at the fact that Silver Samurai turns out to be a robot. Being in Japan, I would expect the ninjas in more scenes.

There are good points. This is still outdo the first Wolverine movies. I do not how well it sticks to Logan history in Japan, but somehow the Japanese background of this story plus the "honour" concept works well for me. I still enjoy the movie though, but in comparison to the rest of the summer movies, this just did not hold.

ratings: 2 half poink!
comments: stay until least half of the ending credits. There is a small preview to X-Men 4 which sounds promising.