Remember when the prospect of a new X-Men Origins story was really exciting? Remember when we thought, we are really going to get the dark side of Logan now? There was so much material, this mutant has been around for centuries. However, unlike the much more mature and interesting films coming out of the DC studios, Marvel have found it difficult to strike the serious balance with Wolverine.
Despite the fact that Wolverine himself knows little of his life before he was fitted with his adamantium skeleton as stressed to us in the actual X-Men series, there was more than enough interest to create a spin-off for one of the favourite Marvel heroes. However, Origins found it tough to bring the Wolverine story to the big screen, the entire affair was not dark enough considering where the superhero came from and director, Gavin Hood, slowly let the film descend into a cartoonish antics and a ridiculous end involving Deadpool. (Excited about the prospect of his spin-off? No, neither are we. We have seen the Green Lantern.)
Marvel were not finished with Wolverine, however, and when news broke that an adaptation of the Wolverine series written by the legendary Frank Miller and Chris Claremont was on the cards, fans became reasonably excited. Then it was announced that Darren Aronofsky, he of Black Swan fame, had been signed to direct the project and we finally thought the Wolverine project was going to become a serious entity. But it was not to be, James Mangold took over after Aronofsky’s departure and suddenly the film was looking like standard Marvel output.
The Wolverine begins with Logan retreating to a cave in the Canadian wilderness following the death of Jean Gray who haunts his dreams. Plagued by hallucinations and memories of events, Logan remembers an incident where he saved a soldier’s life in Nagasaki named Yashida. The soldier, now in his twilight years and living in Tokyo, sends a messenger to find the Wolverine in order that he may use his regenerative power to save his own life. Yashida doesn’t want to die and offers Logan the opportunity to live a normal life but he refuses.
During the night, Yashida passes away, leaving his entire estate to his granddaughter Mariko and therefore placing her in a huge amount of danger with criminal gangs in Tokyo. At the funeral, a shoot out takes place and Logan removes Mariko away from the danger in order to protect her. However, following an encounter with a mutant, his powers have greatly deteriorated and he is becoming human. Despite his injuries, Logan continues to protect Mariko, but with her family and the gangs on their tail, the Wolverine is finding it difficult to keep both of them alive.
Despite the fact that you may feel like you are watching an extra scene from an X-Men movie that has just gone on for too long, The Wolverine also has an air of “TV series” about it. It’s a fine story, it’s just not a very interesting one and considering the amount of tales that could have been told about the Wolverine on the big screen, it is impossible to understand why this seemed like the perfect choice.
On top of that, in the back of your mind the entire way through its excessively long 126 minutes, you can’t help but think, this would have been a lot more interesting with Aronofsky at the helm. Mangold is a reasonable director, he’s just not a very flamboyant one and The Wolverine suffers from the same problems as its predecessor, it’s just a bit too comic-y.
You cannot fault Jackman, he puts his heart and soul into these projects and obviously cares a great deal about the Wolverine character itself, but he doesn’t really have a lot to work with here and his character’s progression is entirely predictable from start to finish. The rest of the cast put in reasonable performances, but none will stand out as any better than any other.
The greatest event that occurs is in the end credits which are entirely worth waiting around for, in fact those three or so minutes got the audience more excited than the rest of the film combined.
Oh, and Hugh likes to take his top off a lot in this. Besides that? Nothing to write home about.
