Ten Things: The Wolverine

To round out my discussion of superheroes over the last week or so, I'd like to take a moment to briefly talk about The Wolverine.  And yes, I know that this is a bit late, but I hadn't started this blog when it came out.  So there.


I didn't have high hopes going into this movie, given how bad the X-Men movies had gotten (First Class being the exception).  To my surprise, the film was actually pretty good.  I would rank it as maybe the third best in the franchise, behind X-2 and First Class.  Hugh Jackman still owns the role of Wolverine, and he remains the best thing about the franchise.  His performance here works especially well because the movie isn't trying to be a traditional superhero movie--it honestly feels more like a samurai film.  That difference in tone and structure is a welcome shift, because any experimentation with the formula can only help the genre at this point.

Now here are ten things I didn't like about it.



1.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine still exists.  I know it's not this movie's fault, but nor does it really do anything to suggest that Origins isn't still canon.

2.  Speaking of shitty X-Men movies, The Wolverine is in direct continuity with X-Men 3.  And here I was hoping that that was just a bad dream.

3.  The return to practical effects for Wolverine's claws make the stupid CG claws from Origins look even worse.

4.  According to Logan, the only death that haunts him is Jean Grey's.  Even if we accept the notion that he forgot about the woman he loved and lost in Origins because of what happened in that movie, that still leaves dozens of people that he's killed since then that he doesn't regret.  That's cold, Wolverine.

5.  Wolverine's Alan Moore cosplay in the beginning is a little terrifying.

6.  The woman playing Lady Viper's performance was bad.  Like, really bad.  "Emma Frost in First Class" bad.

7.  Wolverine can apparently detect when a B-29 is carrying an atomic bomb from miles away.  Also, he knows what an atomic bomb is despite being a POW for quite some time.  And wasn't he still going by James Howlett at the time?  Why would the old Japanese guy know him as "Logan?"

8.  While we're on the subject, that Japanese dude was looking directly at the bomb when Nagasaki went boom.  He should have been blind as shit.

9.  This is the kind of movie that really makes a mockery of the MPAA ratings system.  Wolverine racks up a higher body count than Jason Voorhees, but it only gets a PG-13?  Gratuitous violence is A-OK!  Just so long as nobody says any dirty words!

10.  Fox still owns the film rights for the X-Men characters, meaning Wolverine won't be showing up in Avengers 2.