After losing his jacket in the dubious Wolverine: Origins and knocking back a pitch perfect cameo in X-Men: First Class, Hugh Jackman’s Logan returns in The Wolverine.
Director James Mangold looks to revitalize the film franchise with an Asian travelogue featuring scores of assassins, a hulking Silver Samurai, and a whole lot of brooding in the rain. What role, if any, will Logan’s mystical jacket play in his adventures abroad? What obscure mutants will pop up? Will Logan get his healing factor back? (Well, yeah).
One thing’s for sure (in addition to that last bit):
The Wolverine is coming for your ninjas, Japan. All of the ninjas.
Want to read Paul Montgomery’s spoiler free review of The Wolverine? Look for it tomorrow!
Are you going to see The Wolverine? Of course you are! So let’s talk about it!
If you haven’t seen the movie yet be forewarned – there be SPOILERS ahoy! So don’t scroll down any further if you are sensitive to that kind of thing.
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So far this is getting better reviews than ORIGINS (with it almost having twice the percentage on Rotten Tomatoes). But I just don’t find myself caring about this. This weekend I’m going to be seeing Park Chan-Wook’s STOKER starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, and Mia Wasikowska.
Maybe if it gets rave reviews by you guys and the podcast crew I’ll watch it on DVD.
Saw it and was extremely let down by it! It looks cheap, the action is by far the worst out of all X-movies and Wolverine really doesn’t let his Berserker out (even if Jackman repeatedly said so in Interviews).
For me its a weak 6/10.
The movie was alright. Not “HOLY CRAP I GOTTA SEE IT AGAIN NOW” good, but it was pretty O.K.
One thing that it drove home for me was the fact that there’s only so much that can be done with Wolverine. We already know he can kick ass really well, he’s got the claws, and he can heal super-fast. In this movie, he kicked ass really well, used his claws, and healed super-fast. Nothing really new. Still, it was fun to watch.
As most X-Men readers probably guessed, the movie is loosely (VERY loosely) based on the Frank Miller mini-series. There are some key incidents from the comic that are presented here, but tweaked quite a bit. One particularly memorable scene is presented, but changed & compressed to fit the flow of the movie. The changes unfortunately watered down the scene, IMO.
The key characters from the mini-series are introduced here as well, which was pretty cool. As with the comic, they add some dimension to Logan & facilitate some important character development. Some of the relationships are HEAVILY tweaked. This isn’t something that detracts from the film, however. In fact, not knowing what to expect helped to keep the movie interesting for me.
In summary: I think the producers took Miller’s story, decided it wasn’t flashy enough for a summertime movie, and jazzed it up by adding a bunch of new twists and turns. Some of this added-on stuff worked really well; other elements felt like unneeded fluff.
For what it’s worth, my favorite part of the movie was the bonus scene during the end credits. THAT scene was kick-ass. It actually gave me goosebumps.
Long story short: The Wolverine wasn’t as enjoyable for me as X-Men: First Class, but it was better than Origins. It had an actual story and a nicely realized character arc. Good story & cool action scenes, with some stupid/filler elements mixed in. A strong 7.5 out of 10.
I watched it yesterday and I liked it very much. The funny thing that went on after the movie was that most of the other people in the movie had a problem with the bone claws at the end, Jean being in the movie at all, and the bonus scene. Everybody said but in X-Men he has his adamantium claws, how? What is Jean doing there? And didn’t he went to Xaviers School to be recruited? Because they were thinking, that the movie plays after X-Men: Origins, which was before X-Men 1, so this one had to happen before X-Men 1, too.
I explained a bunch of them that The Wolverine happens after X-Men 3.
That must have been a hard discussion.
Will there be a special edition podcast for this one? Hope Josh can get out of the house!
I absolutely love when a movie franchise does it the hard way and redeems itself. After Wolverine : Origins, I think it would have been super easy for any of us Comic Book nerds to give up on these movies. However, The Wolverine was a great bounce back, a great depiction of Wolverine and the classic “Logan Goes to Japan” storyline that many of us remember from back in the day, and most importantly, a great movie! Hugh Jackman has never been the question here, as the man was literally born to play this character. However, with this movie, gone are the massive missteps with the source material that both X-3 and Wolverine : Origins gave us. Instead, this was a complete righting of the ship, and a blast to watch. Some of the fight scenes were simply fantastic, and the Bullet Train scene in particular will go down as one of my absolute favorite Super Hero Movie moments YET. I will definitely be rewatching this when it comes out on Blu Ray, and without spoiling anything, the mid-credits scene has me VERY excited for Days of Future Past.
Overall rating from me, 7.5. I really enjoyed it a lot.
Seeing it this weekend. Hearing good things. I’m walking in with the appropriate amount of skepticism, but looking forward to it nonetheless.
I saw it last night and enjoyed it quite a bit. It doesn’t try to be too much and I liked how it was a self-contained story and almost all of the characters were from Claremont’s and Miller’s 4 issue series. Stay partway through the credits for a Days of Future Past teaser.
Overall, it was a decent film.
Hugh Jackman was, as always, stellar in his role. The rest of the casting was pretty good, especially Viper IMO.
The plot was nothing special. Towards the end of the film, I almost lost interest as I could see exactly where it was going. It wasn’t awful, but pretty predictable.
The pacing was good (which honestly seems to be a problem with most current movies).
The cinematography was nothing to cheer about. I do especially hate it when the camera gets shaky in a million-dollar movie.
Nothing new with the action, but it was decent. I mean, it’s WOLVERINE.
So, nothing to go praising to all your buds about, but worth a watch.
P.S Does anyone else think that this was an ACTUAL lead in to DoFP, or just shoehorned during production?
I’m not planning on seeing this. After Origins? I’m done, never again. Maybe if my buddy (who’s not a comics fan but LOVES Wolverine) rents the DVD or something maybe I’ll sit through it. I’m kinda done with the X-Men movies in general I think. Like they don’t know where to take the movies now, or if it’s just all about money making more if the things.
I’ll see this on video, but I doubt I will venture to the theater for it.
I liked the movie up until the last half hour or so. The end just didn’t line up with the majority of the movie, character and pacing wise. And god, WTF is with the bone claws. I thought we were done with that. Other than that though, it turned out to be a decent movie.
I liked this quite a bit, certainly a lot better then Origins. The mid-credits scene really caught me off guard, I didn’t expect that but it was pretty awesome.
Definitely better than Origins. The first half of the movie really got me, it was entertaining and kinda refreshing. The second half wasnt horrible, but it definitely ran off the tracks and kinda soured the overall movie for me.
——SPOILERS——–
(it’s habit)
I didnt understand Viper’s power very well, it seemed like something that you cant purge from your body without having Viper physically there with you (like how you’d need snake venom in order to make anti-venom). There’s even a scene where she uses the power on Harada and it isnt reversed until she touched him again. Instead, it took the shape of a little spider and Logan could just yank it out himself. Just a small gripe storywise.
My biggest gripe would have to be the heated adamantium katana that can cut unheated adamantium. What? That was just a very odd way to take the story. Although the trailers ensured me that Silver Samurai would be a mech, I just wanted to see Hiroyuki Sanada fight Wolvie in that adamantium armor and equipped with adamantium katanas. Sadly, it never happened.
For a split-second, I thought Magneto instantly fixed Wolverines claws in the mid-credits scene :p
I think it was epic – not as epic as Origins (I don’t see why people don’t like it – it’s one of my top 3 superhero films), but still pretty awesome.