The Wolverine (2013) - Review

The X-Men movies aren’t exactly known for their subtlety.  I mean take X2: X-Men United for example:

“Have you tried... not being a mutant?”

Hm.  Yeah.  That’s about as close to gay subtext as you can get before it becomes regular text.  And that’s one of the best films in the series.  X-Men: The Last Stand had much more subdued subtext.

“Wolverine. I hear you are quite an animal.”

Fine, maybe not.  But at some point you kind of have to accept superhero movies for what they are: fun and... yeah, kinda dumb.  This movie satisfies both of those requirements, but tones down the dumb quite a bit for a more subtle affair than recent outings in the franchise.  No idiotic C-listers like First Class and no absurdly terrible screenwriting (and the grossest misuse of Ryan Reynolds this side of R.I.P.D.) like X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Well shit, that’s the first strike against this movie: the title.  Why call it The Wolverine, when the last Wolverine movie was already called Wolverine?!  That The really makes all the difference huh?  The Final Destination, for example.  I guess it works in reverse, too: Fast and Furious (took out TWO The’s that time).  You suck, Hollywood.

Hugh Jackman doin' stuff.  That's what I came to see!

The movie has other problems than its title, but it says a lot that the box might contain the film’s biggest offenses (yeah, don’t think I noticed you, awful Photoshopped cover).  But despite the strange inclusion of a lot of Japanese culture that feels wildly out of place in a Wolverine movie, this has what it needs to make superhero fans happy: some violent, yet still PG-13 action, a tepid quasi-romance, and some over-the-top-villainry to boot!

Oh don’t get me wrong.  There are some dumby dumb things in this movie, like a giant mecha samurai suit.  Or is that awesome?  I can’t tell which side of irony it lands on, to be honest.  But after Origins, which literally had Will.i.am and figuratively had Jonathan and Martha Kent taking care of ol’ Logan... maybe giant mecha samurai aren’t so dumb after all.

“And really, who cares, because we’re just going to recon the hell out of the series next time anyway.” – Bryan Singer