Chris Reviews The Wolverine

X-Men has always been one of my favorite super hero franchises. I have seen every film in the theaters, watched the cartoons, have read some of the comics and have a general knowledge of the major story arcs and characters from the comics. Obviously I was going to see this but having been really disappointed in Wolverines last solo outing, I came into this with a fair amount of skepticism. Was that skepticism warranted? Read below to find out......

The Good-

This is one of the more interesting story arcs for Wolverine. He is brought to Japan to say goodbye to a dying powerful Japanese business man who he saved from the nuclear blast at Nagasaki during World War 2. The man offers him a chance to end his immortality by transferring it to him. This comes at the same time that Wolverine is struggling with the aftermath of the events of X-Men: The Last Stand in which he had to kill the love of his life Jean Grey. There are some very interesting dream sequences he has where he is talking to her throughout the film that ground the character and make him human. Despite wanting to join her in heaven (or whatever afterlife you believe in) he turns down the offer and the man dies. The Granddaughter of the man is now set to takeover the business instead of her father. Thus a story of a family feud/power struggle over the business ensues and Wolverine attempts to protect the girl despite somehow losing his powers. There are some pretty awesome action sequences as the addition of Samurai/Ninja fighting is a nice change of pace to the usual superhero fights. Hugh Jackman gives another good performance as Wolverine, providing enough charisma and comedy with his fighting skills to keep audiences entertained. The direction by James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line) is pretty good and he is able to create one of the more visually interesting super hero films.

The Bad-

While there is a lot of things I liked about this film there is an equal amount of problems I had with it. The primary issue being that the plot is extremely over complicated. There are numerous side stories that are easy to get lost in and it all comes crashing down in the third act. I was completely lost and confused for the final 30 minutes of the film as it tries to set up a typical "final battle" sequence that makes no sense. The film also tries to do a big villain reveal at the end but it is telegraphed so bad that there is no impact. That is indicative of a larger problem with the film in that the villains are VERY weak. The character motivations are so confused and flip flop often, some of the secondary villains are unnecessary (Viper is probably the worst Marvel movie villain ever) and they are all very incompetent. This is probably one of the worst third acts of a movie I have seen in years and it kills the many positives this movie had.

Summary-

After a promising first 2 acts the film completely collapses on itself and makes what could have been an above average super hero film simply mediocre. That being said it is a vast improvement from X-Men Origins: Wolverine and is an adequate filler movie until we get X-Men: Days of Future Past next year.

MY RATING-

3 out of 5

-Chris "Da Franchize" Hart