The Wolverine (2013)

The X-Men movies are the prime example of a pointless, not that enjoyable franchise that may not ever end. The Wolverine is the sixth one to be released in the past decade, starring recent award-winner Hugh Jackman as the titular character, a superhero that can heal almost instantly and has retractable knives in his knuckles. Jackman does well enough with the role, although I’m not sure what it is he sees in the character that makes him keep coming back again and again. To me, it seems beneath him. We know the actor is capable of greater things than this stupid, stiff-faced, growling thing that he seems to have such an attachment towards. I suppose I can understand how an actor could relate to the character’s longing for mortality, which is touched on in this film. It’s the whole “good vampire” dilemma. Sure, you live forever, but you have to watch everyone you love fade away. Wolverine accidentally killed his sweetheart in one of the other movies and she keeps reappearing in this one as a vision. I suppose it’s supposed to be dramatically significant, but it’s overused.

What’s perhaps a stranger phenomenon than respectable people wanting to do movies like this is why the movies keep making enough money to keep being made. From what I understand, they are not appreciated by the comic book community, which complains that the movies skim over important events and characters and ignore better material in favor of predictable and typical plots. I don’t know anything about the comic books and don’t care, but it is clear to me that these movies also don’t seem to care too much. There’s a reason even those who aren’t comic book fans can’t seem to get into this stuff. I think it’s mostly due to the fact that they brood too much when there’s nothing to brood over. Of the two and a half hours that make up The Wolverine, half is talky drama and the other half is random fighting. The dramatics are pointless because the characters learn nothing from anything they’re saying and remain perpetually the same. The action scenes are a mixed bag. Some of them are laughably absurd, while others are actually exciting. There’s one really neat chase atop a bullet train that defies everything I said against train chases in my Lone Ranger post. Moments like that are there, but unfortunately sparse.

Let’s see, what else? I guess I should mention Svetlana Khodchenkova as one of the handful of villainous characters. Compared to the countless, nameless ninjas that otherwise occupy the film she is probably the most interesting character. She is a mutant with the power of spitting on people to death and she, for some reason, intermittently sheds her skin like a snake. I assume the comic book fans know why she’s here more than I do, because I didn’t really understand how she “stole” Wolverine’s powers at one point, what that little bug she planted in his chest was or what good it was doing for her to go to all that trouble to try to cut off his knuckle-knives when they apparently just grow right back. I clearly wasn’t very interested in this movie. It was just too obviously a money-grubber and nothing more. It never did draw me in and I bet it won’t work any better on others, even if they don’t quite realize why.

The big, overwhelming problem with The Wolverine is that nothing whatever happens. No events here relate to the other X-Men movies in any way. It almost doesn’t even take place in the same universe as the other ones. There’s a part where Wolverine bares his claws, causing his victim to squeal, “What kind of monster are you?” Wasn’t it just yesterday that governments were arguing about the extermination of mutants and Magneto was ripping up bridges? Or has that not happened yet? The very, very ending is what places the movie into the chronology of the others and I thought it came after the first three movies. Then again, maybe it actually takes place in-between the two prequels, which would really make this the second movie and the fourth the first and the fifth the third and the first three the last. I don’t have time for this.

5/10