Wolverine is one Marvel Comics most popular characters, he first appeared way back in 1974 in The Incredible Hulk 180-181 when he was dispatched by the Canadian Government to put an end to the Hulk and Wendigo's rampaging donnybrook. By 1975 Wolverine joined the X-Men and the rest is history. As a comic book geek between 1981-1992, I first saw Wolverine in an issue Rom, Spaceknight (I was young and had no idea who the X-Men were. Did I go so far as to have a subscription to Rom? Guilty as charged. The X-Men had a guest appearance to increase sales and I thought the X-Men were wicked cool.), would eventually start following the X-Men religiously and like everyone else come to think Wolverine was the coolest character in comics.
In the comics Wolverine has gone through several retcons over the years and his origin has been expanded on as well. They've even done some ridiculous stuff to him as well over time. Suffice to say he's a bit different than I remember.But we're no here to dwell on the comics, it's about the latest Wolverine film. Now let's be honest 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine was lousy. I didn't know who some of the characters were and there were others who's appearance was much different than what I had grown up with (the Blob for instance). So they decided to go back to the drawing board after the success of X-Men First Class (which Wolverine had an uncredited cameo).
This film takes place some time after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand. Logan has gone to a self imposed exile in the Yukon, living in a cave, venturing into town when he needs batteries for his radio or when he runs out of canned beans (there are no empty rolls of toilet paper which I found a little weird, must be a port-a-john out there). It's pretty clear he can't get over the death of Jean Grey and he wants little to do with the human/mutant race (adding to his loner/brooder mystique that chicks dig). While in town to get batteries and dispense some old school frontier justice, Logan runs into Yukio, who's been looking for Logan in order to help absolve a life-debt for her boss Shingen Yashida (Logan and he have some history dating back t the Pacific Theater in WWII). Reluctantly Logan travels to Japan because he's not the type to make a big deal of things like this.
While meeting with the dying Yashida, Logan gets offered a chance at mortality (Logan's one of those types who looks at immortality as a curse) and he's a bit intrigued so he decides to stick around. Another reason is Yashida's uber-hot granddaughter Mariko (in the comics they're father-daughter) as you can see for yourself...
(whether it be comics or in films the silent brooding dudes with the hair hair & the pecs score the babes)
So Yashida dies and there's an attempted kidnapping of Mariko at the funeral that Logan helps foil by carving up a few yakuza. After a fight on top of a bullet train, he spirits Mariko to safety in a small village where she's got a place.
They get it on in case you were wondering
During the battle Logan finds that his wounds are taking longer to heal and it's really putting a drag on all the fighting he does. Eventually the yakuza find their location and snatch up Mariko. Logan decides to go back to Yashida's lab to see if he can find out what happened. He links up with Yukio and finds out there's a nanobot near his heart that he's got to dig out the hard way. Logan & Yukio figure out where Mariko is being kept and they head over there, presumably because the film is at the 90 minute mark and the plot needs to speed up.
It's at Yashida's mountaintop factory (keeping in step with the theory that all villains have some sort of mountaintop lair) where it's revealed that Yashida , with the help of his "doctor" who's really Viper (now I vaguely remember this character from my days as a comic reader and she was more like the Baroness from GI Joe but what they heck, they gotta spruce her up right?), faked his death and is kept alive by the armor of the Silver Samurai. The armor is also made of adamantium and it comes with a super heated kitana (remember that in film, a kitana blade can slice through anything) blade that Yashida uses to cut Logan's claws off. Yashida is now drilling into the housing of Logan's claws and that somehow transfers Logan's healing factor into Yashida (not sure about the science on this considering that Logan's healing factor along with his boney claws are his mutation and you can't just drill out a guy's mutation) but Mariko is there to help save Logan and Yashida is eventually killed. After things start to return to normal, Logan decides that immortality isn't such a bad thing and decides to go back to the States, despite the fact that Mariko urges him to stick around (that's the thing with the quiet, brooding types wit the hair & the pecs, they're commitaphobes). There's a nice little "easter egg" during the credits that was nice.
The Wolverine has a running time of 126 minutes and it's about 10-12 minutes too long. Overall it was much better that Origins which made it pretty good but with room for improvement. The film's plot borrowed heavily from the 1982 limited series Wolverine
which I bought! Given.
Teenage Emma
The mature Emma but several years earlier
So which timeline are we following? There are clearly some hiccups with the continuity and that bothers me a lot. Another example is that Professor Xavier explains in the first film that Magneto helped him create Cerebro but in First Class Hank Pym is its inventor. It boggles my mind how they pay attention to continuity in some spots but not in others. Of course it's entirely possible that I'm taking this a little too seriously. All in all this was an ok superhero film that was not as good as Iron Man but better than Captain America. Do Not spend the extra money for the 3D , it's not worth it (I saw it in 3D because that was the time and I didn't think it was all that great). I could go on for awhile but this is getting to long. Thank you for your time.
