I used to read comic books as a kid, but they were never a ''thing'' for me. I had my favorites : Hulk, Spiderman, Ghost Rider and The Punisher amongst others, but I never collected issues for any of them. When they started getting adapted to the silver screen, it always baffled me that the hardcore fans bitched about respecting the original material so much. One comic book writer never respects the work of another, they'll put your gritty urban vigilante in space or fighting a civil war on another planet and it's accepted by fans like it was a normal thing. Josie and I went to see THE WOLVERINE last weekend and it was almost awesome. It's moral victory for what was supposed to be a quick, derivative cash-in.
The movie opens with Logan (Hugh Jackman) being severely depressed and hiding on a mountain, somehwere in Yukon. The losses he endured because of his mutations (including the very much deceased Jean Grey) are hounding him in his sleep. One day, he is visited by a mysterious ninja girl * (Rila Fukushima) who want to fly him to Japan, so that a long-time friend can tell him his last goodbyes. Logan accepts because really, he doesn't have anything better to do and once in Tokyo, he realizes that the situation is a lot more complicated than it seems. His old friend Yashida (Hal Yamanuchi) wants to give him a gift : mortality. The chance to live a proper life.
I always loved Wolverine for one particular reason : he is not a white knight. Saving the day doesn't matter as much to him as surviving his exceptional fate. I get attached to characters like that. The premise of THE WOLVERINE and the first twenty minutes of the movie beautifully expose the dilemmas that gnaw away at Logan : Why does it matter to be so badass if you have nobody to defend? What good is virtual immortality when everything around you is ephemeral? All these interesting ideas are canned as soon as Logan hits Japan, though. Right when he lays eyes on Yashida's granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), he makes it his mission to protect her, even if it doesn't make any sense unless his goal was to get laid all along.
Pictured above : Logan, learning the about the concept of public transportation.
Here's the thing. Yes, there is a useless love interest and yes, it's full of cliché bad guys (really, they dug up the Yakuza for this one). The screenwriters also seemed to have given up on their story at some point. But it gets so ridiculous, it gets passed the ''bad ridiculous'' and it gets ''good ridiculous''. ''Pulpy ridiculous'' to be more precise. THE WOLVERINE gets increasingly pulpier as it goes along. There are gangsters, ninjas, silly martial arts and bigger, better surprises all wrapped up into this movie. Near the end, it was getting so over-the-top, I was wondering whether I was watching a Marvel Comics superhero movie, something written by Emerson Lasalle or an adaptation of a lost manuscript of Edgar Rice Burroughs, written under the influence of an unknown substance (presumably peyotl).When a movie gets that insane, you can sign me back in.
Overall, I enjoyed THE WOLVERINE. It's not a movie I would watch twice though. The story is just not that good. The idea is very interesting: removing Logan's mutant healing capacity. It's the execution that's sloppy. Logan didn't really need a love interest and if it was mandatory to have one, she didn't need any saving. In fact, he needed saving more than Mariko. Toa Okamoto had a lifeless part, compared to Rila Fukushima and these those characters could easily have been one. The pulpy excesses of the screenplay and the comfortable performence of Hugh Jackman made the viewing worthwile though. My money was neither invested or wasted. I was entertained, but I was frustrated by all the opportunities to elevate the standard of superhero fiction that THE WOLVERINE didn't take.
* I never caught her name during the movie, but apparently it was Yukio.