Escape to the Movies: The Wolverine

[cefm]

The bone claws are canon. He had them after Magneto ripped the adamantium out of him. This being said, it happened in the 90s.

In hindsight the idea that "the claws were always there" makes a little bit of sense in that it would explain why they are there at all - not sure that a super-soldier experiment to put a metal skeleton on a trained killer with a healing factor would necessarily make the leap to "hey let's put some claws in him too", increasing the risk and complexity of the project for no real benefit. The big problem with the bone claws is the art - they were always drawn as blades, which look totally artificial.

 

[Ukomba]

Hmm, I was really excited about the setting. This is my favorite wolverine era. It never struck me as entirely sensical tha a canadian would be in Japan, but I liked the comics from that era.

I would like a more visceral Wolverine. PG-13 just isn't cutting it (hahaha, NO, lazy puns are bad!)

Why is that? There are a lot of Asians in Canada. 15% of Canadians are Asian actually, doesn't seem all that strange for a Canadian to go the other way.

How many Canadians are in Asia? That's the reason for the comment. I've spent a lot of time in Seattle and am aware of the Asian population in the North West but am not particularly aware of the Canadian populations around the World.

There were 12,022 Canadians living in japan in 2005. 15th largest non native group above France, Australia, Germany, Russia, Italy, ext. There also between 14,000 and 15,000 Canadian tourists who visit japan every month.

 

[Strain42]

I'm kinda with Bob here. I thought it was good enough, and I guessed the big twist at the end pretty early in the movie.

...Viper was a total ***** though. Which is probably why at least 2 or three characters in the movie call her one.

Post credits scene was awesome, one of my favorite parts in the movie.

Was REALLY disappointed that

Spoiler

They didn't set up Daken at all. I mean I thought the whole point of Wolverine going to Japan and having sex with a Japanese woman was so that they could set up Daken. But I guess because the whole sex thing did happen, there's nothing that says they CAN'T.

And kinda on that note, do you think they'll ever bring X-23 into all this stuff?

Oh and Mr. Go? Just from that one image I wanna see it. Let's see what happens, shall we?

 

[Yuuki]

Thank god I've still got a bunch of free movie coupons lying around after blowing them on Man Of Steel (a loud, incoherent and grim/joyless mess of a movie) and Pacific Rim (so far my favorite blockbuster of 2013).

Well, looks I know what I'm watching this weekend

 

[Winnosh]

Good enough eh... So, it's better than Man of Steel at least?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

You know they'd probably have more success with a Wolverine movie if they stopped trying to make him PG-13 and instead let him hack people up.

 

[Olas]

Nothing wrong with the bone claws, Bob.

Except they conflict with the continuity of the first X-men when you see the x-ray of Logan's hand and he has a mechanical device in there.

And that the bone claws aren't blade shaped, nor would they be able to do so if they were just coating his bones like they did.

And the bones don't really have a way of staying still when he cuts with them, likely resulting in them splitting his hands apart if he ties to swipe.

And without a healing factor, they wouldn't work. He doesn't have like skin that retracts them like a cat, they split the skin between his knuckles.

"You were an animal then, you're an animal now. I just gave you claws."

-William Striker, X2

Even continuities aside the boneclaws are just stupid. Does he have muscles controlling them? If they're a natural part of his body why do they need to rip holes in his skin? As incredibly round as they are, how do they fit between his knuckles? They even look stupid. I always liked how the metal claws seemed like a clever way to use his regeneration ability to give him another power. But instead I guess he has these 2 separate arbitrary powers.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I wont lose sleep if mr. go doesnt make it here but it looks... alright? I guess. To me Mr. Go just reminds me too much of Mighty Joe Young if MJY was shrunk and broken and I just dont see the point of seeing another pet movie where it joins the human team unless somewhere in the move a pitcher is going to bean the gorilla and the gorilla charges the mound and tears the man's arms off chewbacca style.

and will this mean the rocky series can finally die, or are we going to get a shift to the apollo creed series staring whoever played BA in the A team movie until we come full circle back to him fighting another rocky and then start this over again in a never ending cycle?

More Video OT... It looks alright. Really as soon as I saw wolverine fighting ninjas, I was in. As long as the rest of the movie is even the slightest bit better than "the Warrior's way" was, i'll be happy. I meant nothing i really going to be as bad as origins was.

*Youtubes up Mr. Go*
So it's a Korean Air Bud with a gorilla instead of a dog (Upgrade) and baseball instead of basketball. (Downgrade)
I'd watch that.

they have a baseball airbud. its not particularly great.

 

[Pyrian]

...would I be remiss in assuming comic books are generally a cesspool of absolutely horrific writing?

"Absolutely" horrific? Maybe. But "relatively" horrific would be a bit much. See, there's lots of bad writing in lots of comics. But, there's also lots of bad writing in lots of books, TV shows, movies, games, and so on. I don't think comics stand out for their bad writing the way, say, video games tend to.

 

[Jacco]

I guessed the plot twist with the silver samurai

Spoiler

when Yukio said she didn't foresee Yashida's deafh, I figured the lack of vision meant that it didn't happen

so I was watching g the fight wondering whether or not I'd be right.
I liked the movie, it was a fun action movie but I agree with Bob when he says it would have been nice if the movie didn't try to create drama but just not telling the audience anything about the various motivations involved.

Really? I saw that coming the moment I saw the trailer. I just figured it was poor writing and left it at that. Huh.


OT: I've never really understood the hate for Xmen 3. I thought it was a pretty decent movie--the best of the trilogy in fact.

 

[Chimichanga]

Ugh, I've always kind of hated wolverine.

I like the X-men, I grew up on the campy 90's X-Men animated series, I especially like First Class, but after being introduced early on to the better written, more complex and interesting characters within the series and continuities, I can't help but get annoyed by all the attention this character gets.

I mostly blame the writers.

"Hey, how about we make this guy, with, CLAWS ON HIS GLOVES, fight the Hulk? What's that? Oh, right - better give him a healing factor or something so that he actually stands a chance against the invincible rage-beast."

Later...

"Oh wow, readers seem to really like this character - I admit, he was pretty cool - let's, like, make him a recurring character with the X-Men - he'll fit in there, good fit. Also: we should flesh out his character a bit. Like, he's so grouchy all the time because he's like, uh... a war veteran... or something, like 'NAM, or, uh... Korea? Does anyone remember the Korean War? OOH! OOH! We can also make him, uh, deep or something by... uh, you know those claw gloves that made him all cool and everything? Let's go a bit further and tie that in with his healing factor thing by making them, like, A PART OF HIM! From... Uh... A MAD SCIENTIST - NO! A SEEEKRET ORGANIZATIONS OF MAD SCIENTIST-SOLDIER-ILLUMINATI-GUB'MINT-SCIENTISTS called "Weapon X" or something. That sounds like a tragic enough back story, let's publish this shit!"

Later...

"Heeey brah, this character is like, dope - let's make him even MORE 80'S! Have you heard of this country, like, across the sea called JAPAN! It's like, the coolest thing EVER! And we should like, make him a samurai, or a ninja, or, uh, uh... A KAWAI-DESU-DESU-WEEABOO-NUNCHAKU-WARRIOR... -san. You know, because, it's uh, Japan, and EVERYBODY in the comics industry is INFATUATED with this small country because we all like their ANIMU CARTOONS and they are TOTALLY going to OWN AMERICA AND BEAT EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION ON EARTH WITH THEIR SUPERIOR WAYS, BECAUSE EVERYONE AT THE TIME IN THE 1980S SEEMS TO BELIEVE THIS. I mean, we'll have to retcon some shit, and like, make the character older... like old enough that he could be present in WWII and go ever there as a soldier, or something, TO LEARN THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI-KUN-WAIFU-NO-DESU-TOYOTA! you know, despite being also at the right age to fight in korea/vietnam/whatever it was he took part in originally. How is that? Uh... I don't know... OH - his healing factor also stops aging, or I don't know, some shit like that. I guess going to war is his thing, or something. Mehbeh we can spin our bad writing to actually make that sound patriotic or whatever. Sounds radical man, see you in the '90s!"

Later in the 90's...

"HOLY SHIT - comic sales are EXPLODING through the ROOF right now! Why? I have no idea why, but it's like, everyone now wants GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF DEATH AND BLOOD in their comics, because THIS IS THE 90'S, AND IF IT ISN't F***ING EXTREME or DARK AND C*NT-SLAPPINGLY GOD D**N SH*T-F***ING-LY DARK AND EDGY THEN WE WON'T BOTHER F***ING PUBLISHING IT! ~ 'CAUSE WE'RE EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEME! We gotta keep our characters DOPE-TO-THE-BONE and RELEVANT with the current trends -- Like this wolverine guy, he doesn't JUST have metal claws, but he has DONKEY-R***ING SH*T-SUCKLING BONE CLAWS under his UNBREAKABLE METAL ONES! What, brah? That's retarded? Eh, I agree too - but what if we, like, use uh... science-y thingie uh... explaninerations for it, like... uh... HE WAS BORN WITH IT! Because, uh, uh, uhm... HE EVOLVED FROM WOLVERINES - NO, FUCK IT, WOLVERINES AREN'T EXTREEEEEEEEEME AND HARD CORE ENOUGH, let's make it like, MOTHER-F*CKING WOLVES, BECAUSE WOLVES ARE F*CKING BADASS! No, NO - even BETTER - He's a DONG-MONGLING ** ACTUAL ** wolverine that got, uh, transmorgriforfied into A MAN... WITH CLAWS! Because... uh... genetereic experiments? I don't know, man - I went to school high every day, so I flunked science AS WELL as writing and English, which explains a lot, now that I think of it."

Later in the 2000's...

"Whoa... shit... I must have been on crack for every day of the 90s or something... Augh, my head... you still there bro? Brah? Anyone? Huh. Well... Maybe I'll retcon a bit about the bone claws, perhaps I went too pants-on-head-retarded while on my bender there... Hmmm... And none of his "hurr war veteran" thing is making much sense so I guess I could clean that up by just declaring that slow-aging thing I mentioned a while back as full-blow virtual immortality. I mean, it's still retarded, I guess, but I *AM* an unapologetic weeaboo, and I *MUST* keep up the part about him being a WIISHU-WUBASHI-MITSUBISHI-NINJA-SAMURAI-CHAN-HONORABRE-WARRIOR-SAN (despite the fact that all he ever seems to do in an actually fight is go 'RAAAH!' and directly charge at them), so, he's not, like just old enough to have fought in WWII, but, like, so old, like, he was in THE CIVIL WAR! Because even though I'm totally over all that silver age weirdness, it totally makes sense that a Canadian guy can keep fighting for the American government for almost roughly two centuries of armed conflict and not get noticed or recognized is totally logical. He kept it all secret. Totally. Because the armed forces just grab random people off the street without thoroughly ID'ing them or taking note of the one guy with a single-digit social security number. Oh yeah, and his healing factor can revive him from a single cell in, like, 5 minutes after being directly nuked. I don't even care anymore, this guy's a cash cow and he needs plot armor thick enough to protect him from being glassed from orbit."

** This actually was going to be much shorter, but I had such a blast writing this that it eventually got this long **

TL;DR : Wolverine is a Mary Sue with stupid hair. Look at it - I don't care if the guy can disembowel me while suplexing my spine, his retarded haircut makes him impossible to take seriously.

 

[Korskarn]

No-one wants to see Jackman outside of the Wolverine role.

Uh...

Real Steel - $296mil worldwide
Les Miserable - $438mil worldwide

 

[faefrost]

Dumber then making him an ACTUAL wolverine that had been genetically engineered?

Naw, I think the "human descended from wolves" one was worse.

You know, I'm not a comic book reader at all, but considering how comic book fans talk about their own hobby, would I be remiss in assuming comic books are generally a cesspool of absolutely horrific writing? I'm always hearing about the absolutely eye-rollingly dumb facets and continuities of even major characters and I can only assume the thick layer of camp is what makes the hobby so appealing to people.

It's because while they are often cesspit s of absolutely dumb writing, the high points almost make it all worthwhile. Take Wolverine as an example. There have been so many bad or stupid Wolverine plots over the years. But they all get washed away by the shear goodness of things like the original Clairemont / Miller 4 issue miniseries that this movie draws inspiration from.

 

[faefrost]

Good enough eh... So, it's better than Man of Steel at least?

Absolutely. This one is well paced. It's not to long and the fights action and effects don't go on and on and on until you are numb and bored. Oh and they actually shot parts of this movie using real natural light, and actual real colors and scenery and everything. It was wonderful seeing a comic book movie tat wasn't totally awash in that horrid Zachary Snyder blue and orange color correction. I could love it for that alone.

 

[daxterx2005]

I thought the prequel films retconned Xmen 3 out of continuity....?

 

[xPixelatedx]

Nothing wrong with the bone claws, Bob.

Except that it makes no sense, seeing as animal claws aren't bones, they're made of a protein called keratin, the same thing nails and hair are made out of. Yeah, it's easy to sweep it under the rug with "he's a mutant, mutants are we're like that", but it's still a completely pointless retcon that adds nothing. The whole "claw implants" thing was way better.

But yeah, glad to know that the Angry Nerd from Wired and I aren't the only ones who hate the bone claws.

Also, I thought wolverine wasn't supposed to have the claws before he got the adamantium... so why would he have "Bone Claws" when they were removed? Usually when you remove metal from something it doesn't add organic material...

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I think that I can agree with the general consensus that my friends and I have come to about this movie - interested in seeing it (not in theaters), but more excited about Days of Future Past. I think this movie had a lot of potential, but I had a feeling it wouldn't live up to it, which sounds about right. I'm just glad it doesn't out-and-out suck as hard as Last Stand or Origins did.

I'll take "good enough" over "oh god this movie's dragging... just win the fight against Zod so I can get out of here."