WARNING: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE FILMS X-MEN III: THE LAST STAND. BUT SINCE THAT FILM A) SUCKS AND B) IS MORE THAN 7 YEARS OLD, YOU REALLY SHOULD NOT CARE ABOUT THESE SPOILERS ANYWAYS.
The X-Men film series has been to hell and back. It started with a largely good entry directed by Bryan Singer, followed it up with an even better effort by the same director, the series starting taking a downward spiral when Brett Ratner took the director?s helm for The Last Stand. X-Men Origins Wolverine is better left forgotten. I thought the series was wholly and unfortunately dead, but X-Men First Class proved that Fox can still get people capable of making an X-Men movie into making an X-Men movie. That being said, I didn?t know what to think of the The Wolverine going in because of the polarizing history that the rest of the series has had.
There is a lot to be liked in this film though, and it goes without said that this is an infinitely better film than the last X-Men solo film that starred Hugh Jackman. Of course, it should be a crime for any film pitting Wolverine against ninjas to not be. The Wolverine is heavily inspired by a well-liked comic book arc by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, in which Wolverine heads to Japan to say good bye to a dying old friend of his. On this journey he meets some interesting people and finds that this old friend has better plans than just kicking the bucket. The film also deals with Wolverine?s personal struggle and (SPOILERS!) the psychological repercussions of his killing of Jean Grey in X-Men 3.
The film is very well shot and directed by James Mangold (you may know him from directing the fantastic 3:10 to Yuma remake, the admirable, but problematic Walk the Line, and the affably terrible Knight and Day). Mangold takes a tonal departure from the X-Men series by making The Wolverine a darker, relatively-grounded film compared to the rest of the X-Men series. The movie is also quite the genre buster; verging into psychological-thriller, mystery, noire, action, western, and even a bit of romance. Surprisingly, the film does manage to balance out all these styles and ideas reasonably until the third act, where the ?action/superhero movie? persona kicks in and outweighs everything else. The rest of the movie kept me in full interest and intrigue, with exciting set pieces, full character development, and an atmosphere of mystery. Japan is beautifully captured in this film as well, by use of genius cinematography and a fantastic score from Marco Beltrami.
When I say the film is different from the rest of the X-Men series, I mean it is fundamentally darker than the other movies. Mangold sets the characters as the center of the story, as opposed to the broader, political metaphors that the other films focus on. One particular scene involving Wolverine fighting a man clad in samurai armor portrays the ?humans versus mutants? conflict better than any of the other films have just by using imagery and a few lines of dialogue.
Hugh Jackman returns to play Logan as a down-and-out soldier with no purpose to live (I found it a bit redundant because he has already went through this stage in Origins, but like I said it is best we forget about that film). When his old friend that gives him a path out of immortality, Logan of course still has a warrior instinct in him and still feels he needs to fight. He fights, particularly, to protect the granddaughter of his old friend from the Yakuza, ninjas and other forces that can be described as both ?Japanese? and ?menacing?.
The biggest problem The Wolverine faces is its structure. The story is great; it is just the order in which it was told, the syuzhet that is degrading to the movie. This is most problematic in the third act, where all the twists and turns the film seemed like it was leading up to still haven?t been resolved. The beautifully looking climactic action sequence is a confusing mess because the film never takes a moment of revelations. While a robotic Silver Samurai and Wolverine are duking it out during the ending, I couldn?t fully enjoy it because I still didn?t know the true motives and ambitions of some major characters or what was really at risk. When the film finally does tell the audience what?s going on, it?s a disappointingly obvious twist that wasn?t worth all the effort of keeping a secret of. It?s even more frustrating when the film spent time building up to a well-executed fake climax, and then took a crazy turn to give us the real ending to all this mayhem.
None of the new characters that The Wolverine introduces are particularly bad or annoying and I can say I liked the lot of them. Yukio, a Japanese mutant girl played by Rila Fukushima, was the most fresh out of them all and I really enjoyed the brother-sister dynamic she had with Jackman?s Logan. Mariko Yushida, played by Tao Okamoto, is the granddaughter who needs Logan?s protection. I didn?t really think she was that great, and her actress was pretty flat. For the strangest reason, I thought she had good romantic chemistry with Hugh Jackman though. Think of it as a decent middle-ground between Man of Steel?s Lois-Clark and Pacific Rim?s Mako-Raleigh. The villainess is Viper, a mutant who is oriented around toxins. She is good but not great character and her motivations are muddled.
The Wolverine has its fair share of issues, but fantastic cinematography, direction, character development and action scenes still hold up as a great film worth watching.
Like what you see? Read more by clicking here! [http://speccinephile.blogspot.com/]
The X-Men film series has been to hell and back. It started with a largely good entry directed by Bryan Singer, followed it up with an even better effort by the same director, the series starting taking a downward spiral when Brett Ratner took the director?s helm for The Last Stand. X-Men Origins Wolverine is better left forgotten. I thought the series was wholly and unfortunately dead, but X-Men First Class proved that Fox can still get people capable of making an X-Men movie into making an X-Men movie. That being said, I didn?t know what to think of the The Wolverine going in because of the polarizing history that the rest of the series has had.
There is a lot to be liked in this film though, and it goes without said that this is an infinitely better film than the last X-Men solo film that starred Hugh Jackman. Of course, it should be a crime for any film pitting Wolverine against ninjas to not be. The Wolverine is heavily inspired by a well-liked comic book arc by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, in which Wolverine heads to Japan to say good bye to a dying old friend of his. On this journey he meets some interesting people and finds that this old friend has better plans than just kicking the bucket. The film also deals with Wolverine?s personal struggle and (SPOILERS!) the psychological repercussions of his killing of Jean Grey in X-Men 3.
The film is very well shot and directed by James Mangold (you may know him from directing the fantastic 3:10 to Yuma remake, the admirable, but problematic Walk the Line, and the affably terrible Knight and Day). Mangold takes a tonal departure from the X-Men series by making The Wolverine a darker, relatively-grounded film compared to the rest of the X-Men series. The movie is also quite the genre buster; verging into psychological-thriller, mystery, noire, action, western, and even a bit of romance. Surprisingly, the film does manage to balance out all these styles and ideas reasonably until the third act, where the ?action/superhero movie? persona kicks in and outweighs everything else. The rest of the movie kept me in full interest and intrigue, with exciting set pieces, full character development, and an atmosphere of mystery. Japan is beautifully captured in this film as well, by use of genius cinematography and a fantastic score from Marco Beltrami.
When I say the film is different from the rest of the X-Men series, I mean it is fundamentally darker than the other movies. Mangold sets the characters as the center of the story, as opposed to the broader, political metaphors that the other films focus on. One particular scene involving Wolverine fighting a man clad in samurai armor portrays the ?humans versus mutants? conflict better than any of the other films have just by using imagery and a few lines of dialogue.
Hugh Jackman returns to play Logan as a down-and-out soldier with no purpose to live (I found it a bit redundant because he has already went through this stage in Origins, but like I said it is best we forget about that film). When his old friend that gives him a path out of immortality, Logan of course still has a warrior instinct in him and still feels he needs to fight. He fights, particularly, to protect the granddaughter of his old friend from the Yakuza, ninjas and other forces that can be described as both ?Japanese? and ?menacing?.
The biggest problem The Wolverine faces is its structure. The story is great; it is just the order in which it was told, the syuzhet that is degrading to the movie. This is most problematic in the third act, where all the twists and turns the film seemed like it was leading up to still haven?t been resolved. The beautifully looking climactic action sequence is a confusing mess because the film never takes a moment of revelations. While a robotic Silver Samurai and Wolverine are duking it out during the ending, I couldn?t fully enjoy it because I still didn?t know the true motives and ambitions of some major characters or what was really at risk. When the film finally does tell the audience what?s going on, it?s a disappointingly obvious twist that wasn?t worth all the effort of keeping a secret of. It?s even more frustrating when the film spent time building up to a well-executed fake climax, and then took a crazy turn to give us the real ending to all this mayhem.
None of the new characters that The Wolverine introduces are particularly bad or annoying and I can say I liked the lot of them. Yukio, a Japanese mutant girl played by Rila Fukushima, was the most fresh out of them all and I really enjoyed the brother-sister dynamic she had with Jackman?s Logan. Mariko Yushida, played by Tao Okamoto, is the granddaughter who needs Logan?s protection. I didn?t really think she was that great, and her actress was pretty flat. For the strangest reason, I thought she had good romantic chemistry with Hugh Jackman though. Think of it as a decent middle-ground between Man of Steel?s Lois-Clark and Pacific Rim?s Mako-Raleigh. The villainess is Viper, a mutant who is oriented around toxins. She is good but not great character and her motivations are muddled.
The Wolverine has its fair share of issues, but fantastic cinematography, direction, character development and action scenes still hold up as a great film worth watching.
Like what you see? Read more by clicking here! [http://speccinephile.blogspot.com/]