Ryan McNeil
A good friend of mine has been wondering for a while about the state of comic book films. He has asked on several occasions when we might finally reach The Silver Age; the point at which we’ve been introduced to all of the main players, and we can start dropping them into more nuanced and individual stories.
While I don’t want to count my chickens before they’ve hatched, I wonder if THE WOLVERINE might well mark the beginning of the storytelling era he has long wanted.
Some time after the events of the X-Men Trilogy, we find James “The Wolverine” Logan (Hugh Jackman) deep in the forests of The Yukon Territory. He seems to be hiding from the world, feeling a great deal of guilt from his role in the death of Jean Grey (Femke Janssen). He feels so guilty, in fact, that she continually haunts his dreams. So he continues to keep to himself and hide from the world.
He can’t be hiding that well though, because he is eventually found by a Japanese girl named Yukio (Rila Fukushima). She has been sent on a mission to gather Logan and bring him to Japan. Her mission is the dying request of a man named Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi). Logan met Yashida when he was an American soldier in WWII. It was then, on the island of Nagasaki that Logan pulled him out of harm’s wat and allowed him to survive the atomic blast that destroyed most of the island. Now, almost seventy years later, Yashida’s dying request is to see him once more and thank him.
Logan reluctantly consents, and upon his arrival in Japan, he discovers that the entire situation surrounding Yashida’s impending death is a complicated one. It’s about to cause great unrest in the corporation he has built, it has sparked assassination attempts from The Yakuza, and is being directly affected by Yashida’s doctor; a mysterious American woman who goes only by “The Viper” (Svetlana Khodchenkova).
Upon finally coming face to face with the man he once saved, Logan is presented with an offer. Yashida claims he can free Logan from his immortality – specifically from the adamantium grafted into his skeleton that prolongs his life all the more. While conflicted, Logan rejects the offer, claiming that it will not bring him peace. Shortly thereafter, Yashida dies.
However, as so often is the case, death is only the beginning. At Yashida’s funeral, The Yakuza finally make their presence known. As the bullets begin to fly, and Logan gets into the fray, it becomes clear that the target is Yashida’s granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto). While Logan instinctually pulls her to safety, he is puzzled as to why she might be an assassin’s target…and likewise, why he is suddenly feeling more pain than usual.
What makes THE WOLVERINE work so well, is how it finds a way to move the comic book genre along a step or two. In the thirteen years since X-MEN kicked off the genre in the way we now know it, the stories have all been contained to one of two categories: they are all origin stories or sequels. Where the latter is concerned, films generally lean back on what happened in the previous film, and hope to leave enough on the board that the next film has been set up. Here though, we have something a little different. While there are glancing looks at what Logan has already gone through, he has primarily been dropped into an isolated incident. That formula allows us to focus on the story at hand, without looking back or looking ahead…and it feels like a breath of fresh air.
In a lazier approach, THE WOLVERINE might spent precious time telling us how Logan isolated himself away from the X-Men…or what he is doing to regroup with them. In this film though, such details are left aside. Instead, the story focuses on Logan as a person. It gives us both a piece of his past, and a situation in the present to digest. It assumes the audience knows the character, and like a twelve issue arc of a comic book, it drops him in to a specific story and lets the situation play out.
Doing so allows the story to stand on its own two feet. It doesn’t feel like a commercial for the next film, nor like a rehash of the last film. Instead, THE WOLVERINE gives us a long look into Logan’s psyche, and where his many adventures have left him. As Yashida puts it, “Eternity can be a curse”, and by this point Logan is over 150 years old. How long is he supposed to wander the earth looking for peace? How many times can he have his heart-broken? How many people must he watch die? While these questions are somewhat underplayed through the course of the story, they are there nonetheless…and they make Logan’s experience in Japan far more interesting than it had any right to be.
However, THE WOLVERINE is not without flaw – and its flaw is something of a paradox. THE WOLVERINE seems unsure of what to do with its female characters. On the one hand, Mariko and Yukio are well fleshed-out and well portrayed. The pseudo-sisters have a subtle complexity that tempers their characters, and the way they interact with everyone, including each other. They become guiding lights for Logan in very different ways, helping him regroup and once again become the hero we know him to be.
In stark contrast to Makiro and Yukio are Viper and Jean Grey. THE WOLVERINE seems designed with its feet planted on the ground; while not quite “set in reality” it certainly feels realistic. In the face of that, Viper’s vampish demeanour and her maniacal dialogue feel out-of-place. So too does her wardrobe in the film’s final act. She’s supposed to be an evil genius, not a cat burglar. Speaking of wardrobe, I can appreciate the haunting nature that Jean Grey has on Logan’s subconscious – but does she have to haunt in a silk slip?
While these flaws distract, they do not sink the whole film. If anything, they hold it to goodness when it could have achieved greatness. Dropping Logan into a situation that is all about legacy creates a deeply engaging story. It allows him to examine who he is, who he was, and who he must become. The film underlines just why Wolverine tends to keep to himself, since he seems to have unwanted and lasting impact on the lives he touches…and after 150 years, he has touched a lot of lives.
THE WOLVERINE chooses to focus on but one of those lives, and in doing so it becomes an unexpectedly solid movie.
I’d probably be a BIT more harsh than you (maybe 2.5/4 stars), but chalk that up to me being a lifelong X-Men fangirl. 🙂 Still, this did exceed my (admittedly low) expectations, as it did yours, for some of the same reasons. I did appreciate that it didn’t have a big “REHASH!!!” tag stamped across the whole thing, and considering it’s called “The Wolverine,” we actually got what was promised: Logan’s story, a little more than we’d seen in previous films, more time spent just with him and why he is who/what he is, etc. All of that made me appreciative of the direction they opted to go. (Do you think there’s any strength to the rumour about Aronofsky’s reasons for dropping out as director when this was first announced? That would’ve been…interesting!)
The things that didn’t really work for me, mostly, were Viper (I know she served a purpose, but shoehorning in the mutant factor was really unnecessary and didn’t pay off much; she could’ve been used to greater effect, or otherwise just left out entirely, along with her thoroughly WTF green outfit at the end, as you pointed out…plus the actress wasn’t anywhere near the calibre of the people with whom she was acting, so that stuck out, too) and the weirdness that Mariko was given the romantic lead, where there was zero chemistry compared to the kickass pairing of Logan and his “bodyguard.” Again, I see the purpose behind Mangold & the writers using the characters that way, but I felt like it may have been a wasted opportunity.
Also? I have always hated Jean Grey. As a character, in the comics, as played by Janssen, you name it. And AGAIN I say I get the reasoning – Logan has to choose life (…choose a job! Choose a family! Choose a f*cking big television! …oh, wait, wrong movie) or let go, and obviously his Great Love will weigh on his decision. So, yeah, okay, fine, but you’re right about the angelic white negligee thing. Ugh.
Full disclosure: I let out a shriek of excitement during the end credits. I will say no more for fear of spoilers, but…yeah, in a full Sunday morning theatre, a grown woman fangirled. *facepalm*
Aronofsky was supposed to direct this, that isn’t rumour. The story goes that just before things were supposed to really get rolling, Aronofsky and Rachel Weisz split up. As such, Aronofsky didn’t want to be stranded on Hawaii during a tough time for the couple’s son.
I’m with you on Viper, but actually bought the connection between Logan and Mariko. With his lowered pain threshold, it feels like he’s looking for a port in the storm, and when she sees the punishment he’s taking to keep her safe, it seems to spark something in her too.
Jean Grey has never swayed me one way or the other…she’s just always “been there”
I liked it. My favourite thing about it is how it kind of went against the current obsession with blowing up everything and just was a good, clean action flick. I always liked Wolverine and after the shit that was X-Men Origins, I was glad that he got a film that explored his character.
And yes, the post-credits scene was as awesome as they come.
“…it kind of went against the current obsession with blowing up everything…”
YES. So refreshing to see some stripped-down action that still managed to be entertaining. I realize I’m the ONLY person on earth who didn’t like “Pacific Rim,” but it was (in part) the bombastic Transformers-esque approach that put me off. There was little enough of that here to be a very welcome change, and yeah, we got to see Logan, not just the Superhero Comic Book Character Of The Month.
Am I the only person who actually thought there was enough story in ORIGINS for two films? One of Logan and Victor growing up and becoming soldiers, then a whole second film of Logan becoming part of Project X and being infused with adamantium?
I’m with both of you though. While I do enjoy a story where the stakes are sky-high, it feels as though we’ve been getting a rash of them lately.
That this tale was personal and self-contained felt like a breath of fresh air.