The Wolverine: Review
Official Synopsis:
Based on the celebrated comic book arc, this epic action-adventure takes Wolverine, the most iconic character of the X-Men universe, to modern day Japan. Out of his depth in an unknown world he faces his ultimate nemesis in a life-or-death battle that will leave him forever changed. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than we have ever seen him before.
After X-Men Origins: Wolverine it kind of left me with a bitter taste in my mouth and with little to no hope for another solo Wolverine adventure. So when this film was initially announced I rolled my eyes and prepared for the worst. Fast forward to opening weekend and I (of course) was going to go see it no matter if it was good or bad. I saw the running time of the film was coming in at about 2 hours so I was mentally preparing myself for the worst and what I got was the Wolverine film that should’ve been. Forgive me for saying this but it almost felt like this was the Batman Begins of Wolverine films but at the same time it didn’t completely ignore the previous X-Men films and made this a connecting piece which is good because lets face it, they need to try to right the wrongs that Brett Ratner created with The Last Stand. From what I took was that the main focus of the film was Logan coming to terms to what he had done to Jean Grey and finding himself again. It really was a more emotional film than I expected with tons of action to balance it out. Frank Miller has been on a roll the past few years and I loved the fact that his work is being adapted for a film once again. His Wolverine/Japan story is probably one of the best that has been done for the character and even though there were a few differences I felt like it was faithful to the source material in terms of the core of the film. The only thing I didn’t like was the whole Silver Samurai deal. In the original story the samurai was Harada who is the son of Yashida but in this film version it was Yashida himself. The other thing was that Silver Samurai was less armor and more of a mech type robot which I kind of didn’t dig too much. Other than that I think this was the best “X-Men” type film that has been made so far and I think with the success and structure of the Marvel Studios films we’re going to see others get better and better. This is a must see and will leave you intrigued and excited for the future of the Wolverine and X-Men franchises.
NOTE: Stick around midway through the credits for a nice little transition teaser scene.
