Okay this will be the second to last been-in-theaters-for-a-while movie to review since I have also seen Kick-Ass 2 but also have not come around to reviewing it with school starting and things like that. But anyways, some of you have read my X-men reviews building up to this film more or less, so let's finally get on with my own review for The Wolverine.
Plot: Set after the events of The Last Stand, The Wolverine has gone into hiding and has been summoned to visit Yashida whom he rescued years ago and is currently dying of cancer. Yashida offers Wolverine a chance to give his healing abilities to him so he can finally eventually die of old age and have a normal life while Yashida lives forever. Before he considers that offer, Yashida dies and his granddaughter Mariko has been put into a hit list and so Wolverine has to protect her while finding out who is trying to kill her.
Now at the end of the day, this is a good Wolverine movie. And a giant improvement from Wolverine Origins. While that film focused on the action and giving us a story everyone who's seen X2 already knows, this one gives us a story that only the comic book readers would know and focused so much more on that and the characters then with all the action, but still give us a good amount of action for us to enjoy. And many Wolverine and/or X-Men fans couldn't be happier after Origins. This is specifically based on a limited series titled Wolverine where basically everything that happened there happens in this film. And while I cannot say I have read it for myself, I know a couple of people who have and they have said that for the most part it was bringing the entire comic to life which is always a good thing when it comes to adaptations. And most importantly the story is good. Just like with what they more or less did with The Dark Knight Rises and Iron Man 3, this film went a little into the different between the hero and the powers when Logan questions whether or not to give up his abilities. Plus like some other Marvel film nowadays, it has a scene during the middle of the credits and I can assure you that you do NOT want to miss it. But as good as all the things that have been said are, everything else was just...mediocre. Aside from Wolverine himself, not to many of the characters really stood out - not that any of them where really bad, but they didn't leave a mark. One characters that comes to mind as an example is the villain Viper. For the most part she played her part well enough to actually be the Viper as some of us know from the comics. But when you compare her to many other villains that have hit the silver screen, she wasn't anything unique. At the end of the day, she was kind of just there just so that Viper has made a theatrical film appearance and that was kind of it. And when we come down to the question as to how The Wolverine stands out from the other Marvel films or superhero films in general, I would have the say that it doesn't do much. It will definitely be a film to treasure for years to come for Wolverine/X-Men fans or people in general who want something better then Origins, but after a while when looking back at what an impact it had for me and probably others, it only has a very small part for Marvel's phase 2 with slightly building up for X-Men Days of Future Past, which when I think of it that way, it may not make such as impact as we would like for years to come. But I certainly hope I'm wrong, because I would like to think this movie will hold up as at least fairly memeorable.
And that's my review for The Wolverine. It's mostly mediocre as a film by itself and possibly not that memorable when you look at the grand scheme of things with what Marvel is doing, but it's still a big improvement for origins with it's more story heavy setting and it's fair amount of action and further development to Wolverine itself while building up to the next X-Men film that makes it a nice film to watch and definitely one to check out as we wait for Days of Future Past. (man I hope that one turns out awesome!)
