Cinemutants - The Wolverine (2013)

At a time when superhero movies are starting to lose their stranglehold on pop culture, there are really only two options: go back and watch old movies, or kill off an entire cinematic universe in spectacular fashion. This July, Marvel’s taking the latter approach with Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems primed to seal off the 20th Century Fox film universe. And while director Shawn Levy promises, “This movie is built [...] with no obligation to come prepared with prior research,” skipping the research has never really been my strong suit when it comes to franchises. It’s a perfect excuse, then, to go through the last 24 years (and 13 movies) with everyone’s favorite mutants, the X-Men.
 

This week, from 2013, it’s The Wolverine. Years after The Last Stand, Logan (Hugh Jackman) is in exile, alone and haunted by the ghost of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Invited to Japan by the ailing Ichiro Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi), Logan finds himself entangled in a conspiracy involving Yashida’s son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada), his granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), and the precognitive mutant Yukio (Rila Fukushima). 

1. Eternity can be a curse. After thirteen years and six outings as Logan (counting his cameo last week), Hugh Jackman gives his best performance yet in The Wolverine. Wolverine has always been a creature of rage, and in this one we get to see that rage turned inward – for the first act, at least. Like any good soldier, Wolverine only needs a mission to turn himself around, something I suspect will come into play in Deadpool & Wolverine, when we meet another Logan broken by failure. But it’s not all heartbreak here, because Jackman also gives us some of the best action sequences with Wolverine, including a sensational fight on a bullet train and (in the extended cut) a lengthy battle with ninjas on motorbikes. And while Jackman is much taller than the Wolverine of the comics, he takes full advantage of that size difference and owns it in this movie.
2. Kuzuri. In the comics, Wolverine has a long history with Japan, having trained there before his days with the X-Men and drifting back every so often to settle some bit of unfinished business. The Wolverine relocates Logan’s history with Japan into his present, tying him in an arresting opener to the bombing of Nagasaki before setting the bulk of the film in Japan. There’s some question about whether Logan is a kuzuri (an animal) or a ronin (a samurai without a master), and there’s some room to wonder whether Yukio’s gift is a mutation or just a spiritual connection to the future. In some ways, this movie anticipates Peach Momoko’s recent work in the Marvel Universe, which reimagines mutants as yokai (cf., Demon Days, Ultimate X-Men). Done carefully, this cultural crossover enriches the character and keeps him from growing stale.
3. Everyone you love dies. The Wolverine plays with one of the most stalwart archetypal plots in superhero comics – take away everything recognizable about the hero, break him down to nothing, and build him back up. On a meta level, the film even acknowledges that The Last Stand and Origins didn’t go very well, and so we’re rooting for a redemption of the franchise and its erstwhile protagonist. First Class was a step in a new direction, but The Wolverine had the unenviable task of picking up from an unloved film and playing the X-ball where it lay. (Director James Mangold would tread a similar path with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny a decade later, following on the unpopular Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) So we have a Logan without a team, without a purpose, and even without his healing factor. Who, then, is the Wolverine? It’s immensely satisfying once Logan embraces the mantle that had been used to taunt and torment him.
4. We don’t all have claws. While I don’t think too many people would thrill at the return of mutant poison mistress Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), I was reminded on this rewatch that we were really robbed of more Yukio. Rila Fukushima would get her superhero due playing Katana for a few years on Arrow, but The Wolverine set up a fun dynamic with Yukio as Logan’s backup, his confidant, and the closest thing to a friend he permits himself (almost reminiscent, incidentally, of the relationships Wolverine has had with young X-Men like Kitty Pryde and Jubilee). We meet a very different Yukio in Deadpool 2 – either due to time-travel shenanigans or just two people having the same name – and Days of Future Past will imply that this timeline doesn’t exist any longer. But since exiles from dead continuities are sort of the TVA’s whole thing, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this Yukio makes a return; someone who can see the future might come in handy if the TVA are pruning timelines. 
5. Ghosts of future past. I had entirely forgotten that Famke Janssen plays a not-insubstantial role in The Wolverine, which makes me wonder if we might see her pop up in the new Deadpool movie as some multiversal variant of the Phoenix (she stands a better chance, at least, than Sophie Turner, whose Dark Phoenix is less than fondly remembered). There’s certainly a sense of the unresolved in the relationship with Logan, as well as the question of whether she’s just a memory or a spectral vision from beyond. What I hadn’t forgotten, however, was the first-rate post-credits scene which reintroduces Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart into the mix; though we saw them three weeks ago, it had been seven years for moviegoers (not counting Stewart’s CGI cameo in Origins). This is one of those gold-standard teasers, and it had me wanting to cue up Days of Future Past immediately; we’ll have to wait a week for that one.

Sound off in the comments, true believers: is The Wolverine overshadowed by other, better X-films? Case in point, we’ll do the time warp again next week with arguably the franchise’s finest hour, Days of Future Past. (And for those playing the home game, I’ll be watching “The Rogue Cut” this time around.)