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.)

The Wolverine (2013)

Six times in the past thirteen years, Hugh Jackman has snikt’d his way into theaters as Wolverine, and now that he’s finally starred in an adaptation of a much-loved plotline from the comics – Logan goes to Japan – I feel even better about naming Jackman’s performance(s) as the #4 Comic Book Movie Moment.  The Wolverine is a film that takes a written-in-the-stars casting choice, throws it in a bold new direction, and still manages to appease Joe Popcorn.

After the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan (Jackman) has gone into self-imposed exile, retiring his Wolverine identity out of fear and denial at the prospect of killing another loved one; as it is, he’s haunted by visions of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), whom he killed to save the world.  But after the deadly clairvoyant Yukio (Rila Fukushima) tracks him down so that her employer Yashida can thank Logan for saving him at Nagasaki, Wolverine finds himself without his healing powers as he protects Yashida’s granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) from the assassins working for Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).

Most of the positive reviews for this film have already noted the compelling emphasis on character exploration over plot-driven mutant hijinks, so I’ll just add myself to that chorus and say that The Wolverine does well to stand on its star’s strapping shoulders.  Jackman handles Logan’s grief well, maintaining throughout some of the quintessential Wolverine characteristics (his berserker rage and his hunter’s humor, mostly).  Indeed, it’s to Jackman’s credit that the film can oscillate between moments of despair and the high-octane X-action we expect from the X-Men franchise.

It’s worth noting that Fukushima and Okamoto are both newcomers to the acting game, though both perform quite well – especially Fukushima who, despite a few unconvincing line readings, manages to hold her own opposite powerhouse Jackman and in the film’s more demanding action sequences.  The only piece that never quite fits is Khodchenkova’s Viper, whose theatrical villainy feels more at home in The Last Stand than The Wolverine; while she doesn’t do anything wrong per se, she’d be more appropriate in a Technicolor comic book film, and I would have appreciated a subtler villain in her place here.

Director James Mangold, of 3:10 to Yuma fame, earns some of the credit for the film’s success with his engaging cinematographic treatments of Japan, shots that would look beautiful in any context without pandering to preconceptions of what stereotypical Japan “ought to” look like.  Mangold creates an appealing topography, from bullet trains and “love hotels” to funeral pagodas and corporate bases.  Mangold keeps a methodical pace through the film, keeping the plot progressing forward while stepping through character moments like a Noh play – slowly but precisely.

Simultaneously, Mangold knows when to let The Wolverine off the leash and treat audiences to the action sequences without which this wouldn’t feel like a superhero movie.  The fight atop the bullet train recalls Spider-Man 2 by way of The Matrix, and the film’s third act – which some have critiqued as being inappropriately blockbuster in such a nuanced character-driven piece – manages to weave the family drama plot elements into the ongoing mutant tapestry quite well.

Be sure to stay through the credits for another nod to that aforementioned tapestry – with a few cameos that are too swell to spoil – but even taken as a standalone entity and not as an installment in an ongoing franchise, The Wolverine is a solid alternative superhero piece that places more emphasis on protagonist than on punching.  It’s almost Superman Returns done right, a more thoughtful take on the superhero’s place in the world without relying on the Donner formula of escalating super-feats.  It’s my hope that films The Wolverine become more frequent rather than novelty items in the genre – just as long as he gets to snikt his way out of a snafu or two.

The Wolverine is rated PG-13 for “sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some sexuality and language.”  There’s a fair bit of gunplay and a lot of hack-and-slash with Wolvie’s claws, though most of it is pulled off without much blood being shown.  Wolverine is shown in bed with two different women (only one of whom is real, though sex is implied in both cases) while another man parties with two underwear-clad ladies; finally, Jackman gets to drop his contractual one F-bomb near the end.