The Wolverine

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Click here to show this review. Yeah I'm really sorry but this was not a very good movie. I grew up on Wolverine before he became popular and I've seen all the movies. I know the character well and remember many of the story lines. The fatal flaw in this version was really the writing. They tried too hard to craft a story around Japan. OK, Wolvie was captured in WW2 and saved some guy's life, he gets obsessed with his healing ability/immortality as well as adamantium. Fine, but the way they add the other characters in is unnecessary. There are ninjas for the sake of ninjas. Wait, come to think of it, most of the comics had similar convoluted plots! Well maybe if the goal was to make a short story into a 2 hour film, then I guess the producers did a good job. Not much chemistry with the other actors -it's a darn good thing Hugh can act otherwise this would have been a REAL mess! Action scenes are total cliche. How many multi-level action scenes can Hollywood produce? The good & bad guys crash over ledges and fall to sub-levels or catwalks ad nauseum. Then the sidekick shows up just in the nick of time to prevent the villain from dealing a death blow to the hero. Yawn... There are BIG holes in regard to many details, but we can suspend disbelief for a while. Some things are much harder to forgive like choice of villains. The only other mutant in the film is the Viper lady. As far as I'm concerned, this was about as bad as using Toad in the first X-Men. How did that one go in the board room? "Wait! I know: let's get a foxy lady and put a CGI tongue on her and she spits poison. We'll have a scene where she rips her skin off!" Oh, and poison always, ALWAYS makes skin blister and veins turn black (just so you know how to identify it, then you can call 911) I really believe many scenarios were designed around the camera shots where they just HAD to shoot a dramatic scene with Wolvie full of arrows on ropes held by ninjas. Ok, it looks good but does it make any sense? No, none whatsoever. The guy with 6 sharp claws never thought to turn around a cut the ropes? Instead he keeps running blindly toward the tower to save his girlfriend while some 20-30 ninjas keep shooting those harpoons and he makes a valiant crucifixion pose for the camera. Then, the little prawn on his heart stopping the healing factor can only be cut out by himself. With no healing factor or anesthesia. AND a sword fight is going on beside him. Cringeworthy. So all in all, I was hoping for an improvement over the last "Origins" iteration, but I feel it was well below that standard. Long, drawn-out scenes with Wolvie losing his healing ability, weak love story. Action scenes kind of overdone/ineffective. Hollywood is very good at milking a franchise, and frankly I just go to these superhero movies to unwind. I have no personal interest beyond losing myself for a while and being entertained. But when the story is not treated with enough quality or substance, it becomes hard to maintain interest. I'll still go to see the X-Men movies but I gotta say I'm not impressed with this one. Too much of the same, it's getting boring!