The Wolverine Review

With a lot of really highly anticipated comic book movies out this year including Superman,Kick Ass 2, Thor 2 and the long awaited sequel to Sin City it would be easy to let The Wolverine pass you by. Before it was released not many people would have put it near the top of the list of must see movies out this year.

The main reason for this would have been the after effect of the first movie released in 2009. Everyone loved Wolverine for the X-men movies and a solo movie sounded like a great idea. But due to a poorly executed story and adding way too many mutants and not using any of them properly it almost closed the door on a Wolverine sequel.

Four years late they finally got a Wolverine solo movie right. For a movie I almost decided to wait until the DVD came out I’m really happy to have decided to go see it.

The Wolverine doesn’t both going over his origin as it’s an old story. This one is for fans of the X-Men movies and comics and already know of Logans conflicts in life. It’s set years after X-men 3 : Last stand where he killed Jene Grey who turned into the Phenix and two years before Days of Future Past if that makes sence. It starts out with a Wolverine who is very damaged after killing the woman he loved and has gone back to living on his own.

Warning, some minor spoilers ahead.

The great thing about this movie is although parts are almost predicable there are still so many suprises. For example Famke Janssen aka Jean Grey has a few scenes in the movie and the post credits scene is probablyt he best one I’ve ever seen and takes you back to the time you first saw Nick Fury at the end of Iron Man. It’s also not got one of those Stan Lee cameos which were fun at first but after years it got very old.

One thing I loved about this movie was how they played on Wolverines psychology and his powers so well. He works great as a solo hero or a lone wolf. There is one part where he loses his powers and the hand to hand fighting is amazing. In all the other movies where he has his powers close combat was never a stuggle for Wolverine but when he loses his powers then gets shot you really feel it. Then when he keeps going it shows how strong his will is to fight.

Taking him to Japan works so well too. He’s away from all the normal distractions he has in the other movies like random mutants turning up from nowhere and it almost alienates the audience as in the firts movie they introduced so many mutants nobody knew who they all were and it was lost. In this movie you know exactly who everyone is and where they stand.

Seeing Wolverine have to struggle against hand to hand combat of none mutants creates some awesome fights. These guys haven’t got super powers just years of Ninja and Samurai training which you can imagine lends to some awesome battles, especially where Wolverine heads up against dozens of Ninjas in one village.

For the rest of the cast we have Rila Fukushima who plays Yukio, shes a mutant who can see the future but only their deaths. At one point she predicts Logans death with him covered in blood holding his own still beating heart. I’m not familior with the chracter in the comics but she was a very wise choice.

The main mutant villain in the movie is Viper who is played by Svetlana Khodchenkova. Again a great choice as you see her use her powers to the full and not just spitting acid at people like you might have seen in the first Wolverine movie.

The Silver Samurai probably wont please comic purists but he is still part of the Yashida family and kicks some ass at the end, imagine a giant adamantium Samurai. He’s not a mutant but it is a good interpretation of him. Again it’s Wolverine fighting a very well trained human in an epic suit. I’ve seen enough mutant on mutant fights and seeing some amazing Samurai vs Wolverine fights just makes this movie something new and original which I thinks important since we now get half a dozen comic book movies a year.

CGI wise it’s very well executed and not overly done. I don’t like 3D movies too much other than Dredd and this was good, not overly 3D and you probably wouldn’t miss it. I’d probably advise a 2D viewing if you have the option but 3D isn’t bad either.

Oveall I love this movie, it is to Wolverine what The Dark Knight was to Batman. It’s pushed the bar high and could make another Wolverine movie hard to top.

http://www.thewolverinemovie.com/

Posted by Adi Mursec on July 27, 2013