Official movie review of The Wolverine. Good? Bad?

[makeminemego]

I'm not an x-guy, but I have seen all of the x-movies, and I have a working knowledge of sorts of some of the more important storylines.

 

I thought it was a good, enjoyable movie. Maybe 3 stars out of 4. Took itself (and fans) more seriously than Iron Man 3, and took its time with character development more than MOS. I liked it better than either of those movies. Just a decent show, nothing special, but Jackman plays the part well (at least to me), and the story held my attention.

[Maccai3]

and took its time with character development more than MOS. I liked it better than either of those movies..

 

Jackman is like 5 movies in at this point, development is easier now the origin is out of the way

[oakman29]

I haven't seen it yet,but that train scene looks like it's worth the price of admission all by itself.

[Doc Joe]

i give it a 2

 

just need to figure out if thats 2/5 or 2/10

 

That would be out of 10

 

Unimpressed

[Mark 1]

I liked it at times and was a let down at times. Great fights and some excellent wolverine scenes...the end was typical Hollywood

[TheMightyJohn]

Every scene with Viper should have been cut, still can't figure out the thought process of including her in this film.

 

SS was a horrible villain choice, that character will never work on film, and seeing it as an iron man type armor just seemed like Wolverine vs Real Steel.

 

Get Him A Fight!

[Mark 1]

I aactually disagree about SS as a villain...I thought it looked cool until ...

 

 

the old guy was inside and then looked like the end of Iron Man 1 with Stane in the Iron Monger suit....

 

 

I thought that was lame!

[bronze_rules]

Loved It!!!

 

Best comic movie this year, IMO. Finally some story and character development.

[Jester Hats]

I enjoyed it a lot better than Iron Man 3 and many other comic movies. It was pretty good!

[Wall-Crawler]

I just got back from the theatre - I thought the first 2/3 of Wolverine were very good but the last bit was mess. It felt like it became a completely different movie.

 

I feel that they pulled a bit of a 'Mandarin' with Silver Samurai. Viper was not the Viper I was expecting either. I thought the two actresses playing Mariko and Yukio were great.

 

Stayed after the credits...I enjoyed the extra scene that gives hope for X-Men Days of Future Past though...

 

 

[Mmanick]

Im not a fan of any of the x men movies but this one wasn't like those boring lame ones.....it was my type of movie! I wish the punisher had been more like this the one im talking specifically about the 2004 film. To me it was the best CBM of the year.

[comicstock]

I enjoyed it a lot better than Iron Man 3 and many other comic movies. It was pretty good!

 

Exactly right! Iron Man 3 was a yawner. Mandarin? What the hell was THAT all about??

[comicstock]

Im not a fan of any of the x men movies but this one wasn't like those boring lame ones.....it was my type of movie! I wish the punisher had been more like this the one im talking specifically about the 2004 film. To me it was the best CBM of the year.

 

I thought the Dolph Lundgren version was a hoot!

[WEBHEAD]

Loved It!!!

 

Best comic movie this year, IMO. Finally some story and character development.

 

+1 (thumbs u

[Mmanick]

Im not a fan of any of the x men movies but this one wasn't like those boring lame ones.....it was my type of movie! I wish the punisher had been more like this the one im talking specifically about the 2004 film. To me it was the best CBM of the year.

 

I thought the Dolph Lundgren version was a hoot!

 

,I have the movie and I still watch it from time to time but its pretty bad ...the 2004 film had small bits and pieces of what I wanted in the punisher film but it lacked so much and war zone was a disaster all the way around.

 

I'm buying this wolverine movie when it comes out on Blu ray with the directors cut. Should be even better I think.

[goldust40]

(CNN) -- When Hugh Jackman first called his director for "The Wolverine," James Mangold told him that he had had an inspiration after reading the -script. Mangold wanted to to make the set-in-Japan film similar to "The Outlaw Josey Wales" by making the mutant a Josey Wales with healing powers. Jackman hadn't seen the classic Clint Eastwood film, so Mangold sent him a copy.

 

"I felt like tonally, it would give him a clue of what I was talking about," the director said.

 

The director started thinking about the deep affinity between gun-slinging Westerns and swordfighting samurai films. Mangold thought that drawing upon both of them would help "The Wolverine" stand apart from the rest of the X-Men series.

 

This installment takes place after "X-Men: The Last Stand," as Wolverine retreats from killing the love of his life, Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix, and heads to Japan. It is based on the comic by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, and Mangold thought of it as Hugh Jackman in a Western in Japan, without the horse. To make sense of this movie mashup, the director tweeted images from the top ten inspirations for "The Wolverine," daring fans to identify them.

 

Astute fans of Mangold's body of work (which includes "Cop Land," "Walk the Line" and "3:10 to Yuma") might have spotted the 1959 Yasujiro Ozu film "Floating Weeds," since the director has cited it as one of the best films of all time as well as a major influence on his first film, "Heavy."

 

"Ozu is the most underappreciated Japanese director, in my mind," Mangold said. "For me, the whole trip that Logan takes south to the Nagasaki area, it's almost the reverse train trip that the older couple take in 'Tokyo Story.' "

 

"But it's also about that sense of the beauty and simplicity of rural Japanese life," he added. "When I started scouting Japan, the world of the Ozu films still exists. You ride south; you find yourself in a simple fishing village, and it looks unchanged since the postwar period."

 

Depicting the atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki in "The Wolverine," and the community's recovery, was a useful allegory for Jackman's character: "Out of all the pain and the catastrophe and loss that he had suffered in his life, he's in a place that keeps going," Mangold said. "They keep living, and they keep loving, despite the atrocities that have happened."

 

Also on the list of Mangold's top films of all time is 1947's Himalayas-set "Black Narcissus," about a group of nuns establishing a convent. It was an influence on one of his most acclaimed films, "Girl, Interrupted."

 

"In regards to 'Girl, Interrupted,' it's a conscribed universe with these women all trapped in one place," Mangold said. "But in 'The Wolverine,' it's the tone, which is both realistic and dreamy, the sense of travel to the exotic land and the buried sensuality in this new place."

 

Mangold planted one shot as a direct homage to "Black Narcissus" in "The Wolverine": when a woman runs out of a building and seems on the verge of throwing herself over a cliff into the sea.

 

"That's from the final sequence of 'Black Narcissus,' " Mangold said, "from when the nun who goes mad is chasing Deborah Kerr around and they show downward with the cliffs."

 

On the Western front, Mangold cites two classics: 1953's "Shane" and Eastwood's 1976 film "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

 

" 'Shane' is because of the dark outlaw who is brought into town, comes into a new village and changes everyone's lives but can never stay," Mangold said. "He's a soldier of fortune, a vagabond. Logan is like that Western hero, a man who can never stop moving."

 

In "The Outlaw Josey Wales," Eastwood's character loses his wife and children in the very beginning, and it sets him off on a journey built on his rage and loss -- which echoes not just in Logan's loss of Jean Grey but the perceived loss of his mentor, Dr. Charles Xavier, seemingly destroyed by the Dark Phoenix.

 

"It's also the journey," Mangold said, "and how the enemy is not clear. It's kind of a labyrinth. And it's also about a wounded soldier trying to get home again. In the end of 'Josey Wales,' it's not like he's victorious against any enemy. He just literally finds a new place to live and love again and the courage to do it."

 

Then, of course, there are the samurai films such as the "The Samurai Trilogy": 1954's "Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto," 1955's "Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple" and 1956's "Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island."

 

"The imagery is incredibly fantastical," Mangold said. "It's not the kind of desolation you'd find in the Kurosawa films. They're extremely lyrical and colorful, with beautiful sets, beautiful design, beautiful use of color."

 

Two films noir are also on Mangold's list: William Friedkin's 1971 thriller "The French Connection" and Roman Polanski's 1974 neo-noir "Chinatown." Mangold said he values all of the films even beyond the inspiration they provided for his latest project.

 

"All of these movies are huge to me anyway," he said. "And they spoke to me as I was working on the -script and preparing for this shoot. But they've been touchstones to me all my life."

 

 

I'm impressed that the director could've taken all those classic arthouse and genre influences and tropes and conflated them all into something as shallow as that film.

 

Seriously - Black Narcissus? Chinatown? Shane? If there was a subtext, I didn't spot it, for the simple reason that it wasn't there. Invoking Powell and Pressburger for one tiny scene is daft and made no difference to what was another cookie cutter affair, albeit one that was slickly put together.

 

It was better than the first Wolvie outing (it started promisingly and the train sequence was excellent), but if Hollywood is now going to dress up silly schlock by claiming it has a connection with heavyweight cinema, you'd have to say that the bar has been lowered too far.

[Aweandlorder]

I didnt really expect much from it just because of the simple fact that I knew it would be based on the CC/FM book which was not for me. I just never got into ninja/kung fu movies to begin with and was kinda disappointed when chris and frank took it to that level back when it came out, but thats obviously my opinion, but judging from peoples reaction here to the final post credit scene I see that Im not alone.

This aint MOS (extreme high) and not IM3 (extreme low) its just another regular marvel movie

[slym2none]

...which is a postive thing, right?

 

 

 

 

-slym

[paperheart]

I didnt really expect much from it just because of the simple fact that I knew it would be based on the CC/FM book which was not for me. I just never got into ninja/kung fu movies to begin with and was kinda disappointed when chris and frank took it to that level back when it came out, but thats obviously my opinion, but judging from peoples reaction here to the final post credit scene I see that Im not alone.

This aint MOS (extreme high) and not IM3 (extreme low) its just another regular marvel movie

 

mediocre US BO but ROW lapping it up.

[Aweandlorder]

...which is a postive thing, right?

 

 

 

 

-slym

 

Akshully it is, now that i think of it :-D