March Marvel Madness: THE WOLVERINE

Greetings, True Believers! Welcome to March Marvel Madness! Every day this month, I'll be looking back on a theatrically-released movie based on the characters of Marvel Comics. It's all to commemorate the April 4th release of the next Marvel film adventure, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Today, honor is (almost) restored with...

Hugh Jackman returns as Logan, once a member of a team of valiant mutants called The X-Men. Now, he's a  hermit living out in the woods, haunted by the memories of sacrificing the woman he loved (Famke Janssen). His exile is cut short when he's brought to Tokyo to say goodbye to a dying man who Logan saved when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. It's not long before Wolverine is caught up in a tangled web of family, politics, and the Yakuza. Add to that, the immortal mutant suddenly loses his ability to heal, making him vulnerable for the first time.

A great character like Logan deserved a lot better than what he got in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. While that movie played out as a cold highlights reel, this one is an actual story worth caring about. Largely inspired by the 1982 limited series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, The Wolverine delves deep into the soul of the title character. Logan is a failed warrior looking for an easy way out, and he's forced into action in order to really look at himself. Only then will he be able to not just accept who he is, but embrace it. It's definitely a smaller, more intimate scale X-Men movie, but it is no less thrilling. The Wolverine still has its share of action, with chases, Japanese swordplay, a really wild fight on top of a bullet train, and the obligatory climactic superhero showdown. In addition, it's one of the more exquisite X-Men pictures to look at.

This is the kind of Wolverine solo film 20th Century Fox should have been shooting for in the first place. Instead of simply relying on the character alone to sell tickets, The Wolverine takes him places emotionally to give the audience someone to root for. My main concern with it at this moment, however, is how it ties with the X-Men films past and future. If X-Men: First Class is suppose to disavow the events of The Last Stand and the first solo flick, The Wolverine doesn't seem to want to honor that. Continuity-wise, as of this writing, the X-Men movie universe is really fucked up.

The Wolverine
4 out of 5 Cap shields