There’s a moment near the beginning of the final act of The Wolverine wherein Logan, our favorite adamantium-laced mutant, rides in a car with his accomplice Yukio, a mutant with the ability to foresee people’s deaths, as they race to save a mutual friend. As he’s about to climb out of the car, Yukio shares her visions of his impending death, an ominous foreshadow of the struggles he will surely face in the film’s climax. Instead of heeding Yukio’s warning or internalizing her affection, Logan interrupts with a flippant, “I don’t have time for this shit” and races off to beat up some thugs.
It’s a line of dialogue that perfectly encapsulates my feelings towards this mismatched, oddly offputting attempt at dissecting a character that just isn’t all that interesting.
Wolverine has an indestructible metal bonded to his entire skeleton. He also has a natural mutant ability to heal and regenerate almost instantaneously. In other words, he’s invincible -- he is the Superman of Marvel Comics sans weakness to radioactive space rocks. You can’t nuke him. You can’t shoot him. You can’t stab him. You can’t even chop off his claws. He... is... unstoppable!
This makes for a supremely difficult character to dramatize on screen. If he’s invincible, why should he care about anything? If he does care about someone, what are the stakes to his journey? What threats face him? What must he overcome? Spoiler alert: he will never die! So how do you get me to care about this character?
This is the principal question at play in this film -- and the only one worth investigating. What makes the Wolverine care about the Yashida family after he’s witnessed so much death and destruction over what must be centuries of time? How does he find any humanity in himself if he is by all accounts, not truly human? I give credit to director James Mangold for at least asking such questions. I take away more points for his total disregard of these questions when the movie begins barreling towards its action-heavy multi-ending climax. Here, like in so many other superhero movies, the film is better at beginnings than endings, more adroit at formulating questions than supplying answers.
But The Wolverine is a notch above the standard superhero movie -- it's one of the few whose finale didn’t hinge on cataclysmic planetary destruction. It's one of few whose hero doesn’t necessarily get the girl. It's one of even fewer wherein moments of quiet repose and exposition are almost as exciting as its grand action spectacles... almost. But beyond all these factors, I fear The Wolverine is simply marking the passing of a new age in filmmaking. There is an obscenely large superhero/action/blockbuster bubble forming right now. Summer over summer, the few studios with enough capital to absorb nine-figure writedowns (read: John Carter, Battleship, The Lone Ranger, After Earth, RIPD) invest more and more into bigger, faster, louder, badder movies. They aim to bring in droves of ticket buyers by reheating cold leftovers in hopes of passing it off as new, fresh, or worthy. This bubble will burst, sooner or later. I just hope to discover some new, clear, confident voices when this all finally comes tumbling back down to Earth.
It’s a line of dialogue that perfectly encapsulates my feelings towards this mismatched, oddly offputting attempt at dissecting a character that just isn’t all that interesting.
Wolverine has an indestructible metal bonded to his entire skeleton. He also has a natural mutant ability to heal and regenerate almost instantaneously. In other words, he’s invincible -- he is the Superman of Marvel Comics sans weakness to radioactive space rocks. You can’t nuke him. You can’t shoot him. You can’t stab him. You can’t even chop off his claws. He... is... unstoppable!
This makes for a supremely difficult character to dramatize on screen. If he’s invincible, why should he care about anything? If he does care about someone, what are the stakes to his journey? What threats face him? What must he overcome? Spoiler alert: he will never die! So how do you get me to care about this character?
This is the principal question at play in this film -- and the only one worth investigating. What makes the Wolverine care about the Yashida family after he’s witnessed so much death and destruction over what must be centuries of time? How does he find any humanity in himself if he is by all accounts, not truly human? I give credit to director James Mangold for at least asking such questions. I take away more points for his total disregard of these questions when the movie begins barreling towards its action-heavy multi-ending climax. Here, like in so many other superhero movies, the film is better at beginnings than endings, more adroit at formulating questions than supplying answers.
But The Wolverine is a notch above the standard superhero movie -- it's one of the few whose finale didn’t hinge on cataclysmic planetary destruction. It's one of few whose hero doesn’t necessarily get the girl. It's one of even fewer wherein moments of quiet repose and exposition are almost as exciting as its grand action spectacles... almost. But beyond all these factors, I fear The Wolverine is simply marking the passing of a new age in filmmaking. There is an obscenely large superhero/action/blockbuster bubble forming right now. Summer over summer, the few studios with enough capital to absorb nine-figure writedowns (read: John Carter, Battleship, The Lone Ranger, After Earth, RIPD) invest more and more into bigger, faster, louder, badder movies. They aim to bring in droves of ticket buyers by reheating cold leftovers in hopes of passing it off as new, fresh, or worthy. This bubble will burst, sooner or later. I just hope to discover some new, clear, confident voices when this all finally comes tumbling back down to Earth.
