There's a joke that's been around since I believe the 1970's. I remember first hearing it on an old episode of M.A.S.H. I'll save you the setup, but Hawkeye turns to his friend Trapper and says, "I thought you said he was dead." Trapper responds, "He got better."
I've used that joke to make fun of one of the most over-used clichés in comic books, and that is the hero returning to life. Just about every major superhero in comics has died, and come back to life in one form or another. Captain America dies in one of the biggest/most shocking scenes in comic book history... but he gets better. Superman gives his life in an awesome fight against Doomsday. They have a funeral for him. Everyone says their goodbyes... and he gets better. Basically, any character that has a fan base, they will never really kill that character off. There will always be a way to bring him back. Even if it makes about as much sense as covering yourself in honey and poking sleeping bears.
I bring all this up because in the trailers they talk about "ending Wolverine's life." And you know Wolverine isn't going to die. And even if he did die, he'd just get better. It's so rare to see a the main hero in a movie die. And even if they die, the bad guy never wins.
There really isn't anything new in this movie. But that's not why we go to see it. We go to see Wolverine be awesome. And that's exactly what you get.
There are a few things that annoyed me about the movie and it's mostly because of the comic book geek in me. The one huge complaint later but first this: I didn't like the look of Yukio, they changed who would become Silver Samurai, and I didn't like them turning Viper into a mutant.
Unless you were to do the research yourself, you've probably never heard of Yukio unless you're a huge X-Men fan. But here's what they did to her: 1) They made her look like Lady Deathstryke with that ridiculous red hair, and 2) they made her a clairvoyant mutant. The entire movie I was waiting for her to reveal herself as Deathstryke but she never did. And the stupid "seeing people's death" mutant power! WHY!?!? It literally added nothing to the movie!
The changing of the Silver Samurai... I get it. Really I do. But it still wasn't necessary. I can't really talk about this without getting into spoilers, but for me it's just one of those things where I'm scratching my head wondering why they went this route. I understand why they did it. They wanted to have this big emotional moment at the end of the movie, but it's so telegraphed and lacking any emotion that it really would've been better had they not gone that way in the first place.
And then there's Viper. Oh dear God what did they do to Viper? I'm less upset they made her into a mutant than I am they completely forgot that Viper is a member of HYDRA! If you've seen Captain America: The First Avenger you should be familiar with Hydra. Hydra is the Red Skull's group. A group more ruthless and bloodthirsty than the Nazis. And this element of the story was never explored. Personally I think it would've added a lot. Especially since we start the movie on Nagasaki just before the atomic bomb was dropped in WWII!
And that leads me in to what I found the most annoying about this movie: It's in canon with the three X-Men movies. And I hated those movies. Especially the third one. So even though I was expecting this to be a sequel to X-Men Origins Wolverine, it's instead a sequel to X-Men The Last Stand. The entire movie Wolverine has fantasies about dying and being with Jean Grey in Heaven. The entire point of it was to emphasize how much Wolverine is tired of living forever and watching everyone around him die. If you don't know how it ends, just think about it for a minute.
My problems with this are mostly with the way these characters are treated in the movie and less with the story itself. The action scenes are really good and if you go there just to watch Wolverine be awesome, you're going to get Wolverine being awesome. What upsets me is that this movie could've been so much more than it was. With just a little bit of work it could've been something very special. It could've tied in the events of The Avengers and could've led into Wolverine being a part of the next Avengers movie. It could've been a heart wrenching tale of betrayal and sacrifice, but instead it's a generic action film.
It's an enjoyable popcorn flick. But that's it. Shame.
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