by OL » Tue Jun 24, 2014 3:46 am
Finally got around to the extended/uncut version of The Wolverine. The regular one started coming on HBO recently, so I watched about 20 minutes of that to get the gist of what it'd be like, and decided I liked it enough to buy.
Not disappointed at all. Honestly, I have to say it's probably my favorite of the X-Men-related movies overall (haven't seen DoFP yet though). I've always felt that Wolverine + Japan = win (if handled right, and it's kind of hard to screw up). They really did take a lot of the best aspects of that formula from the comics and did all the right things with it, and even managed to surprise with a few really cool scenes/setups I wouldn't have expected. The opening, with Logan as a prisoner in Nagasaki just as the bomb drops, was really a phenomenal way to start the whole thing. And going from there, it was great to finally see a Wolverine movie where he isn't treated as a costumed superhero, but rather as the tortured loner he always should be. And I think that might lead to the biggest problem with the movie; it basically ends with the promise that he's going back to the X-Men to play around in bigger-scale superhero adventures. No more "angry loner who wishes he could die" stuff for him. And that's, ironically enough, kind of a bummer. I like seeing Hugh Jackman as Logan, pissed as hell, shredding into a bunch of low-level gun thugs.
And ninjas. Always ninjas.
I'll always prefer seeing that kind of thing over seeing him take on other mutants or supervillains and whatnot. Hate to see that possibility go away.
Being the extended cut, it was really nice to see some properly Wolverine-style violence too, and not the neutered kind they usually have to settle for in the PG-13 versions. It wasn't as bloody as it could have been, but there was enough for it to be really faithful to the character.
I feel like this is going to end up a bit like the 2004 version of The Punisher, where I love the movie to pieces, but it ultimately gets forgotten by everyone else in the sea of slightly more mainstream-friendly comicbook flicks. There's a level of maturity, I think, to the storytelling of this one that a lot of people have a hard time appreciating. That sort of slower-paced, long-buildup style, where the movie isn't overly-eager to rush into the action, but once it gets there, it revels in it. It takes almost forty minutes for this one to hit a proper "action scene," but while I love that kind of pacing, I think it'll ultimately cause a lot of people to forget about it.
OL has received a thanks from: Henry Spencer