The Wolverine

Well the verdict is in on The Wolverine, and I'm afraid the news isn't good. I really wanted for this to be a good movie. I mean, it's directed by the guy who did 3:10 to Yuma, the cinematographer did the freaking Matrix, and it's about everyone's favorite tormented claw-weilding X-Man. How can you go wrong? Well apparently there are a lot of ways, which I will now enumerate. Anyone interested in making a really lame movie, do the following:

1. Include a lot of really bad CGI, like a crappy looking grizzly bear and a poorly rendered bullet train.
2. Try not to develop your characters very much. That might cause your viewers to actually think and care about the film.
3. Be sure that the motivations of every character are completely unclear. It doesn't matter why people in movies do things, just as long as those things look exciting!
4. Make sure that your movie frequently references other films that weren't very popular or very good, and which were made seven years ago. Be sure these references are so central to the plot that if these people haven't seen the previous film they will be completely in the dark.
5. Completely disregard the existing mythos relating to your story, particularly regarding the properties of indestructible metals.
6. Don't look up the definition of indestructible prior to filming.
7. Make sure that at first your main character seems deeply conflicted about something, perhaps his violent past, but make it appear that he has gotten over it fifteen minutes into the film without explaining why.
8. Have a host of characters who abandon their loyalty to someone they've known their entire lives in order to ally themselves with someone they met yesterday.

So there you go, folks. How to make a terrible movie in eight easy steps! All joking aside, I was sorely disappointed by this film. The director and cinematographer have both done excellent work, but I feel like they just phoned this one in. The writing was the biggest problem, with plot holes and narrative shortcuts abounding. This isn't particularly surprising, since the film's writer has contributed to some fairly terrible films in the past (*cough* Total Recall remake *cough*). Even if the story had been better, though, I feel that the directorial choices were ill-advised, particularly as regards the special effects. The film had at least one interesting central theme (aging), but I felt that the most interesting theme (that of Wolverine's inner conflict over his violent nature) wasn't utilized effectively, and ultimately fell flat. I had hopes that this film would shed itself of the baggage of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: The Last Stand (the two worst X-Men films) and join the ranks of the greats. Instead I am assigning this film a different honorific, as the third worst film in the franchise. It's not awful, and it's fun enough to see one time, but in the end it's just the next installment in a long line of forgettable summer movies that are full of sound and fury, yet signify nothing.

The Wolverine
PG-13, 126 Minutes
Director: James Mangold
Writers: Mark Bomback and Scott Frank

Score: 5.5/10
Watch this movie if: You want lots of action, bad CGI, and a plotline that, like swiss cheese, is thin and full of holes. Also it's worth watching just to make sure you're caught up on the X-Men film franchise in preparation for the next movie.
Don't watch this movie if: You feel no particular attachment to the X-Men series, and therefore don't feel obligated to see them all regardless of quality.