The Wolverine (2013)

The Wolverine (2013)

Release Date: July 24, 2013

The disastrous X-Men Origins Wolverine somehow didn’t put Fox off the idea of giving Wolverine his own solo adventure, but they did wait a few years before trying again. Fortunately, The Wolverine is a significant improvement on the previous film.

Plot Summary / Riffing

Spoiler Warning for those who haven’t seen the film yet. The twist here isn’t one everyone knows, so I mean it this time!

Enough time has passed since the controversial X-Men: The Last Stand that we’re finally getting a new X-Men film set following its events. Wolverine has left the X-Men out of guilt and is now living in a cave without a box of scraps when he is visited by a young woman named Yuriko. She explains that Wolverine saved the life of her grandfather Yashida by protecting him from the nuclear bomb at Nagasaki. He is now dying of old age and wants Wolverine to visit him in Japan. Wolverine goes since it’s nice to have a holiday at someone else’s expense once in a while, and he was trying to come up with a way of procrastinating from putting up that shelf in his cave anyway.

Yashida tells Wolverine that he has come up with a way to take Wolverine’s healing factor away and give it to Yashida because he wants to live, but Wolverine says no because he’s afraid of needles after that Weapon X business, and Yashida dies that night, which honestly raises questions as to whether he would have survived long enough to undertake the transfer process anyway. Before dying, he throws a hissy fit and decides that if he can’t have Wolverine’s healing factor, Wolverine can’t have it either, and Yashida’s doctor Viper puts a squid inside Wolverine that takes away his healing factor. This is Wolverine though, so he’s still a double hard bastard.

Yashida’s will states that his entire fortune goes to his other grand-daughter Mariko, which is a decision her father Shingen and fiancée Noburo are not okay with, so they put a Yakuza hit on her, but Wolverine and Mariko are able to escape thanks to Japanese Hawkeye being a team-killing fucktard. Viper punishes Japanese Hawkeye for his incompetence by using Reptile’s acid spit fatality on him, though he survives. The Yakuza eventually capture Mariko, prompting Wolverine to do his best impression of Liam Neeson in Taken, throwing Noburo off a balcony (he was lucky enough to land in a swimming pool that appeared beneath him to keep the film at a 12A) and awarding Shingen the title of Worst Dad Ever, with his prize being getting stabbed in the throat. Wolverine also finds the time to get the squid out and get his healing factor back, which means that the battle to see who’s more OP between him and Alice from the Resident Evil movies is back on.

While Wolverine was busy with that, Mariko suffers kidnapception when Japanese Hawkeye kidnaps her under orders from Viper, to be used as bait for Wolverine. Wolverine takes the bait and is turned into a pincushion for his troubles, which is strange since the arrows have ropes attached and he doesn’t try to cut the ropes. When Wolverine comes to, Viper has him strapped to an operating table and plans to have the Silver Samurai, a giant samurai robot made of adamantium that looks like Shredder, cut Wolverine’s claws off. Mariko is able to get Wolverine free and Japanese Hawkeye switches sides, only to die almost immediately afterwards. Meanwhile, Viper sheds her skin, and Yuriko is unimpressed by such a lame evil transformation, so she chokes Viper, then cuts a rope to hang her and she bangs her head on the elevator going in the opposite direction, because there’s no kill like overkill. Wolverine cuts Shredderbot’s head off, only to find that it’s a mech suit operated by Yashida, who isn’t dead after all (The guy who died was a struggling British actor named Trevor Slattery.) Yashida cuts Wolverine’s claws off and absorbing the adamantium from his body, but Mariko interrupts the process, allowing Wolverine to grow new bone claws and throw Yashida off a cliff to his seeming death. Even if he did survive, he’s not getting back up that cliff in that big Steel Samurai suit. He’s no Heihachi Mishima after all.

This film is quite a departure tonally from the previous X-Men films, which the film commits to admirably. Unlike X-Men Origins Wolverine, which felt like an X-Men film that had Wolverine alone in it because of reasons, this one does do something new and different for the series. This feeling is aided by the new Japanese setting and cast of characters, and the only returning characters, besides post-credits cameos, being Wolverine and the ghost of Jean Grey. The shift towards “When suddenly ninjas!” is handled much better here than in Elektra, as despite the changes, the film still feels like it belongs in the same universe as the previous X-Men films. The smaller, more intimate scale allows the film to better explore Wolverine as a character than the last spin-off did, which limited most of the character development to the opening credits. There’s a world-weariness to the character that was merely hinted at occasionally before, but is brought to the forefront here. Taking away Wolverine’s healing factor for most of the film is a great idea too, as it aids the exploration of Wolverine’s mortality. It’s easier to care about Wolverine’s character development when he isn’t an indestructible juggernaut who could probably survive being shot into the sun, like in The Last Stand or X-Men Origins Wolverine, and the idea that for all his death seeking tendencies, Wolverine starts having second thoughts when confronted with the possibility of death is rather ironic. The nerf also works on a practical level, since most of the antagonists in this film aren’t mutants.

The darker feel of the film helps the plot and character development, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have as much success with the action scenes. Because they’re more brutal and less fantastical, due to Wolverine hacking up people with swords and guns, the editing is from the we wanted a 12A school of spastic editing and camera angles that make it difficult to see what’s going on and leaves a lot of it out of shot for the sake of getting a lower rating. Also, Wolverine is the only character capable of bleeding. This is rather annoying since the franchise hasn’t done this before, and hopefully it won’t become a trend. At its heart, the film can’t get away from its status as a superhero movie. Many of the action scenes are fine despite this, with the train scene being the standout, but the climax is more like a scene from Iron Man, and is at odds with the tone the rest of the film had had up to that point.

I dare you to watch the bit on the train when Wolverine does his Superman impression without saying “Hugh Jackman away!”

The biggest issue with the film is one that hurts the film in retrospect. The Wolverine was followed a year later by X-Men: Days of Future Past, which rebooted the film series so that only X-Men: First Class remained canon. The knowledge that this film is ultimately pointless hangs over it now, more so than the first three, because they were around for a while. The Wolverine was irrelevant within a year of its release. The filmmakers had to have done some work on Days of Future Past and known what would happen while The Wolverine was in production, which makes it even more of a shaggy dog story. Surely they would have been better off holding back this film for a year or two and releasing it after Days of Future Past, so that they could avoid making the whole thing a pointless endeavour, and in particular having this film’s new developments of Wolverine’s bone claws, getting over killing Jean Grey and Yukio tagging along with Wolverine amount to nothing?

While the timing of the film’s release is unfortunate for that reason, I can’t hold it against the film too much because it isn’t to blame for something out of its control. What I can say however is that The Wolverine proves that Wolverine can carry his own film without the result being a disaster.

Bonus: If you want fun times, synch up the train scene in this film with the audio of the train scene from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers. Hilarity ensues!

Next Time: This film, it is good. Another!

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Release Date: May 3, 2013

The success of The Avengers put Marvel in a prime position for Phase 2, which kicks off with the return of Tony Stark. Iron Man 3 makes the decision to go darker and edgier, with a more personal story arc, an interesting decision after the escapist fun of The Avengers.

Quick note before I progress to the plot summary / riffing. We’re coming up to the most recent films now, with these ones being less than two years old, so from now on, I’ll put a little spoiler warning, just in case readers haven’t seen these films yet, but intend to. Granted, it may not be necessary with this film, since the big twist has joined the ranks of “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father” and “Bruce Willis is a ghost” among plot twists that everyone knows, but it’s good to get into the habit anyway. Veteran readers likely know how I do this by now, but the warning is there for the sake of any new readers who may start reading here.

Seriously Bender, that was uncalled for.

We last saw Tony Stark at the end of The Avengers where he flew into space with a nuke and set the Chitauri mothership up the bomb before going to get some shawarma. As it turns out, this has resulted in Tony developing PTSD and having nightmares and panic attacks, which have prompted him to build a whole load of new Iron Man suits to keep himself occupied, since not even Pepper moving in is enough to keep him sane. Happy Hogan, now working as Head of Security of Stark Industries, is suspicious of AIM leader Aldrich Killian, who suggests working with Stark Industries and puts the moves on Pepper, so he follows Killian’s bodyguard and is caught in a suicide bombing caused by the Mandarin, leader of the League of Shad- oh wait, wrong movie. Tony is hit hard by this, and has the bright idea of challenging the Mandarin to 1v1 him if he thinks he’s hard enough, giving Mandarin his address while he’s at it. This goes about as well as you’d expect, as Mandarin doesn’t play fair and sends helicopters to blow Tony’s mansion into the sea.

Tony is able to survive the attack on his mansion thanks to Jarvis sending him to Tennessee. There, Tony gets a young boy to be his sidekick and investigates the suicide bombings, discovering that they are caused by Extremis, a drug given to veterans who’ve lost limbs to regenerate them, in addition to gaining super strength and speed, and fire powers. The catch is that Extremis doesn’t always get along with the user, and if the body rejects it, they go boom. Extremis was created by an ex-girlfriend of Tony’s, who only intended the regeneration part, not the exploding or fire parts. Aldrich Killian worked with her, but didn’t iron out the exploding glitch, since he’s in the market for suicide bombers. Killian captures Tony and Pepper separately, gives Pepper Extremis, then kills the ex when she’s about to switch sides. Killian then explains he turned to the dark side after Tony snubbed him at a new year’s party.

I don't know about you, but this sounds familiar.

After escaping captivity, Tony teams up with Rhodey, who had been hunting for Mandarin himself on behalf of the government using his snazzy new Iron Patriot suit, but got captured and taken to the same place, with his suit being stolen by Killian’s lead henchman and used to kidnap the President. They find that Mandarin is there too, but he’s just a puppet whose strings are being pulled by Killian. Mandarin is revealed to be a struggling British actor named Trevor Slattery, acting the role of a terrorist leader to scare the citizens of the USA.

Tony and Rhodey find out where Pepper and the President are, but they’re heavily guarded by Killian and a small army of Extremis enhanced soldiers. Tony initiates the House Party Protocol and sics all his suits on the bad guys at once, while Rhodey proves himself to be a bad enough dude to rescue the president. Tony fails to rescue Pepper and she seemingly falls to her death, which drives him over the edge, sealing Killian in a suit and ordering Jarvis to self-destruct it. Killian survives because he’s actually a Terminator, but Pepper also survived because of the Extremis, and uses her newly gained superpowers to do her best Sarah Connor impression and destroy the K-800. Tony then detonates all of his suits since he didn’t have any fireworks on hand, and they all lived happily ever after. Even Mandarin gets a happy ending, since although he is sent to prison, his acting talent finally gets him recognised on the world stage by adoring fans. It’s amazing how quickly acts of terrorism are forgiven when you’re the toast of Croydon.

Before we go any further, the first thing that must be addressed is Mandarin. His film portrayal is very different from the comics, and has proven to be a source of controversy. In the comics, Mandarin is a real terrorist leader, as opposed to a fake like in the film. This change to the character is a big risk, but I think it works. A comic faithful portrayal wouldn’t have been accepted since comic Mandarin is a yellow peril, Fu Manchu type, so they would have needed to do something different anyway. In that case, well done to Marvel for going crazy with it, and for keeping the twist a secret until the film came out. The fact that nobody saw it coming, and it’s not the sort of thing anyone could guess, made it all the more hilarious when it finally hit. Trevor Slattery being the funniest character in the film when he’s out of character certainly helps.

 I liked movie Mandarin. #DealWithIt

 

As I mentioned earlier, this film has a darker tone to it than the first two Iron Man films. This is because the stakes are more personal this time, and Tony Stark is really made to suffer. This time around, he loses almost everything: his friends, his suits, and his mental health. The mansion attack in particular is terrifying, especially when Tony gets dragged underwater with a cable around his neck. Considering how cocky and relaxed Tony Stark normally is, seeing him of all people have panic attacks is actually surprisingly upsetting. Credit to Robert Downey Jr for making the attacks so convincing. It’s a relief that he gets two of the things listed above back at the end. The tone is comparable to The Dark Knight Rises, in terms of the emotional journey the protagonist goes through, before retiring from their destiny and starting a new life at the end. Feel free to make jokes about The Iron Man Rises or The Stark Knight Rises.

In this comparison, Mandarin is Bane because they both have silly accents and everything they say is quotable.

While the darker tone works for the character development, I’m not sure if it was as successful elsewhere. While this film does want to be something more than the previous popcorn entertainment, and that is to be applauded, I think maybe having the villains be suicide bombers was too big a step to take at once. We see that sort of thing constantly in the news, and I’m not sure Marvel is quite ready to tackle a topic that heavy just yet. These scenes, combined with Mandarin hijacking the airwaves to announce his next target, hit a little too close to home, given the climate of fear the world is currently in, and the fact that these things can and do happen, besides the fire powers of course. The first Iron Man film also had terrorists as the antagonists, but there was a lightness of touch there that helped detach it from reality just enough to avoid being disturbing, yet still pose a threat.

Though Tony Stark will continue to play a major part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man 3 seems to be the end of his solo adventures, at least for now. Though it doesn’t beat the original, it does at least improve on Iron Man 2, since it tells its own story, as opposed to setting up the rest of the Avengers.

Stan Lee spotter: Stan Lee appears as a judge at a beauty pageant. Dirty old man, he is, judging the looks of a woman young enough to be his grand-daughter!

Next Time: Konichiwa, Hugh Jackman-san!

Bonus: We may not have seen the last of the Mandarin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The short film All Hail the King reveals that there is a real Mandarin, and he is pissed at Trevor Slattery for impersonating him. Iron Man 4 for Phase 4, anyone?