Movies in Review: "The Wolverine"

There isn't a chance in the world that I will ever pass on seeing an X-Men movie, and especially one focused around Wolverine, my favorite X-Men character. But can someone explain to me where "The" came from in Wolverine? Seriously? There wasn't a better title that could have been given for the movie? Feels all types of weird to call Hugh Jackman's character "The" Wolverine especially when there could be no other. Ok ok...enough of me complaining about the extra 3-letter word placed in front of Wolverine's name...lol...onto the review...

This film begins interesting enough, but I think It may have been too long since the last X-men movie because it took me a while to understand why Jean Grey seemed to play such an important part with Wolverine. I loved Jean Grey and was crushed when she was killed off in The Last Stand, but as important as she seemed for this film, I found her to be annoying. Her scenes tended to slow the movie down for me. Although I get her relevance for the story of the movie, I still think she was in far too many scenes...ijs.

I want to be honest here, this had to be my least favorite X-Men movie. I was actually kind of bored. Hugh Jackman put on a great performance as always as Wolverine, but everything going on around him killed my experience. The theatrical trailer had me expecting more than I felt I received. For example the character Yukio is supposed to be one of the deadliest assassins in Shingen's clan, but a majority of her fight sequences looked like choreographed performances instead of natural movements. And was I the only one who had a hard time understanding what the hell she was saying in her opening scene...smh.

She wasn't the only character who brought the movie down for me. I also wanted more from the character Viper. Her mutant abilities were boring to watch, for me anyway. She was one of the least interesting mutants I have seen come out of this series. The character Mariko also failed to pull my interest in. She was a decent fighter, but also too much "damsel in distress". You know what, now that I think about it. I think that the major problem with everything was the writing and direction. I wasn't a fan of this story as it progressed. The story didn't excite me like the other movies, and had me anticipating the end.

But the movie wasn't a total fail. Hugh Jackman is still great to watch, and there are plenty of action sequences to provide entertainment, my favorite scene being the train sequence. I thought that the storyline and characters were some of the weakest in this movie, but the entertainment factor is still there...for the most part...B