Warning: This post shall contain spoilers all related to the X-Men movies leading down to it’s most recent release. And frankly speaking, I’m gonna need a Wolverine genome to heal myself off this; or maybe the Adamantium bullet through my brain to erase my memory of it.  

1] Wolverine: A solitary animal, a pint sized version of a “bear”, known for it’s strength and ferocity out of proportion of it’s body size.

2] Wolverine: The embodiment of the above definition, infused into a rapid healing, and agile mutant combined with an adamantium laden exoskeleton and at-will protruding claws, making him closest to being immortal.

3] Wolverine: The anti-hero, who blew my conscience away, every time he was portrayed in the cartoons. That bad-ass enigma controlled by his berserker rage, having a care-a-damn attitude – What’s not to like about him!?

4] Wolverine: The movie series, an off-rail from the possibly only surviving and most notable member of the X-Men franchise, that has done everything to portray him larger than ever, yet has failed at every step.

The above definitions are all note-worthy to the various stages I’ve come to know a character and be able to write about him. But as the 24 year old me writes about it, he is constantly being overshadowed by the 9 year old me, who is fighting with me, all clouded by his version and judgment of the very character and trying to stop me from my critical analysis. You see, the 9 year old me was first initiated to the Wolverine through the X-Men anime which would air on mornings on Star World. That followed by a few Comic book readings through the years and further spin-off solo Anime series. The 12 year old excitedly watched the first X-Men movie and like an amateur enjoyed his prowess through the remaining sequels over the years, including the much-hated “The Last Stand”. The 21 year old sat through the unfinished print of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine and was simply puzzled. The 23 year old saw the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon series, an Anime which is a very complex and underrated story-line which actually showcases Wolverine in the lead with assistance from Charles Xavier from the future. The 24 year old right now, is fresh off watching The Wolverine twice on back-to-back days just this week and once again, is majorly disappointed.

The whole reason for the above over-explanatory paragraph is to show my attraction and appeal for the anti-hero mutant corresponding to my age group. The first stage showcases my love for the character – with an absolute non-judgmental insight. The second stage showcases my love for the character, clouded by my excitement to see him portrayed into cinema, so much so that I admired him despite the lack of story development. The third stage showcases my search to see what was wrong in that love and why was I dignified to defend him. And the fourth stage brings in my current conclusion.

The current Wolverine movie might just be the last piece of the puzzle. I searched long and hard for a review that would truly try and explain my predicament. I haven’t read the Wolverine Tokyo story-arc and I’m familiar with it simply from an episode from Wolverine & the X-Men. My analysis doesn’t come from someone who felt betrayed at how the movie ruined the comic book story-arc, if anything I’ve read that the movie somehow stayed true to it’s source material. This is clearly a personal insight.

It is hard to create a proper Cinematic timeline – The kinds Marvel has successfully interwoven in it’s release of Avengers. X-Men was a series just like the Sam Raimi version of Spiderman, surviving on pure commercial success that it overlooked various continuity errors. X-Men writers brought the axe on their own feet by trying to extend their fanhood only limited to Wolverine, with the release of the Origin movie and then tried cleaning up their act with the fascinating First Class movie. So, in order to release The Wolverine and yet create a logically understandable timeline, it would make things very difficult. I mean, for starters, Why would Wolverine remember Yashida in the first place? Isn’t his memory of everything prior to his tryst with Stryker supposed to be wiped out? But then even if I were to ignore that point and progress through the movie, I couldn’t help but point out the instances I had to ask the question “Why”. You know there’s something wrong with the franchise when you overlook enjoying the “What” and end up distinguishing the “Hows” and “Whys”. Or maybe it was the fact that this was a weak, solely meant to be a “watched once and then forgotten” piece of artwork and that my decision to write this long piece was spurred on by giving it a second look on the very next day.

The fact about the Origin movie, was that it had an unnecessary villain, been made so over-the-top powerful that I couldn’t bear to look at it. Wolverine heating his claws with the antagonist’s laser vision and then beheading him!? Wow! But the worst thing about that movie was that it had an over-abundance of mutants that weren’t essential to the story-line. So you ended up having a mish-mash of individuals spending no more than 5 minutes of screen space, 3 of those using their powers in a needless battle. Some of those mutants were Blob, Cyclops, and Gambit. The friend with whom I watched the Wolverine movie first, couldn’t help but count the number of mutants actually used in the movie, as if it were a conscious attempt to splash Wolverine at us. Even the villain wasn’t a mutant and the mutant that actually WAS one of the villains didn’t even get slashed by Wolverine. Maybe I can bring myself to overlook that factor as well.

But then no matter the lengths I go to overlook, I cannot come to terms with the following points:
1] How can a man, not prepared to die and thankful to the limit of wanting to gift his savior a Katana or Japanese sword, utlilize his life to grow the largest Corporation of Asia, only to tarnish its credibility, its financial stability in an attempt to steal the immortality of his savior?

2] How can a bed-ridden person, fake his death and in his three-day “sabbatical” learn to fully operate a one-manned adamantium suit? [I guess he read through the Instruction Manual while lying on his private nursing bed]

3] What is it in the engineering that can enable a High-Tech suit to heaten the adamantium sword? And that robot had another sword “strategically” placed on it’s back to be snatched and then heated by Wolverine?

4] What is this fascination to show Wolverine with bone claws all the time?

5] Was the sole purpose of Viper only to increase the “hideous” quotient of the movie?

6] Except for the first movie, why is Wolverine not able to use his heightened sense of smell? It IS one of his main powers and sadly has been constantly neglected by everyone who attempted to write a movie script on him.

7] And the cherry on the icing, the only way to steal Wolverine’s immortality was to drill into both his “post-claw amputation” arms and into his bone marrow, like uploading a file through a USB device? [You know the movie is flawed when instances cannot be defined to the extent of writing “Post Claw Amputation”]

My conclusion to this, is that this movie gets nothing but a single point above it’s predecessor i.e. Wolverine Origin. It creates lesser mess in the X-Men timeline by not having more mutants in it to ruin the story-arc logic. What my main concern is, is that I hope Days of Future Past can be able to create more sense of the 5 movies that have been made prior to it. It somehow makes sense to me when people make comparisons of Wolverine with Hulk, saying that Hulk is better off with a team to truly rise to potential than carry a movie on his own. I mean, in all honesty everyone would enjoy Hulk taking down the Leviathon all by himself or thrashing “puny God” Loki than his fight against mutated dogs or even the Abomination. Similarly, I’d rather remember Wolverine among his X-Men in his fight against Sabretooth in the first movie, than everything else that he has been up against, and that makes me yearn for his role in Days of Future Past.

As long as it may be, it is just as agonizing for me to write on a character that is still absolutely endearing and beloved to me. As much as I yearn for the Wolverine to be portrayed in movies, I wish for it’s spin-off series to be avoided. Despite all the disappointment, I am very much excited about their next movie that takes off after two movies and is a conscious effort to link all remainder of movies and take the Marvel path which seems to be the righteous path as far as Super Hero movies are concerned.