Seriously, this makes what, five? It’s not like the three X-Men films didn’t revolve around Wolverine, and it’s not like Wolverine didn’t already have his own movie in X-Men Origins: Wolverine* already, so I guess The Wolverine makes five films about Wolverine until 20th Century Fox decides that another Wolverine film is needed for another layup paycheck, and so they drop the “the” and just release Wolverine in like 2016.
*I think it’s hilarious that they prefaced this with “X-Men Origins:” as if it were implied that 20th Century Fox could make a series of origins films of any other X-Men characters whose origin stories could actually be encapsulated into 90-minute films. It’s almost as pathetic as the lucrative Street Fighter name and logo being attached to The Legend of Chun-Li, with slight implication that they could actually make movies about any other Street Fighter character.
Honestly, I don’t really understand the worldwide fascination with Wolverine. Sure, he’s an interesting character with a pretty complex backstory, which unfortunately dates back before just about every earthbound Marvel superhero, which means there’s always a ton of shit to be filled in, but would it really kill people to get off of Wolverine’s jock and actually branch out some? There are quite a few other characters in the Marvel Universe other than Wolverine that might actually have somewhat compelling storylines.
I know there are tons of people that are suddenly Iron Man fans and Captain America fans and experts based on the popularity of the films, but if I could get a little hipster here, let’s not pretend like they’ve had any measure of lasting popularity compared to Wolverine. When X-Men dominated the 90s, nobody cared about either of those guys. Nobody read their individual comics, and nobody read the Avengers during that time. It was all about the X-Men, and most notably Wolverine. Everything revolved around Wolverine. Xavier’s great enemy? Rips out Wolverine’s adamantium. Days of Future Past? Wolverine is pretty much the last survivor. Phalanx Covenant? Wolverine is one of four saviors of the X-universe with Scott and Jean not really counting because they were on their honeymoon. Shit, even to some more modern story arcs, like the whole Jubilee becoming a vampire; who did the LeStat-wannabe really want to get his hands on? Of course it’s Wolverine.
I’m getting sidetracked here, so back to the original point – does the world really need another Wolverine movie? I get that this particular one is going to deal with Wolverine’s tenure in Japan, so I imagine they’ll run with, or concepts of Mariko, the Silver Samurai and The Hand to some degree, but honestly, I don’t think it was a very strong arc in the comic books, so it’s going to be a stretch for me to imagine that it’ll be any good in film.
But I am looking forward to Asian-American-centric blogs and critics to rail on and QQ over the flim about how it’s essentially Wolverine kicking the shit out of a bunch of Asians.
The bottom line is that I’m feeling that it’s become pretty tiresome of filmmakers to keep dragging Wolverine out for easy paychecks and cheap pops, when there are so many other great comic book characters to really exercise some creativity with.
The world needs another Wolverine film like it needs another McDonalds. It’s just excessive and yet it will still make money in spite of those who know better substance exists everywhere else around them, if people were just willing to put in a little work and look.
