When the last cinematic superhero-bubble burst it produced,
towards the end, some very weak results (The Phantom). There has been some
suggestion that history may be repeating itself with the relatively poor box
office performance of Pacific Rim and the fact that all the major heroes have
been rebooted several times (Superman, Spiderman, Hulk etc) This
latest offering is certainly not going to do anything to inspire confidence in
the future lifespan of such movies. There
have been spin offs from the X-Men trilogy before; the vastly superior X-Men
First Class and the faintly ridiculous X Men Origins Wolverine. Why anyone would want to attempt a repeat of
the Wolverine origins story is quite frankly beyond my imagination.
Part of it may be down to Hugh Jackman’s performance as the
eponymous character which has always
proven popular with audiences even if they haven’t been too wild about the
overall movie (I’m thinking X-Man 3 here).
The set up for this story is promising as the hero is made vulnerable
when his ability to heal is taken from him by shadowy forces. Now he has to
unravel the conspiracy whilst feeling pain like a normal man. The character is
taken out of his element and placed in different country – Japan - with its
vastly different culture and attitudes.
Nor is the film simply one action scene after another, a significant
portion of the film is given over to plot and characters.
It’s a shame then that with this promising start they chose
to do so little with them. After an
initial strong start the film quickly loses its sharp edges and begins to
splutter. One of the main problems is
that the characters tend to talk in extremely cliched tones and that caused me
to lose interest (count how many times the words ‘honour’ and ‘dishonour’ are
used). It’s also something of a problem that the
identity of the dark shadowy puppet master is likely to be figured out by any
discerning viewer about halfway through the movie (and that’s being generous). Some might defend the plot as it’s based on a
popular arc from the comics books. I
haven’t read these comic books but my guess is that this is a pretty poor
adaption and something must have been lost in the process. I can't imagine the comic book story being
this predictable but it does make for one funny moment when the characters all
make shocked faces at something the audience saw coming a mile off.
All of this is a great shame because, as previously
mentioned, the action scenes themselves are very impressive - one of the most
innovative scene in the film takes place on the roof of a Japanese bullet train. The Japanese setting lends itself to some very
visually arresting scenes and set pieces – possibly more could have been made
of these. Nor are the performances at fault, the cast
deliver their lines with conviction - even when having to deliver some pretty
stupid dialogue (we’re back to the honorable and dishonorable lines).
As I said before the set-up of the film had a lot of promise
and is definitely a huge improvement over X Men Origins Wolverine, however,
it’s my belief that it could have been so much better had more attention being
paid to the script.
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