True
story: the first comic book I ever bought with my own money was the
'Wolverine' trade paperback collection. I couldn't have been more
than 10 or 11 at the time. My father drove me across the river to a
store I had never heard of but had seen advertised on TV so, the
logic went, it must have been the best. I wanted the best for my
first solo excursion into the world of heroes and villains.
It
took me a long time to pick it out, to measure it carefully against
some other selections set aside as prospective finalists, (my father
looking distracted at this point, and drumming his fingers on his
pant leg), and to finally settle on that book, and that alone, for I
recall that lone volume took almost every dime I had. Even as we
drove away I worried about buyer's remorse, that perhaps in settling
for only one actual, physical comic I had somehow come away with a
bum deal. But there was just something about that glossy white cover
that sang to me: Wolverine, claws bared, in the middle of a furious
dogpile of masked ninjas armed with an inconceivable compliment of
edged weapons. One of the assassins was trying to strangle him from
behind with a length of chain and ol' Canuklehead was biting down
on the chain like a feral dog. I wondered if that scene was in the
book itself, and if Wolverine would actually bite through the chain.
I
didn't know – couldn't have known at the time – that chance had
pointed my dowsing rod straight at one of the greatest works of comic
literature available in the day. 'Wolverine' – written by Chris
Claremont, drawn by Frank Miller – remains on my shelf
twenty-something years later, only a little worse for wear. I still
pick it up and give it the occasional re-read. It holds up, to say
the least. It wouldn't be until years later, after reading the
1970's flashback book 'Classic X-men', that I would fully understand
just what 'Wolverine' did for the mutant with the adamantium claws:
it took the largely one-dimensional Logan, a narrative trail mix of
ex-Canadian secret agent, stock badass and cigar enthusiast, and made
him whole. Originally depicted as an unstable psychopath, the
Claremont-Miller experiment muddled Wolverine's manic blacks and
whites into nebulous grays, re-imagining him as a ronin
adrift in a world that wouldn't have him, conflicted, lovesick,
yearning for purpose. Some may argue for Barry Windsor Smith's
Weapon X, but I
maintain that it is the single best work on the character, and a
damned entertaining read, too. If ever there was a comic-to-film
adaptation that I'd want in the bottom of my soul to see done right,
it is this.
Which
brings us to The Wolverine, Marvel's latest entry in the world
of 'X' and the second movie to rest entirely on the shoulders of what
has become their flagship character. And don't try to counter that
with 'Spider-Man'...Spider-Man is one lousy offering away from
joining 'Highlander' in the 'Dear-God-Quit-While-You're-Ahead' bin.
What
is this movie? It's a question with which I'm still tussling. To
wit: it is most certainly NOT an adaptation of the Claremont-Miller
book, although it does borrow from it, both in selected macro
elements of the plot and in little details and homages seeded
throughout. It's a redemption tale, certainly, both for Logan and
for the rainmakers at Marvel looking to gloss over the odious 'X-Men:
Origins' flick, which flamed out for no other reason than it was a
story that didn't need to be told. And it is a balancing act between
the calloused comics readers who continue to ache for a celluloid
vision to match their fantasies and the everyday theatergoers who
haven't done the reading but whose comprehension – and wallets –
are crucial to the bottom line.
The
endgame of such a sullied mash-up is, I'm sorry to say, something of
a disappointment. Just writing that makes me feel like Radar
O'Reilly announcing Col. Blake's plane being shot down at the end of
M*A*S*H. It's tragic, but these days making pictures is war by
another name, and with comic-films serving as the vanguard of the box
office assault, casualties are inevitable.
The
Wolverine finds the Logan summoned to Japan by the elderly
industrialist Yashida, a man whose life he (very improbably) saved
during the bombing of Nagaski in '45. Yashida has since become the
patriarch of his clan and the richest man in all Asia. Now
terminally ill, he wants to have one last powwow with the man who
took an atomic blast wave to the back for him. Seems cheating the
Reaper all those years ago has made Yashida somewhat covetous of
life: he doesn't want to go and he thinks he knows how he can stay.
He proposes 'transferring' Logan's regenerative powers to him,
subsuming his vigor while allowing Mr. Clawhands (a lot of
Wolverine's nicknames are corny so I will
be referring to him occasionally as 'Mr. Clawhands' – fair warning)
a chance to live out the course of a normal life and die naturally.
When Logan refuses and the old man perishes forthwith he finds
himself embroiled in a Yakuza abduction plot and internecine intrigue
faster than you can say 'SNIKT!'.
Complications
arrive, as all complications do, in the form of a woman: Mariko
Yashida, willowy granddaughter of the recently departed, soon to
inherit her father's billions and sprawling technology empire. As
the target of the kidnappers she only has to fall into Wolverine's
arms three or four times before he becomes the only man in
all of Japan who can save her!
What follows is any number of take-'em-or-leave-'em bodyguarding
tropes, all of which swirl like so much narrative runoff toward the
same predictable drain: Logan and his charge fall head over heels in
love, which would have been more amusing if Hugh Jackman was really
5'3”. Betrayal and heroics follow, as well as no fewer than five
scenes of people waking suddenly from sleep with a startled gasp.
Though
I'm doing it now, I'd advise against playing a matching game with the
Claremont-Miller book while viewing the film because it becomes
distracting after a while. If you loved the comic as I did you'll
catch all the deviations (there are tons – as I said, it's not a
straight adaptation) but you'll lose focus wondering why
they changed so much from the original, elegant story that inspired
the movie. Some of the departures are done in deference to
the challenge – and volume of exposition – a more faithful
translation would require, while others are downright baffling.
Before
the film leaves the first reel it starts having fun with Wolverine's
abject cluelessness of Japanese culture, a major departure from his
character who was adroit in Eastern custom (and fluent in Japanese)
even back when Cyclops wore bellbottoms. The filmmakers took the
easy, overly-trod route here by making Logan a fish out of water and
providing another threescore excuses for him to furrow his brow at
something that isn't hep to his jive. Mariko, too, is a new species
here, a stranger, whereas it was the already-chequered past between
her and Wolverine that was the impetus for the original story. From
a scriptwriter's point-of-view these changes are understandable, even
if they make a loyalist like me taste something sour going in.
Those
aspects aside, however, I found myself asking 'Why?'
with alarming frequency, and more often than not I was inadequate to
the task of finding an answer. Why does a film that was built on the
strength of Logan's character ignore or subvert so many
stellar opportunities for growth
and introspection provided by the source material? Why would the
studio show enough confidence to greenlight an 'X' picture with no
leather armor and zero familiar faces but not
enough confidence to flex the more fleshed-out and pan-dimensional
aspects of their hero, the very things that transformed him from a
caricature into an icon? And why, oh why, does the third act have to
devolve into just so much schlock comic book claptrap, making it look
for all the world like every other spandex throwdown since the turn
of the millennium?
Let's
consider the man himself, the real-life man. Jackman seems
frustrated with this one, and I can't blame him. Here at last is a
chance to truly explore a character he's been playing since Clinton
was in office and to mine one of the undisputed best stories of that
character's existence, yet the script gives him shamefully little to
work with. As Logan he fumes, growls, broods and mumbles his way
through two monosyllabic hours, taking the verbal road less traveled
even when the situation begs for a more talkative yaw. Wolverine has
never been a chatterbox, but there is a fine line between the
strong-silent type and the guy by himself in the corner at the
neighborhood mixer. Put another way, there's stoic and then there's
just plain boring. I
was left wondering if maybe Hollywood's rank hatred of the inner
monologue as a device didn't bite them in the ass here: the
Claremont-Miller story maintains a running narrative as told by Logan
throughout; it functions not only as a window to his thoughts but
also as a keen tool for gleaning the more subtle and intelligent
aspects of his personality. But the monologue fell out of favor with
Raymond Chandler (and was famously railroaded by Ridley Scott in the
director's cut of Blade Runner)
and, though briefly revived for Sin City,
has not been employed again in any major studio pics that I can
immediately recall. Our loss, and Jackman's, because without that
window into his process we can only watch as Logan reacts to
everything, and those reactions are restricted to a niggardly palate
of stock snarls and pithy jibes. Dream sequences in which he speaks
to his true love Jean Grey are employed to shine a light on his
misgivings, but they are overused and feel cheap – once would have
been poignant, four times was excessive. It's tragic because in
every frame of this film you can feel Jackman's desire to exorcise
the script-imposed stick up his butt and really act.
Alas, the chance never comes and we're left with a talented actor
who seems more hamstrung than ever as his alter-ego blunders around
like the gaijin he
apparently is, validating instead of disproving the Japanese
prejudice toward him and coming across like the quintessential Ugly
Canadian.
Even
the truly marquee moments of the original story from which the script
plainly borrows have been cluelessly bastardized. Just one of
several examples: we're treated to an early scene straight from the
book in which Logan confronts a group of yahoo hunters who have shot
a grizzly bear with a poisoned arrow. The poison fails to kill the
bear, who instead goes mad with pain and begins killing at random.
In the book Logan kills the bear, but when he tracks the weekend
warriors to a bar to dispense some frontier justice he is
sucker-punched by the guilty party and left sprawled on a table with
a broken beer mug in his face. This prompts an implied off-screen
ass-whomping and one of the very best lines in the whole story: “The
bear lasted longer...but I let the man live.” In the film this
scene is interrupted by Yukio, Yashida's wily female agent, turning
what should have been a rough-'n-tumble pub brawl into a ludicrous
wire-fu wank straight out of John Woo. That sound you're hearing is
several million comics fans seething in unison.
Even
worse, the confrontation with the enraged bear was changed into a
tender moment in which Logan mercy-stabs an already prostrate and
paralyzed grizzly, an act of man-to-beast compassion that I guess is
supposed to illustrate Wolverine's magnanimous side. The problem
with this is that it utterly ignores the larger symbolic purpose of
the original scene: when Wolverine defeats the hulking creature he
does so in unbiased claw-to-claw combat and gives his foe a clean and
honorable death in the manner of a virtuous warrior. That early
scene is meant to both parallel and contrast the later themes of
honor, duty and sacrifice with which he will wrestle throughout. By
diluting that moment into mere ham-fisted deathbed scene, more sad
than ennobling, the filmmakers unwittingly altered the dynamic of
the story to come and implied that death is pitiful, honor is
subjective, and great things go out on a whimper. That no one who
made this film ever caught that is a bad sign and a bad start.
In
addition to the thematic whiffs, the geniuses at Marvel decided to
remove most of the realistic and believable elements of the story
that made the source material so visceral. Wonky sci-fi flim-flam is
tossed into the brew like so much eye of newt, obscuring what would
otherwise be a raw and grounded parable. The screenwriters long ago
wrote themselves into a corner by hitching their wagon to this
revisionist notion that Logan is not merely an efficient healer but
is ageless and virtually un-killable. For the record I have never
liked this, nor was I delighted when the idea that he is
centuries-old became comic book canon. The reason is plain: an
invincible protagonist is boring as shit. But Marvel made that bed
in the 'Origins' film, and in this flick the limitations it created
really come home to roost.
In
order to give Logan some checks and balances against his human
detractors an egregious amount of screen time is squandered on a
subplot where his healing factor is forcibly suppressed, making him
theoretically more vulnerable to the puny normals and their bullets.
I say 'theoretically' because even in his weakened state Mr.
Clawhands (see? There is it again!) is more than a match for an army
of thugs and killers, and it's never clear if he's completely lost
his powers or has simply been hobbled a bit. Moreover, this downturn
doesn't last anywhere near long enough for him to really contemplate
what the life of a mere mortal would be like. So really, what's the
point? Is the audience supposed to genuinely fear that the hero
won't triumph simply because he's temporarily exposed? In an age
when we are routinely subjected to Bruce Willis, Jason Statham,
Channing Tatum and fill-in-the-blank-who-else slaughtering hordes of
minions and laughing off grievous wounds are we to suddenly expect
that this time no less of a modern Achilles than Wolverine is
going to take a dive? In the original
story Logan has the utter crap beaten out of him numerous
times by regular folks who are good at killin' without ever having to
navigate these silly calisthenics from the pages of Plot Traps 101.
Speaking
of '101', that's about as far into the study of Japanese culture the
filmmakers ever went. It never descends into outright
stereotyping, but it comes damn close. The touchstones of honor,
family, duty; the inviolable respect for your elders; the
near-deification of patriarchs and reverence of the past are all
given lip service here, ticked off like items on a to-do list, as are
ninja, samurai, kimonos, chopsticks, bowing, hari-kari and
tea-drinking. I try to imagine what it would be like if the roles
were reversed and a Japanese studio made a movie that took place
entirely in America, filling the screen with references to cowboys,
Indians, tricorner hats, apple pie, tommy guns, Ford trucks, Bazooka
Joe, football, the Bush twins and crummy health care. Would we be
offended? Maybe not, but it sure would seem like they were trying
too hard.
Credit
where credit is due, however, to the almost all Japanese supporting
cast. As Mariko, newcomer Tao Okamoto very much resembles Jennifer Connelly and
in fact seems to inhabit the same plane of vibration – quiet
strength, understated grace, a clarion beauty that makes the world
seem like a better place than it actually is. She works well here,
plays the good granddaughter, and contrasts nicely with the more
thoroughly modern Yukio, who, as in the book, is the rebel and
consummate non-traditionalist, then an 80's chic with Annie Lennox
hair, now a dye-jobbed teen fantasy with knee high jackboots and
bangs. The sole exception is Svetlana Khodchenkova playing a slimy
villainess; as an actress she would be irredeemable even if her
dialogue hadn't obviously been re-dubbed in post-production (accent
problems, I'm guessing) but it's made even worse given that her sole
function seems to be to introduce yet another extraneous mutant
baddie whose powers conveniently fit the demands of the plot like an
Isotoner glove.
The
action is fair, fun, and completely sanitized for your protection. I
fear stunt coordinators are running out of ways to have Wolverine
fight in any way that seems original: even the most inventive moves
are starting to repeat themselves and it's clear when all the
fighting is on the man with the claws that more and more concessions
to camera-chopped fakery have to be made to accommodate the
stipulation of PG-13 bloodlessness. A movie like The Wolverine
really drives home how stupid and arbitrary that restriction really
is: there is copious death in this film – easily as much if
not more compared to the original book – and yet the film actually
dances out of the way of the most exemplary fight scene, when Logan
single-handedly trashes a cadre of assassins ala the book cover,
leaving us to wonder if the scene wasn't jettisoned because they
simply couldn't film the brawl in any way that wouldn't seem
laughable for the absence of any blood.
In
the end every harsh and naked catharsis our hero might experience is
deferred in favor of Same Ol' Crap, in this case a loonytunes
confrontation at some sort of post-modern Fortress of Asian Ick –
think a medieval Japanese castle by way of the Death Star – and the
final fight is a tumbleweed of bad physics and techno-dreck. Even
Jackman's fan-favorite “bub” line seems rushed.
Lord,
how I could go on. But this has exceeded the breadth of a standard
review and journeyed far into true analysis, and I've vowed not to
actually spoil the end, which is the source of the my greatest
rancor. Suffice to that no Hollywood scribe has yet devised a comics
climax that has satisfied my desire for a measured, rational
conclusion that didn't involve cheesy ultimatums and portents of mass
death. 'The Wolverine' wasn't ever going to win the marathon, but to
see it trip within sight of the finish line was truly heartrending.
The
worst of it is that we had a better chance than we're ever gonna get
to see a ballsy, character-driven standalone piece that put the man
above the mutant and focused on the timeless and intangible aspects
of his complex persona. We didn't get it. If nothing else I feel a
little sorry for Jackman, who will likely never again have such a
windfall though he play Logan for another twenty years. I do not,
however, feel sorry for Wolverine. He'll dust himself off and get
back in the fight. He always does.
He
is, after all, immortal.
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