Stuck in a Moment: The Wolverine

“The Wolverine” (2013)
Starring Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamato, Rila Fukushima, Will Yun Lee
Directed by James Mangold
Written by Mark Bomback and Scott Frank
Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some sexuality and language

My journey back through the X-movies with my oldest continued with “The Wolverine,” which I did not think of going in as a candidate for #StuckInAMoment.

Then again, I didn't remember a lot about the movie, which I believe I only saw once, in the theater. I remembered it opened with Wolverine saving a Japanese military officer from an atomic bomb detonation in World War II and that same man inviting Logan to Japan, nearly 70 years later, to say goodbye. I remembered that's not what he really wanted. I remembered Yukio (Fukushima) was there, although not the version from “Deadpool 2” (quick scouting of the Internet suggests the character's history was altered by the time travel events of “Days of Future Past”). I remember elements of Silver Samurai scattered across multiple characters.

I forgot about Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), that Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) was in it as much as she was, that Wolverine temporarily lost his healing factor and that whole sequence on the bullet train. I wouldn't exactly say I forgot Mariko (Tao) was in it, but I forgot she was the military officer's granddaughter and that she and Wolverine were intimate. I know their history in the comics, and I know that even non-Hugh Jackman comic book Logan has that effect on a lot of women, including a vampire-hunting nun who got turned into a vampire,* but come on. You would have been old enough to be her grandfather before you met her grandfather!

As we watched, I wondered why I hadn't revisited it before. I think I gave it a 7 on IMDb, which is what I give a lot of movies, provided they don't have glaring flaws and do have a little something extra. I think Jackman as Wolverine belongs on the Mount Rushmore of comic book movie casting, and I've been a fan of Mangold since “3:10 to Yuma,” even if “Logan” didn't do it for me.

OK, some of the twists seemed a little unnecessarily twisty and some of the logic was hard to follow. But in general, I was enjoying it and so was my daughter, in part because the Japanese setting reminded her of “The Mimic,” a Roblox game at which I am terrible. But that's true of a lot of Roblox games.

Then we got to the climax. I'm not doing a full summary here, but big spoilers do follow.

I remembered the end of this movie being kind of messy. This time, as before, I wondered why the heck Viper and the grandfather, who I recalled was not actually dead, were so intent on taking a whack at Wolverine's claws. A couple lines in the movie made it sound like they, or Logan, or possibly the writers, thought the adamantium and the Weapon X project were somehow responsible for his healing factor, even though he's referred to as a mutant multiple times in the movie. This time, as last time, I was relieved to see they only wanted to cut off his claws with a red-hot adamantium sword wielded by a robotic Silver Samurai so they could get to the marrow in his bones to do the mad scientist draining of his healing factor to prolong the grandfather's life.

OK, that's good. Hey, I thought, maybe this is even the reason his healing factor is so wonky in “Logan.”

The presumed-dead grandfather is actually in the robot body, explaining to Wolverine how he's going to take the immortality Logan doesn't want and getting younger by the second. Hey, how did Logan get out of this anyway, I wondered.

And that's when the seemingly forgotten detail about Mariko being a village champion knife thrower or something comes back, as she scoops up his first set of cut-off claws and... hurls one right into her grandfather's skull.

OK, gruesome, but sort of poetic, I guess? And at that point, Logan breaks loose, so I presume he's going to lose the healing factor and die like he was supposed to. But, oh, Mariko goes ahead and jams one of the other claws in his neck?!?

I mean, it had been a rough few days for her, and her fiance and father were trying to kill her. And her grandfather said some mean things, sure, and was going to kill Logan, but he was already dying anyway.

Before I make the obvious joke about overkill, let's continue with the scene. Wolverine comes over and starts pulling off pieces of the armor and yanking out hoses, which, OK, maybe you need to make sure he can't use this killer 'bot body to hurt anybody else. Maybe you even need to deprive him of the ill-gotten healing factor. Not sure how the richest dude in Japan who faked his own death and was in tight with the minister of justice, Mariko's now ex-fiance, is going to pay for his crimes, so I guess you can't just leave him there.

But then Wolverine, who tried to leave Mariko's murderous father alive until dude ran him through with a sword, pops his newly regrown bone claws, jams both sets into Silver Grampurai's chest and drops him off the side of the mountain fortress with a cheesy action hero “Sayonara.”

A while back, I wrote about “The Purge,” which had violence aplenty but made sure the audience realized every death mattered. Spoilers for that movie coming up.

Lena Headey's Mary has more reason than most to take some lives at the end of that movie and chooses not to, even though she had thematic and personal motivation, plus a government-sanctioned murder pass.

Now, Wolverine stabbed a bunch of people in this movie, mostly bloodlessly to keep that PG-13 rating. And I'm sure few of them actually survived. But this was in self-defense, kill-or-be-killed (or-let-someone-else-be-killed) situations. I wasn't cheering on the deaths, but stabbing a dying dude and dropping him off a cliff just because he's a jerk, well, that's a bridge too far. And it leaves a cloud over a movie I was starting to like more than I thought I did.

* - Nightguard, check her out.**

** - But not like that. Dude, she's a nun.***

*** - Or she was. I'm not sure now. Just be respectful, OK?