ORIGINS OF WOLVERINE
FILM GOES BEYOND SUPERHERO FORMULA
Combining romance and machismo can be a risky prospect in a major motion picture. Lean too far to one side and you make everything look like a cologne commercial. Lean too far to the other and you end up with gay porn.
Yet, for James Mangold, the writerdirector who gave us the best Sylvester Stallone movie of all time in 1997’s Cop Land, fusing brute strength with tender feeling seems to be second nature.
Mangold clearly understands the larger chunks of the masculine identity and its foundation in physical strength and size. He also recognizes the emotional need for a caring, safe, nurturing partner who, like Mom, can kiss the boo-boos better.
These two forces are engaged in a constant tussle within the male mind, but most action movies suppress the emotional side in favour of visual physicality because that’s the hero formula we’re used to: A gleaming parade of flexed muscle, skin-tight latex and pin-up females offering 3-D cleavage.
Like any action movie worth its multi-million dollar budget, The Wolverine certainly provides all of the above, but thanks to Mangold’s direction and Christopher McQuarrie’s (The Usual Suspects) script, this latest take on the X-Men’s man of adamantium steel lands in the premium pile of summer shlock — providing you don’t mind a love story mingling with sweaty muscles.
Circling back through Wolverine’s past, this chapter begins in Nagasaki, back when our hero — played with vein-popping prowess by handsome Hugh Jackman — was a prisoner of war. It’s moments before the atomic bomb is dropped, and Logan (Jackman) sees the Japanese officers prepare for hara-kiri.
Yet, one officer can’t go through with the suicide.
He decides to let the prisoners go and run, but just as he’s about to be vaporized by the blast wave, Logan yanks him to safety.
Years later, that same officer beckons him to return to Japan to bid adieu and thank him one more time for saving his life, but Wolverine doesn’t like planes — and he certainly doesn’t like goodbyes.
In fact, poor Logan is haunted by the memory of his dead lover Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who died by Wolverine’s own claws after she went on a homicidal tear as the Phoenix in X-Men Last Stand.
Logan sees her ghost every night. He wants to be reunited with Jean in the afterlife, but as Wolverine, Logan cannot die. His gift for immediate physical regeneration makes a mortal ending impossible — or so he thought.
Thanks to his old Japanese buddy, who’s become the most powerful magnate in Japan, we soon learn Wolverine’s mutation can be passed on or removed entirely. If Logan wanted, he could die a mortal and find peace with Jean.
But surrendering to death isn’t part of Wolverine’s M.O. As a distant cousin to the storied honey badger, Wolverine is famous for doing his own thing regardless of the superhero code.
That’s why he’s living like a homeless psychotic when we catch up with him in the present day. And that’s why he refuses Yashida’s (Hal Yamanouchi) offer of a warrior’s noble death.
“You don’t want what I’ve got,” he says, clenching that taut jaw of his as he storms out of Yashida’s high-tech hospital room.
Yet, a breath later, he sees Mariko (Tao Okamoto), the stunning granddaughter of the cryptic billionaire and feels compelled to protect her from the looming threat of Yakuza corruption.
Suddenly, Logan isn’t the nihilist he used to be. He’s starting to care, and once love gets into your system, it’s like a piece of malevolent nanotechnology wrapped around your cardiac muscle.
In these comic book movies, all the symbolism is bold face but Mangold is clearly having a pretty good time finding the extra dimensions in the flattened genre landscape.
Moreover, Jackman has the acting chops — in addition to the mutton chops — to pull off the most difficult balancing act of all: He brings human depth to an immortal comic book hero by making sure every flex of his gigantic biceps comes with a head of emotional steam.
Most actors with pectorals this large have very limited body language skills. Hampered by their own muscle mass, their bodies stand mute in the frame, as verbal as a load of bricks. But Jackman moves like a ballet dancer as he manoeuvres his way through Mangold’s moody scenes.
It’s Jackman’s grace and talent that really sets The Wolverine apart, because he not only walks the tightrope between feeling and physical rage with ease, he turns a boyish and clumsy genre into a metaphysical dance without effort — or multi-syllabic words.