Set after the event's of X-Men 3, Logan has gone back into hiding, constantly suffering from nightmares of Jean Grey due to feeling guilty about killing her. After a request to say goodbye to a man he saved from the Atomic Bomb that fell on Nagasaki during World War Two, Logan travels to Japan where he ends up being caught in a power vacuum. The man he saved from the bomb turns out to be the head of one of Japan's biggest tech companies, and in three days after his death, his granddaughter will take over. As a result, the father of the girl along with her fiance wants her dead and enlist the help of the Yakuza, while her grandfather finds a new home in the Silver Samurai armour, and intends to take Logan's regenerative powers for himself so that he may live forever. Logan, along with the help of a new mutant named Yukio must protect the granddaughter, along with Logan himself to try and restore the Yashida name.
If that sounds like a mess, it's because it is. It's hard to keep track of the story here, especially if you have subtitles off because a lot of the dialogue here is in Japanese. I was losing track of what was going on because of the constant jump between villains, so when the reveals of the father and grandfather being the two main villains happened, I wasn't shocked, just confused. It transitions from "The Yakuza are doing this for power" to "The dad is doing this cause he's jealous of his daughter getting the company", which at least makes sense and is set up well in the film, to "Viper's the villain and is doing this for... some reason...", to "haha, it was me, the dead man, all along! Allow me to cut off your claws and... drain your healing power through some holes I dig in your Adamantium claws, which will somehow give you your bone claws back, but there's enough Adamantium still in your body to let Magneto control you again"... more on that last part next year. It feels hasty and rushed, though that could be down to me not having subtitles on when I was reviewing it, which at least made me just as confused as Logan when things were going on. It feels sloppy, whereas at least Jimmy was cohesive, awful, but things were still set up well to feel satisfying.
The presentation is ok. I do like the fact that they stuck to a mostly Japanese cast, and the locations were really well handled. As fake as it looked, I did enjoy the Bullet Train fight, and many of the fight scenes were well choreographed. The CGI though still doesn't look that good, and the effects of Logan healing himself go all over the place depending on the wound, which is really distracting. That seems to be a running trend with these movies, a higher focus on the cast then on the effects, I can't say for certain because Jimmy was awful all around. I think the worst effect is the Steel Samurai armour, because of the timing of the movie's release. The Wolverine came out in 2013, and while I can happily believe that the Iron Man armours are actually there in the MCU movies (even though they're not), this stands out like a sore thumb, and I can tell it's not actually there. The only good thing about that fight? Was seeing Wolverine's cut claws being used as throwing knives.
I like The Wolverine more then I did Jimmy. Enough to see it again after this review? Probably not. It was mediocre at best, and though that is a step up from Jimmy, there are still other X-Men movies I would rather see compared to it. I would genuinely rather see The Last Stand, but that's because there are some genuinely cool moments in The Last Stand. Magneto lifting the Golden Gate Bridge is still impressive looking to this day, which makes me question what happened to the post-production side with these films. Up next, a movie that should have been MA 15+, but wasn't, and a movie that is, with Venom, followed by Logan.
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