Clash of claws

[ashwednesday]

A few people on my flist over on lj have complained about the CGI, but I thought it was fine, really. In terms of graphics, I really love the title sequence - it was a bit 300, I suppose, but I think it did a very good job of showing the movement from war to war. I would like an explanation though for how, after Logan and Victor are recruited by Stryker after failing to be killed in Vietnam, the storyline apparently moves to pretty near the present day?! The timeline seems quite messed up. It would be fine for Victor and Logan to do that, since they don't age, but it really didn't make sense for Stryker and the rest of the characters to not apparently age at all... Anyway. Putting that problem aside, the story continued entertainingly. I enjoyed Wade's impressive swordfighting.

Logan leaving to work as a lumberjack seemed to make sense to me - his character fits in quite well to that rugged outdoor environment, and there was some pretty cinematography at this point. Kayla, as a character, was perfectly fine, but there was that familiar irksome quality to her - she doesn't need to be anything but nice and sympathetic before she gets killed in order to provide Logan with a hook for vengeance. She could have been interchanged with really any other similar female character from a similar type of film and no one would have noticed. It would be nice in one of these films to one day have the relationship with the loved-one-who-is-doomed be a bit more unique. It wasn't a big fly in the ointment - I just thought it was sort of a shame. But then again, the X-Men movies have a bit of history of wasting a lot of the female characters, I think. (Storm, anyone? Could Halle Berry's role have been any more boring?!) And of turning them into victims who either need to be saved or put down by men. Sigh! (Having said that, I will admit I loved the Rogue/Wolverine dynamic - but now we're getting off topic...)

Logan's desire to get the adamantium at this point made sense, obviously, and I thought that scene was handled quite well - the horrifying pain was hinted at, but not too grotesquely for a 12A audience. The scenes with the old couple who helped him were sweet, and their deaths could be seen as consolidating Logan's desire to be a loner - if he gets close to people, they die. But of course later on he loses his memories, so that's kind of a moot point... In any case, though, we got to see Hugh Jackman running about naked, which is always worthwhile, and his decision to burn Agent Zero to death showed an important shift in his character.

It was quite nice to see Scott Summers' origins, and it was quite carefully managed that he and Wolverine wouldn't actually cross paths. It was good to have a cameo from Professor X as well at the end. The fight scene on top of the cooling tower was pretty cool, too. But now we come to another gripe - the whole bullet-causing-amnesia thing. Of course it needed to be adamantium now that his skull is coated in it, as a regular bullet wouldn't go through the bone. But do we REALLY believe that Logan never got shot in the head in all those wars he took part in, especially since the opening sequence showed how cavalier he was about running into the path of bullets? Puh-lease. If the brain can be repaired but memories not restored, why could he also remember other learned behaviour, like speaking?! If the last scene right at the end of the credits tells you anything, apparently you can lose all your memories but still know how to speak Vietnamese with barmaids...?! So that was all rather silly, though of course we knew the memory loss was happening since it's a major part of the X-Men mythos.

Overall, this was an enjoyable movie, and certainly was about ten times better than the disappointing The Last Stand! Plus, in the movie mythos anyway, Wolverine has always been my favourite character, so a whole film of his story (and away from some of the irritatingly po-faced do-gooding of which later characters at Xavier's school can be guilty!). I think if you like X-Men, you'll probably enjoy this, and if you haven't seen the other movies, this serves quite well as a prequel without needing prior knowledge.

Comments

[rhube]

I know what you mean about Kayla, and I'm usually the first to complain about interchangeable females, but I thought she had a *little* more character than most, and if she was seducing him (even if she happened to also fall in love with him) it would make sense that she'd maybe be a little bit sweeter with him than she would otherwise, rather than take risks.

As for the shooting in the head thing - I hadn't thougth of that, but then, when he does actually get shot in the head its at point blank range, and several times. Maybe he can take some damage and sustain memory, but the plan in this case was to really shoot him a lot? But yeah, plot convenient brain damage makes little sense, although 'how to' memory and 'event memory' are stored in different ways by the brain, which is why most amnesia vistims can remember how to speak and do a variety of things, even though they don't remember anything about their lives and who they are.

I liked the nakedness, and the pay off of how he responds to the old couple dying, but I wasn't convinced by how thoroughly sweet, nice, and understanding they were... although I loved the bit with the sink!