Let me start out with a few things of note.
If I pick my guy action movie ratings from last summer, my list went like this:
Hulk
Hancock
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Let's not argue that list right now, but just accept it for the sake of some assumptions.
The second point of note is that I do not agree with the current Rotten Tomatoes evaluation that Wolverine is a 36% rating movie. If I were to slot it into the list above, it would go below The Dark Knight, but above Iron Man.
Let me start again with the things that the movie does not do well. This is another Marvel Kitchen Sink Movie (MKSM). I define these movies whenever Marvel has a film where they try to stuff as many cameos as feasible into a film. It is the characteristic experienced when there are characters in off-center positions in a camera shot that are clearly some well-known (or obscure) character from a Marvel comic. It is also materialized when these characters sometimes have one-line, or are maybe even bit parts that go undeveloped. These cameos usually serve no other purpose than to piss us off because we can not understand while they chose to make some of the chumps in the film main characters, but then only give nods to these others. If anything, they become distractions to the main storyline as we become more concerned with playing the incentivized game of "Where's Waldo" than paying attention to the actual story.
The movie itself is not overly explosively exciting. There are some twists and turns, but by and large, it does not really grip you with the action unfolding on-screen. No one's performance is particularly entrancing. The movie goes through its paces, but it never really goes for the gold with any particular character or sub-plot.
These are the things that the movie is not. There are a few things that it is...are...whatever...
Despite the fact that it is a MKSM, it is not so much so that it is ever really that aggravating. I guess you walk into the movie understanding that this is about a whole race of super-heroes, so maybe I expected the whole roster's worth of characters that were presented. Also, I guess I would say that although there are the obligatory off-center cameos (Banshee), the movie stays pretty tightly focused on the main heroes and villains. So in this vein the movie exceeds Spiderman 3, which had characters in its cast just to be wasted and underdeveloped.
Hugh Jackman is as likeable as I reckon anyone would be with playing Wolverine. The movie diddles with the Marvel core timeline (the way things were before Marvel and DC had to spawn multiple universes and what-not to keep readers interested...feh...), but not so much that it is offensive.
The movie is entertaining enough that it makes up for the travesty that was X-Men 3. OK, maybe nothing really "makes up" for that. But..if there were supposed to be three passable, acceptable movies in the X-Men franchise, we finally now have our third. It's not as good as X-Men or X2. But then, I have never found the character of Wolverine all that appealing anyway. His popularity amongst the rest of the geek elite has escaped me in much the same way that the popularity of Stargate SG-1 has.
At any rate, the movie is entertaining, and not atrocious. You could waste your time in more egregious ways. On my own meter, it gets a 3 out of 5 stars.
- Vr/Zeux..>>