X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), The Wolverine (2013)

The previews for the upcoming third Wolverine standalone film Logan, looked pretty good, and surprisingly "indie" for a superhero movie. So in preparation for seeing that I decided to watch the other two Wolverine films. I did the same thing with the first two X-Men prequels in prep for watching Apocalypse this summer, and I was impressed by both those movies, Apocalypse less so. The Wolverine movies were a mixed bag.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the first of what I think was supposed to be a series of 'X-Men Origins' films, an idea that later got absorbed into the prequel trilogy. This movie was mostly rehash of preexisting lore, I did like that they fixed Wolverine's age somewhat, we find out that he was born (presumably in Canada) in the 1830's, and the montage at the beginning of Wolverine fighting in various historic wars was cool. On the whole though the movie was nothing special, there is a kind of long con perpetrated on Wolverine that I didn't really care for, also the chronology is really messy and hard to pin down, as is true of all of the Fox X-Men movies. This film also seemed more of a 'spiritual', if that's the right word, continuation of the original trilogy whereas The Wolverine feels more a part of the prequels, which is ironic because it is set in 'the present day' while the first movie is the prequel. 

The Wolverine I actually quite liked, because it didn't feel all that much like an X-Men movie, more like some other movie that they dropped Wolverine into, at least until towards the end but even that mostly worked for me. This was really an innovative and unexpected way to do a Wolverine film and I hope to see more superhero movies take a similar approach. The movie is largely about intrigue surrounding the pending death of a elderly patriarch to a large Japanese business empire, a man who had become obsessed with Wolverine and mutants more generally after Logan saved his life from the atomic bomb blast on Nagasaki (portrayed in a very well done sequence at the beginning of the film). I know that Hugh Jackman has announced his retirement from the role, but I would have been up for seeing a similarly handled series of Wolverine films from him, let's hope that Logan lives up to or even surpasses this entry.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) **
The Wolverine (2013) ***