The Wolverine (review, plus bitching about how Hollywood portrays 'poor' people)

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 1.5 of 5 stars Average: 2.5 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: The Wolverine is an action/adventure comic book adaptation starring Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada and Atsuki Takeuchi. Like last week’s Only God Forgives, the latest X-Men movie is about a white douchebag in Asia.

What did you think of The Wolverine, Nick?

Nick: Ugh... the guy with the bow and arrow was sweet!

What did you like about The Wolverine?

Dustin: I mostly enjoyed it. I liked that The Wolverine’s immortality was taken away and he could no longer heal himself instantly. This gave the character limitations he didn't have before and added stakes to the story. I thought the movie blended The Wolverine’s brooding, dark countenance with the colorful and fun story effectively. I especially enjoyed the fight with yakuza above a speeding bullet train. However, I didn’t think it was as dramatically effective as recent superhero movies like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man or The Dark Knight. I also thought they could have done more with the Japanese setting. As it is, it was more of a fantasy world of what white people think Japan is like, rather than the real thing.

(For more fictional yakuza antics, check out my series, Yakuza Dynasty, available from Amazon Kindle.)

Nick: Completely agree with your last assessment. If one more Asian talked about, “When I was a little child, this happened to me...,” I was going to get up and leave the theater. They also did the cliche of having the foreign person speak quickly in their own language in anger then explain what they said to the main character who only speaks English. To go back to you liking the fact they took Logan’s healing powers away, then why didn't it seem to hurt him when he takes out his claws, which hurt him in previous films when he did have healing powers? Also the love story is sadly developed. They spend a day together and then are willing to die for each other? This film was made for people who already knew the story and could connect the dots on why these things are happening. To end the rant, I would like to point out how lame the villains turned out to be--Viper and a scene of Silver Samurai.

Dustin: Also, The Wolverine is supposed to be immortal, but he inexplicably looks 13 years older than he did in the first X-Man film. Talk about a plot hole!

What did you think of the casting? I didn’t much care for Rila Fukushima. I couldn’t understand her English at times (and I’m used to hearing Japanese Engrish), and I thought she looked like an alien wearing a wig.

Nick: The only casting that can be well regarded is Will Yun Lee as Harada (Bow-and-Arrow guy, Die Another Day) although his character ends up being a throwaway role. Fukushima's English problems didn't affect me considering how I probably wouldn't understand her in real life. Therefore, I kind of enjoyed that aspect of her, but at the same time her acting, as well with Svetlana Khodchenkova (as Viper) and Tao Okamoto (Mariko), who’s just a model, is just not very selling.

Dustin: I thought Atsuki Takeuchi as Girl In Background At Ueno Station #14 was perfect. (FULL DISCLOSER: At-chan is my sister-in-law).

Haruhiko Yamanouchi did a great job as Yashida. They did a good job making him look younger for the Nagasaki sequence and older for the rest of the film. It never looked cheesy like other attempts to make actors look younger, such as Snape in his flashback in the last Harry Potter movie.

Nick: Yamanouchi's character was one of the most entertaining parts, but he spends most of his time off screen, so he is not enjoyed for long.

Dustin: I was going to talk about the cultural inaccuracies in the movie, but what’s the point? Although there were a few, particularly regarding the ninjas, they weren't too offensive or insulting to the audience’s intelligence like the ABC Family mini-series Samurai Girl, so I’ll hold my peace. But if you do want to see an accurate portrayal of Japanese culture through the eyes of American characters (although ridiculously wealthy American characters), see Lost In Translation.

Nick: Was Scar Jo rich in that movie? She seemed a little “poor” to me, and by that I mean she is supposed to be poor but her apartment rocks and she looks incredibly good, but as in her character doesn't have money.

Dustin: The hotel room she stays in at the Park Hyatt Tokyo for several weeks in that movie probably costs $1000 a night, judging by the size of the room.

Note: $1 U.S. = 98 Japanese yen

Nick: That’s what I’m saying... Do they actually say who she is and how much money she makes? Her boyfriend was a photographer without any high profile gigs. Bill Murray is rich and famous, especially in Tokyo. I was watching Road Trip last night, and they have this incredible dorm room, but they're all broke and could never afford such a dorm with that square inchage. So they are "movie poor."

Dustin: Hollywood is terrible about that. The “poor” characters in movies usually live in two-storey homes, but drive slightly older-model cars with a dent on one side. One thing I loved about the movie Mud earlier this year is that it has characters who live shanties on the Mississippi River or utilitarian apartments. You believed these characters and where they came from.

Nick: Mud comes out on DVD on my birthday... Just a gift suggestion.

Dustin: I’m getting you a $5 gift card to McDonald’s.

Nick: NOOOOOO!!!

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

Nick: I might be biased against The Wolverine because the story the film is based off of is one of my favorite comic book stories. It feels trivialized. He loses his powers, but yet seems just as capable without them, so it feels phony. The screenwriters can just write that he loses his powers, but have him slit open his chest and reach in and grab his heart, as well as a whole bunch of events that would kill someone without healing powers.

Pacific Rim

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Pacific Rim pits giant alien monsters known as Kaiju (Japanese, lit. “Giant Monster of the Godzilla-Class or Larger”) against giant earth robots, known as Jaeger, driven by two pilots, or Jaeger masters (Jaegermeisters?).

What did you think of Pacific Rim, Nick?

Nick: Disappointed pretty much sums it up. The only thing that will stay in my mind a week after seeing this film was how much Idris Elba stood out as Stacker Pentecost.

Dustin: I have to disagree. I was impressed with the visuals, found a lot of fun elements, and enjoyed the character development. I liked that this was an original film, rather than a sequel or reboot of an established franchise.

Nick: Character development? The characters had sap-filled cliché sayings and just fought whenever in disagreement. What development was there? Who changed from when we first met them in the film?

Dustin: There were the two scientists with irreconcilable differences who finally managed to work together. The Australian son, who was an arrogant prick at the beginning, finally learned humility, but without doing a complete 180, which would have been unbelievable for his character.

I also liked the development of the relationship between Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako (Rinko Kikuchi). It never turns into a romantic relationship, even though it looks like there may be a mutual attraction because Mako-chan stares at Raleigh when he has his shirt off, and he speaks Japanese, implying an Asian fetish. But we really only see them hug and almost touch hands in a distant shot. I liked that this film didn't have a love story in a cynical attempt to appeal to female audience members.

My favorite element was the Kaiju (which, coincidentally, is also the nickname of the yakuza boss, Kaizu Akira, in my upcoming novella, Antisocial Forces [Yakuza Dynasty, Part 4], available later this month from the Amazon Kindle store for the amazingly low price of $1.99... OK, I’m done plugging my shit). I thought the CGI was well done, and the scenes of them trampling through cities Godzilla-style were exciting. I would have liked even more of them, and more shots of them from a distance to give an appreciation of their scale.

Nick: The CGI was especially spectacular when robots or aliens were being thrown through the cities. Only complaint there is I would have enjoyed at least one fight scene that took place during daytime. The only day shots we got were short segments of the initial attacks, and that was when the CGI looked the best. When it was dark it was difficult to tell what was going on, and I wasn't sure what I was seeing half of the time. The editing during the action wasn't as bad as most of the summer blockbusters this year as I could at least somewhat tell what was happening.

Dustin: I would have liked more day fights too, not just for variety of shots, but, like you said, it can be hard to make out action in dark scenes. Especially when half of movie theaters these days are too lazy or incompetent to switch out the projector lenses from 3-D movies when they play 2-D movies, so the movie already looks about 50 percent darker.

Nick: I assume that the reasoning behind the night scenes is that it’s probably cheaper to CGI huge fight scenes with dark lighting rather than bright lighting.

Dustin: I wouldn't know. But how expensive can it be to have two actors in rubber suits staging a fight?

Nick: One thing that worked for me was the visuals when the pilots neural linked and we were given glimpses of their lives cut together with those of whomever they were neural linked with. The artistic direction there was wonderful with blacks and whites and shades of blue. Looked perty!

Dustin: I really liked the concept of the neural linking. When they said two minds would be controlling one Transformer, I was worried it would be too much like this stupid scene from NCIS:

Nick: I just watched that clip and I’m thankful I've never seen that show.

I try to notice everything, so one of the biggest disappointments to me was the character and the costume design. Charlie Day’s character had an expensive jacket, pants, glasses and shoes, yet his collared shirt and tie were pieces of shit. There were many more examples I have in the back of my mind, but one character which stood out to me and didn't get as much screen time as the he deserved was Hannibal (Ron Perlman). So much more could have been done with his character. Hannibal is a black market dealer of all things Kaiju.

Dustin: I also thought he wasn't given enough to do. I liked the idea of the Kaiju black market, much like the Kaizu black market in my third novella, The Black Market (Yakuza Dynasty, Part 3), which I’m practically giving away for $1.99 on the Amazon Kindle store. (OK, NOW I’m done.)

Nick: You whore!

Pacific Rim felt more like a sequel than I think a first installment should. Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite directors, and he, with Peter Jackson, is one of the best at building worlds you wholly believe in. But I was left feeling like I was on the outside never getting a chance to really feel fear for this world he has concocted.

FUN FACT: Guillermo del Toro is Spanish for “Guillermo from the Bull.”

Nick: Anything else I want to say might be considered spoilers. When you have nifty looking Asians and Russians putting themselves into dangerous situations, but are never given names and/or things to do, chances are they will probably die. So chances are you won’t and shouldn't give a fuck.

Dustin: While I liked this movie overall, there were a couple things I didn't really like. One was the references to Independence Day, which sort of broke the fourth wall for me. Day’s character’s explanation of the aliens’ motive was almost word-for-word the same as the explanation given in Independence Day, which felt more like lazy writing than homage. And Idris Elba’s inspirational speech also felt too much like the president’s speech at the end of Independence Day.

The one other thing I didn't like was the casting of Hunnam. He isn't exactly the highest caliber actor, and he has such a generic, forgettably good-looking face that I actually forgot who he was supposed to be... several times. When we meet him again after the opening sequence, it took me awhile to realize he was the former Jaeger pilot, and there were a couple other times when I was like, “Is this a new character? Oh, it’s THAT guy.”

Nick: That would have more to do with the poor evolution of the plot than it would be poor Hunnam’s fault. The film should have set up its characters better before thrusting them into battle so you'd know who he was, and then you would know right away IT’S THAT GUY! Hunnam isn't given much to do on an emotional level in Pacific Rim, but in the film Green Street Hooligans he delivers an amazing performance.

Dustin: Would you recommend Pacific Rim?

Nick: To be honest it’s hard to make a recommendation considering I have never seen a film like Pacific Rim. In saying that, since I have never seen a film like it, I think it should be seen. This film will be most enjoyable to people who like the mecha anime genre, which is the only kind of anime I don’t enjoy. But as my friend pointed out, once he turned off his brain, he sure liked it a lot more.

Dustin: The others in the theater I saw it in definitely had their brains shut off, which I think was their default mode. As I was leaving the movie, I heard a jock-type behind me saying, “Dude, imagine if that really happened.”

Nick: Did you turn around and try to convince them that mechas were used in the War of 1812, but the government hid that fact? Of course, you would address them in a formal manner with “Bra”?

Dustin: No. I explained the movie was obviously an allegorical tale about the Pacific Theater in World War II, in which the Kaiju represented Japan (hence the Japanese name) and the Jaeger represented the atomic bomb as the consequences of taking down a Kaiju meant destroying a section of a city and causing an unacceptable number of civilian casualties.

Nick: What, Bra?

Dustin: I hope the Kaiju do wipe out humanity after all.