Well, I had a chance to see Mr. Hugh Jackman in The Wolverine the other day, and I wish that I didn’t. This is the sixth time he has played this movie role that established him as an actor, and it is the worst Wolverine film since…the last Wolverine film. I am referring to X-men Origins (Colon) Wolverine.

It is a real shame, as this film started off so well with Logan (Wolverine’s one-word real name) was in World War II Nagasaki, just before the bomb was dropped. The scene is good on many levels, as Logan save a sword-wielding soldier from being incinerated. Personally, it is pretty dumb to see this soldier saving people with a sword, cutting through chains like string with a blade.

Unfortunately, the whole Nagasaki sequence was a flashback/dream sequence, as Wolverine wakes up in a bed with Jean Grey. For those who are virgins when it comes to anything X-men, Jean Grey is one of the X-men who Wolverine fell in love with, but it was unrequited. Then Jean Grey became Phoenix, this crazy lady who Logan had to stab with his own blades to stop. Jean Grey constantly shows up in the film as this internal ghost thing, and at the beginning of the film, Wolvie stabs Jean again.

Oh wait, that whole waking up with Jean was another dream sequence. This film has more dream-within-a-dream sequences than Inception. I can’t stand that in films, and I have been seeing that a lot. What is the point of that? That the character can’t keep track of reality?

Anyway, Logan wakes up in the wilderness, somewhere. He then finds a bear that he has to put down because it was driven mad, by a hunter’s crossbow bolt that was tainted with an illegal substance. The scene is interesting, because it is straight out of the acclaimed Wolverine limited series that came out in the early eighties. If you don’t know anything about comic books, Wolverine is one of the most popular comic book characters, perhaps the most popular one. The mini-series of the early eighties was immensely popular and is valuable if you have copies, as it featured Frank Miller, who went to write The Dark Knight Returns, another popular Batman comic. He also wrote Sin City and 300, which have both been adapted to popular films.

In the original limited series, Wolverine went to Japan to try and woo Mariko. In the film, Wolverine meets Mariko for the first time as he goes to Japan for different reasons, and he does woo her. The reason why he goes to Japan is to see Yashida, the man he saved in WWII Nagasaki, who has an offer. Yashida wants to transfer Logan’s healing power to himself so Yashida can be saved, but Wolverine will age like normal. You see, Logan doesn’t seem to age, which is why he was in World War II and not on his deathbed.

At first I thought The Wolverine was going to be an adaptation of this popular limited series, as the plot is the same: Wolverine goes to Japan and faces adversity. The huge difference is that Marvel’s movie company did what they are always doing to films: add in as much Marvel stuff as possible to make the fans want to see it.

The theme of someone relinquishing their immortality is an interesting one, and if it had been dealt with properly, The Wolverine would have been a good film, even if it is a departure from its original source material. As it is, it just sucks because it goes so far off from the source material, as it just shoves Marvel characters in a blender and hits “Mix”. In the film, the Viper and Silver Samurai show up, who are popular Marvel characters. The Viper is made to be this snake-like being from the V series, which is nothing like her Marvel persona as a femme fatale assassin. Silver Samurai is also this cybernetic robot thing which was also nothing like his Marvel comic counterpart. Also introduced is Yukio, who is a really interesting character from the comic, but becomes this precognitive mutant in the movie. Now I have no idea if the comic book changed the origins of the characters from the original source material, because this happens…a lot.

Whatever the case, The Wolverine is an awful film that just isn’t worth seeing and is one of the worst comic-book related films that I have ever seen, and that includes so many that this is really saying something.