After the less than spectacular performances of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the wicked snarl of continuity only worsened by X-Men: First Class, it’s impressive that they’re still putting out X-Men movies. Honestly, I’ve enjoyed all of them well enough¹, but it’s still a bit strange.

Overall, the story had a lot of potential. It would be interesting to see just how Logan might deal with sudden mortality–although why he would lose the ability if it were copied doesn’t make much sense. Unfortunately though, we didn’t get overly much of that.

Along with that, I’m not even sure why Logan is so torn up about the death of Jean Gray. Yes, he killed her, but over the centuries he’s lived certainly he’s killed hundreds if not thousands of people. Surely, something similar has come up before? Perhaps the events of Origins? (He’s supposed to have his memories back, isn’t he?) It makes for an interesting motivation, but something just feels off about it.

On the positive side, there were a few visually neat scenes. The battle on the train was certainly a spectacle, even if it didn’t make terribly much sense. The Silver Samurai was cool looking, even if that twist was telegraphed a mile away.

Overall, it’s a ‘good enough’ X-Men movie. I’m not entirely sure why X-Men movies should get a pass for no more than that, but honestly I’ll actually probably watch this again when next I watch the series (perhaps for Days of Future Past?). That’s not something you can say for many movies. There have been far better movies this year though, so The Wolverine will end up just under the halfway mark. So it goes.