The Wolverine Franchise Heals Itself

Apparently the X-Men franchise has a healing factor. The Wolverine opens today, and while it's not perfect, critics seem to agree that it's a return to form for everyone's favorite clawed mutant. Here's what people are saying.

• Rest easy, fans: "The Wolverine is a whole hell of a lot better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine from 2009," a train wreck that "gets completely ignored here," writes Andrew O'Hehir at Salon. The film follows the Asian action flick formula "with considerable enthusiasm," giving us "several rip-roaring set pieces," including a fight atop a speeding bullet train that "might be the summer's best action scene."
• "The Wolverine is the best superhero film since The Avengers—maybe even since The Dark Knight," gushes Stephen Whitty at the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Hugh Jackman "is clearly having a great time" and any plot qualms are powerless before the "amazing action sequences."

• Kyle Smith appreciates that it "turns down the volume on the usual din of colliding mutant superpowers. It takes time for some old-fashioned romance" and the action is "on a more human scale," he writes at the New York Post. But he stops well short of praising it, noting that the "serviceable" film "might be thrilling if special effects pictures came along four times a year instead of four times a month."
• Will Hollywood ever "grab Wolverine by the scruff of the neck and give him the stand-alone movie he deserves?" wonders Randy Myers at the San Jose Mercury News. Impossible to say, but this movie is a step in the right direction, giving him "a substantial story line, one that at least initially prefers character and narrative depth over nonstop action."

(More X-Men stories.)