just claws

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2016)

Writing this now, 7 years after this film was made, gives a better insight into what Marvel has been doing. They have their set of superheroes, long embedded in pop imagination, mostly through comic books and animation TV series. Now they talk about "fictional universe" which is a way to say they will explore each of those characters within their original specific family of characters, as well as mix them with other families and, as in this case, zoom in on certain individual characters.
The biggest problem is that these decisions are based on popularity, ratings, market decisions. And Hollywood is today hostage to bigger and louder, more than ever. So there is no real narrative exploration, no filling of the spaces between the main branches. They just produce action stuff which is ordinary by any standard (visual, narrative etc.). Sometimes the film will be mildly interesting because of someone interesting they employ (Downey Jr, Swinton, Branagh...) but even there we just fill that each one could be doing something more interesting (and less lucrative). Other times they use what Downey Jr taught them in how he worked the Iron Man character: irony, winks, poking fun at the character, by deliberately stepping out of it. They learned the lesson and since than pretty much every film is conceived in such a way as not to take itself very seriously. So we have Dr.Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool... this last one actually has a cameo in this Wolverine mess.
What they did here was simple take a character (with whom Jackman is strongly associated) and just give it to us in high doses, more intense, more screen-time, more... Hugh Jackman has a strong enough presence to carry the thin character alone so they did it.
Because they have not much to say, nothing inventive to fill the narrative with, they copied the framework, and the mood from the first Rambo: the retired hero, who tries to live anonymously, away from the world, someone to whom unhappiness is ever denied and who will eventually get pulled back to the action painful world he is escaping.
But this Rambo has no Vietnam, no drive, no reason to be, no real pain. Even the pain of brutally loosing a loved one is replaced by the mere rage for being betrayed. Just claws and rage. So, nothing to see here. Adamatium claws are still just claws.