You never know what to expect with an X-Men movie. X-Men was great. X2 is one of my favorite comic book movies (Come on! It was good!) Then came X3, which sucked so bad it pretty much ruined X2 for me.

Then came X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The less I say about that, the better. Woof. What a waste of Deadpool

Then, out of nowhere comes X-Men: First Class. I almost didn’t see it because I just assumed it would be terrible…but what a surprise! It wasn’t!

So now comes The Wolverine. Because, you know, just put “The” in front of a word and you’ve got a perfect name for the sequel, right?

So with three decent X-Men films and two terrible X-Men films, where does this one stack up?

Eh. Somewhere in the middle, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong, it was good. It was fine. It was fun. And way better than the last Wolverine movie. For one thing, THANK YOU to Marvel for not just giving us another origin story. How many different ways to I need to see Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and The Hulk start their journeys?!?

If anything, The Wolverine was just brainless comic book fun, and nothing more. How exactly does this power transfer work? Not sure. What the heck is Viper’s mutant power? Something with venom.

Also, I didn’t need all of the ghost Jean Grey stuff. Mostly because it was a reminder of how terribly that story played out in X3. Plus, what a downer. Stop telling Wolverine to kill himself, Jean!