The Wolverine

2013 was a fascinating time for the X-Men franchise and comic book movies as a whole. The MCU was in full-swing with the first Avengers movie the year prior and a new cadence of at least two character-led blockbusters a year. X-Men, meanwhile, was hobbling along. The introduction of a new generation of heroes with X-Men: First Class in 2011 had tried to wash away the disappointment of Last Stand and the underwhelming awkwardness of Origins, but the damage was still fresh. So the fact that The Wolverine wasn’t just a good X-Men movie but also a decent action flick in its own right felt like a big surprise at the time.

Broken physically and emotionally, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine finds himself in Japan, powerless and on the run from evil machinations of a corporate tycoon and old acquaintance. Despite being based on comic arcs by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, the spin-off movie was liberated from the constraints and demands of the larger X-Men films, letting it indulge in poignant character moments the larger series didn’t always have time for amid world-ending showdowns.

The Wolverine whips between bucolic countryside and colorful city streets, showcases some incredible action sequences, including one on a bullet train, and builds out the tormented hero’s backstory in economical but effective ways. It’s the first time Jackman’s Wolverine gets to explore the existential stakes of his mutant powers and the hundreds of years of baggage accumulated from them. The Wolverine is ultimately a movie about death and what we owe one another and ourselves through our shared humanity and histories, and it manages to evoke those heavy themes without upstaging the fun and action of watching a guy with claws fight Yakuza. —Ethan Gach