Character development/story over action.
Oh my, how profound.
Not only did I not mention action at all, but since my entire post was in reference to the mediocre story and sterile character treatment...I'm not sure how your reply is even relevant...but...what the bad place, I'll bite.
For starters, films are not so black and white. I hear this sort of trite platitude often and it always nets an eye roll from me, because there is no reason why a good film can't have both. There is no, nor will there ever be an ultimatum whereby the film makers have to choose between one or the other. A good crew will always deliver a product that is viscerally and emotionally satisfying, bar none. Considering what genre this is, I see no reason to be apologetic about exhilarating, well choreographed action that is
earned; it's what we come to these films to see, otherwise the genre wouldn't be what it is. Let's not kid ourselves, but enough on that.
With that being said, the action is actually among the few high points of this film...from an isolated perspective anyway. The fights and action sequences were well choreographed, but here's my issue with them from this movie that addresses...whatever it is you meant with your reply - they weren't earned, and lacked thus lacked context. Nevermind the fact that with each encounter, the action flew further and further away from established logic, but damn near every action scene in this film, no matter how exhilarating, felt like a device to shove the plot along. It seemed as if Mangold was saying '
Hey, time to move on to a new locale, let's kidnap Mariko again or start another shootout so we can get to the next scene!' With this sort of approach; however, there's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do it. 3:10 to Yuma actually had a very similar structure, but the action scenes, along with being well shot and choreographed, were woven into the film seamlessly, so it puzzles my that they seemed so forced in this movie...and it's Wolverine for crying out loud. None of the scenes had a solid resolution before the action kicked up again(MoS succumbed to this as well, albeit in a fashion far worse than this movie). Clearly he didn't have a very coherent script to work with. In retrospect, it's no surprise that Aronofsky walked away. Again, the film wasn't terrible by any means, just mediocre; I left feeling very lukewarm about the whole affair. The only thing I can definitively say was
bad was that god-awful 'let's go storm the villain's castle' final confrontation. I didn't even care about how the Silver Samurai was butchered per se(and people complain about the Mandarin? Please.), it was just executed extremely poorly, and by that point most of the logic established throughout the franchise and this film was tossed right out the window.
Otherwise, I'm not sure where this character development is that you speak of. This is why I was careful to say character moments, because there was more experimentation and exploration than there was actual depth and development. The whole flirting with death and immortality removal was glossed over in a few scenes, and in a very overt and obligatory fashion, only to be reverted and subsequently forgotten about by the end, which brings me to my next point. There wasn't any character development in this film because the protagonist simply returned to the mean by the film's conclusion, and the entire journey felt trivialized. He cut all ties with everyone he met(where the bad place was his 'bodyguard' in the stinger? Dead?), and nothing had any sort of significance. After a nice little Japanese journey, I'm off for another adventure with the X-Men.
Best film of the summer? Hardly. I can't see this movie being remembered fondly, if at all, in a decade or so. It's a completely forgettable entry in the character's legacy and the X-Men franchise as a whole. I have a hard time seeing how or if there will ever be any call backs to the events of this film in any future iterations.
