From the title of this post, you may start to see a pattern forming as it looks very similar to my post The Man of Steel and Writing. And you would be correct in assuming that I’m going to make this a habit, primarily because this is the genre of choice for me to write to a degree. I’m a geek and I dig it.
Yesterday, I went and saw The Wolverine. I saw the first one and…well…I hated it. However, the trailer for this had me slightly intrigued. So since it was only $5.00, I decided it was worth checking out. After seeing it, my conclusion was that this was only marginally better than the first which means it wasn’t that good at all. Average at best. But the point of this post is not to give a review of the movie but to give my assessment on the writing and what writers can learn from it.
The one thing that was good about the movie is its dealing with Logan the man. The claws, the healing, all cool and dandy but they dealt with the one thing that he couldn’t heal which was his heart and mind. The open wounds of his soul. This was pretty consistent throughout the movie and something that writers need to do for their heroes and heroines (yeah, I’m old fashioned like that). You have to make people care about the character even if it’s on some surface level. That means knowing the character. That is something that it appeared the writers had pinned down rather well.
Now, on the flip side, the overall story was weak and there were some elements in the script that was just silly in my opinion. For example, the fight atop the bullet train was much too long. Action, yes, but let’s not get carried away. In writing and as writers, we shouldn’t make action for action’s sake. It should always be a natural progression of the story and last as long as is absolutely necessary. A tight action scene that makes sense in the plot is much better than a long drawn out one with no particular purpose.
The one big blunder in the writing was the ending. I’m going to highlight this and give a possible spoiler for those who didn’t see the movie so you may want to skip ahead.
Writer, I say this not only as an author but also as a reader and fan—do not save your hero. In other words, do not have someone come in and save the hero in the climactic, crisis moment. That is one of the biggest let downs in writing. We’re invested in a protagonist, we’ve been on this journey with them, we’re rooting for them and want them to overcome this conflict only to have someone else save the day. Absolutely horrible. Yet, it’s not the first time I’ve seen this happen and I end up shunning that author because I feel I’ve been lied to throughout the book. You’ve set me up and led me to believe that this protagonist is the hero when really it was another character. Don’t do that to your readers.
Now, if you’re wondering if I’m going to have a post that deals with Thor: The Dark World, I’ll let you know ahead of time—I am. But until October, I’ll take what little nuggets of wisdom from my experience here and apply them to my writing. Hope it helped you as well.
God bless.
