It would be rude of me to suggest that such a high valued and respect property as the X-Men franchise would do something as crass and racist as reducing all Japanese culture to a couple of tropes, but…

The first time you meet the character, Yukio, she explicitly introduces three separate plot elements. All three are justified as “Because Honor”.

In 30 seconds.

In less than a minute, Yukio explains that:

Wolverine must go to Tokyo to visit an old friend because “To not do so would be dishonorable”. Yukio herself cleaves to Wolverine because “It would be an honor to meet a soldier such as yourself”. Her payment for Wolverine’s services is that she would give him “What every soldier wants: An Honorable death”.

That’s the main plot, a new character, and an internal story-arc all introduced as “Because Honor”. These aren’t paraphrases. These are quotes.

But don’t worry! They covered all the other aspects of the rich, nuanced culture of the Japanese people, too! The movie opens with a group of soldiers committing Seppuku because they were at Nagasaki and the Atomic Bomb was about to drop, so they chose to disembowel themselves seconds before the bomb dropped to… um…



Anyway, even if The Wolverine’s portrayal of Japan weren’t roughly on par with a sixth grader who typed “Japan Stuff” into Google after watching Dragon Ball Z for three hours, it would still be a bad movie.

A bad. movie.

Terribly made, horribly executed, poorly thought out… bad. movie.