Today, we are glad to feature an article from Fuller student Gary Ingle. Gary writes regularly on his own site, Film, TV, and Everything Else, and he contributes to The Burner, a blog run by Fuller’s Lowell W. Berry Institute for Continuing Education in Ministry.
This article on the questions about eternal life at the heart of The Wolverine originally appeared on Gary’s site and is being republished here with permission. SPOILERS abound in this article.
____________________________________________________________________________________
The Wolverine certainly has its fair share of stereotypical superhero-movie action sequences, but unlike other films in the genre, that is not where the power of this film’s meaning is found. This film instead locates its meaning through the area of character development. Perhaps the first clue of this is the film’s title – The Wolverine – the main character’s name. The film’s content reinforces this focus on character development; much attention is given to Wolverine and his own internal struggles. He wrestles with finding meaning and purpose in his life, and it is here where The Wolverine brings about its primary thematic meaning.
The character of Wolverine (aka “Logan”) is always a unique one to analyze, particularly due to the nature of his mutant powers. He possesses a healing factor, which allows him to overcome and heal from any injury, no matter how severe. This has essentially made him immortal. Born in the 1800s under the name James Howlett, Logan has lived through multiple generations. He has many other mutant powers: boned claws that can protrude from and retract into his hands (the iconic, nearly unbreakable metal adamantium had been bonded to his skeleton during his time under the Weapon X program, as explained in the film X2: X-Men United), superhuman senses, strength, stamina, and agility. These powers have all drawn Logan to be a soldier for most of his life, having lived through and fought in several wars during the last couple of centuries.
When we first see Logan in the present day in The Wolverine, he is a reclusive hermit who has been living off of the land. He began his self-imposed exile from larger society as a result of having to kill Jean Grey, the woman whom he loved (see the film X-Men: The Last Stand). Jean had been hurting people, and he was the only one who could stop her. This act has continued to haunt Logan, to the extent that he still has nightmares about her.
After being taken to Japan by a fellow mutant named Yukio, Wolverine is soon presented with an interesting proposition. Yashida, a man whose life Logan had saved in World War II during the bombing of Nagasaki, is now old and extremely successful. Yashida has done much advanced technological research and has found a way to remove Wolverine’s healing factor from his body and transfer it to another person. He sees the anguish and pain in Logan, the struggle that he has been experiencing while trying to find a purpose to his life. Yashida remarks to Logan, “Eternity can be a curse. A man can run out of things to live for.”
Even though Logan initially refuses Yashida’s offer, Logan believes that his healing factor has been sabotaged anyway, and during the middle of the film he experiences what it is like to get hurt but not become healed. Logan comes face to face with his own mortality, realizing that it is possible for him to die now. Yukio, whose mutant power allows her to see a portion of how someone will die, tells Logan that she can now see how he dies. Logan chooses not to focus on that, choosing rather to be a man of action, a soldier continuing on his quest to save Mariko, regardless of the risk to his own life.
Earlier in the film, Yashida had commented that Logan was like a ronin – a samurai without a master, destined to live forever but running out of things to live for. During his final battle with Wolverine in the Silver Samurai armor, Yashida tells Logan that his mistake was believing that a life without end can have no meaning, when in actuality it is the only one that can.
Therin is embodied one of the film’s central questions: how is one to find purpose in the midst of an ultimately mortal life? If we are going to die eventually, what ultimate purpose can our life really hold in the grand scheme of things? If we believe that this life is all there is and that there is nothing after it, then we will probably try to locate our life’s purpose and meaning somewhere within this life. But if we believe that there is more than just this life on earth, we may focus on finding a purpose that aligns with our perspective on that other (often called an “eternal”) life.
Wolverine arrived at an existentialist understanding of life when he realized the true cost of immortality – that it was a curse for him. He had failed to locate any purpose in a life in which everything eventually dies, fades away, and is forgotten. But in this film, director James Mangold cleverly and unconventionally uses the villain’s twisted philosophy to communicate a deeper truth which Logan comes to realize – that a life without end is really the only one that can hold any meaning.
If our life will eventually end in meaninglessness, then what purpose can it have? But if we do each possess a life that will continue on into eternity, then we have a responsibility to fulfill our life’s purpose.
Logan realizes this when he is lying on the ground in the aftermath of his battle with the Silver Samurai. He returns once again in his mind to the place that he had been repeatedly in his dreams: lying in a bed beside his now-dead love Jean Grey, in a place representative of existence beyond this world’s life. She tells him that she is glad that he is now here with her, and asks if he is staying. Logan tells her that he can’t, choosing instead to return to his life on earth and pursue his purpose of being a soldier for the cause of good.
What is your approach to life? Do you believe that this life is all there is, or do you believe that there is something more, that consciousness continues after the body dies? Where do you find your identity, meaning, and purpose? And why do you pursue that purpose?
It is my hope that films like this will urge you to strongly reflect on your answers to these questions.
