点击观看《金刚狼2》电影预告片

OVER the past ten years, Hollywood studios (工作室) have produced lots of superhero movies. Some have been interesting and suspenseful (充满悬疑的), such as the great Batman movie The Dark Knight (2008). But most have disappointed audiences and critics (评论家), often because the films’ heroes are too powerful.

“Why should I care about this guy?” asked the US critic Roger Ebert about the hero of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). In Ebert’s opinion, the character of Wolverine only existed (存在) in that movie to get into meaningless fights, because he “feels no pain and nothing can kill him”.

On Oct 17, a new sequel, The Wolverine (《金刚狼2》), opens in China. Is there anything different about the hero this time?

Wolverine, played by Australian actor Hugh Jackman, is one member of a team of mutant (变异的) superheroes called the X-Men. Jackman first played this role in the three X-Men films that came out back in 2000, 2003 and 2006. The “X” stands for an extra piece of DNA that these mutants possess which gives them special powers. Wolverine’s powers are sharp, mechanical claws (爪子) for defending himself as well as the ability to heal his own wounds.

For Ebert, the best films have characters with problems or flaws (缺点), and it seemed that the Wolverine of Origins had none. So as director James Mangold and screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank were developing The Wolverine, they kept Ebert’s points in mind.

They made their Wolverine weaker and gave his character a more troubled past. For added mystery, they dropped him into the dark underworld of a futuristic Japan. Thus, throughout the film he fights off gangsters (黑帮团伙), ninjas, samurai (武士) and genetic (遗传学的) scientists in Tokyo and Nagasaki.

This time, more than two-thirds of the reviews of the film have been positive, according to movie review database Rotten Tomatoes. In particular, critics appreciate that Hugh Jackman, 44, has been given a more complex character to play. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Jackman’s performance is “in the best action tradition of strength and humor”.

Ultimately, for Mangold, making The Wolverine was all about deepening the mutant hero’s story. “What I wanted to present to the audience was ‘what is it like to feel like a prisoner in a life you cannot escape’?” the director told Newsday in July.