The Wolverine: In a World of Evil, Backstabbing Men and Kind Supportive Women, Who Are You Gonna Date?

 I'm having a bad week in mass media, looking for gay representation and finding heterosexism or homophobia: Pass the Light,  A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, Redneck Roots, The Queen's Gambit...and now it's Saturday night, when we watch the X-Men movies in order (Bob's idea, not mine).

The X-Men are mutants with an X-gene that gives them varying types of superheroic powers.  Tonight: The Wolverine (2013) features the hard-drinking, hard-fighting, annoyingly surly Logan (Hugh Jackman), whose ability to instantly regenerate cells makes him immortal.  And depressed.  Plus his hands sprout Freddy Krueger-style blades whenever he's angry or upset, or sometimes at random and inopportune moments.

Logan still feels pain, so one would expect him to spend his immortality in quiet contemplation of the Divine, or take a nice teaching job at Dr. Xavier's X-Men Academy, but no, he enlists in whatever war is going on at this moment: American Civil War (even though he''s Canadian), World War I, World War II.  

Scene 1:  Logan in a pit, a prisoner of war in Nagoya, Japan on July 26th, 1945.  Everyone is evacuating or committing ritual suicide as the Enola Gay approaches with nuclear bombs.  Young soldier Ichiro (Ken Yamamura) tries to release Logan, but he states that the pit is the safest place, and shields Ichiro with his own body.  

A homoerotic buddy bonding scene!  Things are lookng up. Maybe Ichiro will stick around, and they will go on adventures together.   Wouldn't that be great!  Even if they're not a gay couple, just heterosexual life partners.

Scene 2: Logan in bed with a woman, kissing and hugging.

Way to burst my bubble in the first five minutes!  Ok, same-sex relationships are trivial and disposable, heterosexual romance eternal.  I get it!

Scene 3: After some machinations to demonstrate that he likes woodland creatures, Logan looks up with a kick-ass babe, who tells him that the now-elderly and dying Ichiro wants to see him again, to "say goodbye."

So he has fond memories of their time together, after all these years?  Memories of a homoerotic buddy-bond?  Things are looking up.

Scene 4: Logan and Kick-Ass Babe fly to Japan on a private jet.  Turns out that Ichiro is a multi-billionaire electronics mogul, and also a bit of a kook: he likes to pretend that he's living in traditional Japan, with rice-paper walls, samurai swords, and women in kimonos.  

He actually doesn't want to say goodbye: he wants to modify Logan's X-gene so he can experience cellular decay.  He will therefore age normally and eventually die, and in the meantime "fall in love, get married, raise a family."

Ok, ok, the sole purpose of existence is heterosexual marriage and reproduction.  Same-sex friendships are worthless.  I get it.

Scene 5: Logan meets Ichiro's snarling, surly, ninja-fighting son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada) and quiet, passive, impossibly virtuous granddaughter Mariko.

Uh-oh, Ichiro is dead.  That means that Mariko inherits everything, and everyone wants to kill her, including her dad.

And her fiancee, corrupt finance minister Norobuku Mori (Brian Tee)

Geez, are all the men in this movie evil, and all the women good?  

Well, slinky Bond Girl scientist Dr. Green is evil, a mutant whose super power involves poisoning men to death by kissing them.  Fortunately she's not attracted to men, so she doesn't have to worry about kiss/killing someone she likes.

No heterosexual interest means evil?   This is getting very close to stereotyped gay villain territory. Do we have to keep watching?

To be fair, I got the "no heterosexual interest" from the line "I'm immune to men."  In the comics the character is heterosexual, and even marries Logan at one point.

Kenouchi Haruda (Will Yun Lee) may be the only male character other than Ichiro who isn't evil.  According to Wikipedia, he's a ninja "sworn to protect the Yamada family."  I don't really remember him, though.  I stop paying attention.

I wish I was watching whatever movie this photo is from, instead.

I start paying attention again in the final scene plot twist: 

Spoiler alert:

Ichiro is alive!  He has transformed into a man-machine supervillain, Logan's arch-nemesis.

Moral: All men are evil, they wiall same-sex relationships are destructive and dangerous. But women -- at least heterosexual women -- are unfailingly good, kind, and supportive.

I suppose you're going to tell me that this director is gay