Trailer Trashin’: The Ol’ Canucklehead is Back in The Wolverine

It’s April, and the weather is finally warming up. Even better, the beginning of April means that the start of the summer movie season is only a handful of weeks away. And appropriately, this week’s Trailer Trashin’ examines our first look at one of this summer’s tent-pole releases, the comic book sequel The Wolverine.

Premise: Set sometime after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) travels to Japan, where he engages a mysterious figure from his past in a fight that has lasting consequences. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel, but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than ever before.

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My take: The X-Men, Marvel’s beloved team of mutant superheroes, have certainly had a long and complicated history on the silver screen. With five films released to date and two more on the way, they have gone longer without being rebooted than any other comic book franchise, other than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I have seen every single X-Men film, apart from the first one, in the theater – yes, even X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). Now, the first trailer for this summer’s The Wolverine has arrived, and while it definitely has some cool elements, there are also a couple things that are making me temper my expectations.

In terms of the cast, the main focus is obviously on Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine himself. He’s really made the role his own at this point, and it’s always a pleasure to watch him. We don’t really get to see Hiroyuki Sanada as the main villain, crime boss Shingen Yashida. We also get to see our two main female characters – Tao Okamoto as Mariko Yashida, Shingen’s daughter and Wolverine’s former fiancée, and Rila Fukushima as the red-haired ninja Yukio. We only briefly see Will Yun Lee as Kenuichio Harada/Silver Samurai, although we get a little more of him in the international trailer that was released simultaneously with this one. He looks pretty cool, and I hope he gets a decent amount of stuff to do, and doesn’t get treated like Venom in Spider-Man 3 (2007), where he only shows up for a few minutes during the end battle. Russian actress Svetlana Khodchenkova plays Viper, a villain from the comics who was previously known as Madame Hydra, but it’s clear they’re taking a number of liberties with the character. The character in the comics is usually affiliated with the terrorist group HYDRA, which can’t be the case here because Marvel owns the film rights to the group and used it in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011); also the character in the comics is very athletic and a great fighter, but has no superpowers, whereas here we see her apparently peeling her skin off, similar to the character of Paige Guthrie/Husk from the comics. And as we briefly see in this trailer, Famke Janssen reprises her role as Jean Grey in what is supposed to just be a cameo, presumably some kind of flashback or dream sequence.

I have to admit, one of the main reasons why I’m excited about this film is the presence behind the camera of director James Mangold. I absolutely loved his 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma, and I’m glad that he’s getting to do another action film. I also love the Japan setting, and that will hopefully give the film a different kind of visual feeling than the other X-Men films. And I like that they’re using more obscure villains from the comics like Silver Samurai and Viper. I fully expect the visual and action elements of the film to be quite impressive.

But I have to admit that there are things in this trailer that give me pause. First off, while the idea of Wolverine being offered a way to get rid of his powers and essentially become normal is theoretically interesting, that same basic idea was used as the main plot of X-Men: The Last Stand, which The Wolverine is supposed to be following. If Logan didn’t want to take the opportunity to be “cured” then, why would he take it now? Also, since when is Wolverine immortal? Thanks to his healing factor, Wolverine does age much slower than other people, and therefore lives a lot longer, but that’s still not the same thing as actual immortality. Some of the visual effects work – particularly the shots involving the bullet train – look a little rough and unfinished. Admittedly, the movie is still a few months away, but Fox has let some shoddy VFX shots make it to cinemas in the past – including, infamously, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And as someone who never liked or bought into the whole Logan/Jean Grey romance in the first place, the fact that his grief over her death is being used as the basis for how he starts this story and why he would consider getting rid of his powers doesn’t sit well with me.

In the end, I’d say this trailer is a bit of a mixed bag, but leaning toward the good. We’ve got a solid cast, a good director, and a story that could lead to interesting things. But there are those nagging plot questions and some potentially dodgy effects work. Ultimately, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that this will turn out well. Come late July, I will most likely be checking out The Wolverine at my local theater.

ANTICIPATION: I’m probably going to see it, and I hope it turns out well.

Release Date: July 26^th, 2013

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hal Yamanouchi, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Will Yun Lee, Brian Tee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, and Famke Janssen
Director: James Mangold
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Mark Bomback, and Scott Frank, based on Wolverine by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller

P.S. Apparently, thanks to the solid opening-weekend box office for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, we are going to get a third G.I. Joe movie. If you read my review, you know that I liked Retaliation quite a bit, so I’m perfectly okay with this. But I do hope that Paramount won’t let the next film get a month away from coming out and then push the release date back almost a year.