Such frustrating use of grammar, agh. The Wolverine released a first full trailer today, as this week appears to be trailer week. Wolverine heads off to Japan for this sequel, meeting up with a host of familiar names along the way – and fighting most of them. Let’s discuss some of the things happening inside this 2:33 of tease.

Jeeeeeeeean! Famke shows up right at the start of the trailer, as part of what must be a dream sequence or something. This indicates the film is happening after all the X-Men films, giving us a first look at how Logan’s dealing with life post-Brett Ratner.

One of my favourite villainesses Viper is in the film, although she’s not the Viper anybody knows or recognises. This version of Viper has blonde hair rather than lovely green locks, and is also a snake person. Yep! Snake lady Viper. She has a forked tongue and can peel her skin off – which she does menacingly at Wolverine towards the end of the trailer. Lord knows why this is meant to scare Wolverine, because I’m fairly certain that he’ll be skinning her face off himself once he gets out his restraints.

Speaking of! Wolverine, as is tradition, spends roughly half the trailer tied up and in restraints, further prompting me to wonder what exactly about Wonder Woman would be so difficult to translate to film. If Wolverine can fight Nazis and get tied up a lot, why not Wondy? The Wolverine also delivers plenty of shirtless Hugh Jackman, as we viewers demand it to.

The-Wolverine-shirtless-hugh-jackman

The main plot point brought up by the trailer is Wolverine’s healing factor getting turned off by sinister/friendly forces. This is interesting, because it ties into a storyline Paul Cornell/Alan Davis’ Wolverine comic will be exploring later on in the year. The comic will also see Wolverine getting his healing factor turned off, which has led many to speculate that the character is getting killed off by Marvel next year. Here’s some speculation – what if he also dies at the end of this movie? He’d get resurrected in Days of Future Past, of course, but it would work within the bleak tone that tend to come towards the end of all Wolverine’s cinematic outings.

We also get to see Yukio, the freewheeling death-loving Storm-loving manic vixen, although she’s somewhat restrained in here. She still seems to have a sense of humour – according to the editor of this trailer – so we’ll have to see if the script and actress match up to that promise.

The best thing about the trailer is that, although it’s set in the present, the focus will be on classic Wolverine from the comics. Rather than being slash-happy (although there’s still plenty of slashing), the film seems far more interested in dealing with Wolverine as a man of honour. This is when Wolverine is at his best, as a character. He can be glib and gruff – but focusing on his honour and dignity are also massively important. One of the main failings of Wolverine Origins, besides everything, was the treatment of Wolverine as a joke figure. Giving him a little more respect will go a long way in redeeming his film franchise.

Also: Silver Samurai! Who is CGI. I’m not good with robots, but I’d be happy if Samurai here has been updated to include some of Steven Sanders’ recent design upgrades.

Overall, it looks okay. The fight scenes seem well choreographed and coherent, and it looks like all involved have spent more time considering the character and offering Hugh Jackman something to actually grip onto. Jackman’s been a decent Wolverine let down by poor material so far – I’m more than happy to give him another chance to really cut loose. Y’know – honourably.

9 COMMENTS

  1. This version of the trailer puts me at ease. I feel just as you wrote Steve. Hopefully the movie will focus on Wolverine being honorable and not a cookie cutter action hero. It’s what really lends to the depth of a character that has a berserk rage when he pops his claws. The discipline way of the Samurai is a perfect fit in the comics and hopefully on the big-screen. On the other hand this could just be “movie trailer voodoo” and the movie is really just Origins but instead of being hooked up to a machine to lace his bones with adamantium to fight helicopters he’s hooked up to a machine to take his healing-factor away to slay trains. If that’s the case, I’m saving this trailer to my desktop so I can watch it instead of the movie come July.

  2. This is an interesting story arc for Wolverine. In many ways, more interesting than the X-men storyline. It’s got some development to the character, which I like over the “oh you know Logan, he plays by his own rules” guy we see in the X-men movies. Should be a good movie.

  3. I was interested in this one until I saw the latest Man of Steel trailer, they should put The Wolverine on hold for a few months. Still both of them look interesting: comic books just had become very comic bookish of lately and, frankly, a little bit boring. The angle on both MOS and The Wolverine seems to be focused on character development and not on the sake of spectacular CGI figths for the sake of it.

  4. I agree, looks ok. They have done such a hacking, mix and match job on Wolvie’s history that it is annoying. Really wish they would have done a true back history and not try to tie it in w/Jeeeeeeeeeeeeean.

  5. But if the article title was worded differently, there wouldn’t be anything to make needlessly smug little antagonistic comments over!

    No one wants to deny anyone else the warm after-glow of a needlessly smug little antagonistic comment. That would be selfish.

  6. The only thing I didn’t like about the trailer is that it directly referenced The Last Stand, which for me sits next to Alien 3 and Highlander 2 as movies I prefer to pretend don’t exist.

    I’m really hoping Bryan Singer takes this opportunity with Days Of Future Past to write The Last Stand out of his movie continuity, so that he can follow up by doing The Phoenix Saga properly, like he originally intended.

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