Hugh Jackman accepts an offer he can’t refuse in the first full trailer for Fox’s latest installment in the X-Men movie franchise, The Wolverine. Unlike past X-Men films where visual effects and a broad collection of mutants were the draw, The Wolverine aims to tell a more intimate tale.
As The Wolverine trailer gets underway, we are reunited with Logan whose life has deteriorated into frequenting bars and growing a gnarly beard after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand. As one of what was probably too many bar brawls is about to get underway, Logan is convinced by mysterious Yukio (Rila Fukushima) to fly to Japan and reunite with a man whom he saved from the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima. A man that has the means to make Logan mortal by removing his mutant healing abilities. Logan believes erasing his abilities will help heal his deep emotional wounds and give him a life worth living.
The Wolverine trailer portrays a much more intimate film than has been seen in the X-Men cinematic franchise thus far. Director James Mangold appears keen on putting Logan through the emotional wringer and bringing him out the other end a better man, and likely a better mutant. We know Logan will move on from this film and appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
I do want to call out one sequence that brought back memories of the first X-Men Origins: Wolverine trailer. There’s a sequence in which Logan battles someone on top of a speeding train. The effect isn’t wholly convincing, much like Logan on his motorcycle taking on the helicopter in Origins. The train seems out-of-place compared to everything else in the trailer. I’m hoping it fits more logically within the framework of the complete film.
Hugh Jackman as The Wolverine begins his journey in search of mortality on July 26, 2013.
