The Wolverine trailer hit today and it was not quite what I expected. Yeah, there were ninjas and the Orient, but there were also motorcycle chases, explosions and a fight on the top of a speeding train.
So, it’s pretty clear this is only influenced by the Chris Claremont classic story. And there was the one fleeting shot of him and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) that obviously comes from a memory or flashback sequence.
There were some things in The Wolverine trailer that seemed pulled from the comics, including the fight with Silver Samurai and his meeting Yukio, who would become his wife in the comic’s story before her tragic demise.
The Wolverine trailer starts out with a heavily bearded Logan who is slumming and occasionally getting into bar fights until Yukio finds him and takes him back to Japan. It is here where Logan learns that Yukio’s employer is a man he saved from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and he wants to thank Logan by taking away his healing factor and making him mortal again so he can finally age properly and eventually die.
This is all great until ninjas and members of the Yakuza start shooting and stabbing him, which sucks when he can’t heal right.
Then, we get big fights with motorcycles, explosions, swords and a speeding train with the promise that when he is at his most vulnerable, he is at his most dangerous. Then we get the hint that the changes can be undone.
It looks like big, dumb fun, which is great for a comic book movie, but not what I was expecting for The Wolverine.