There’s a lot riding on the success of The Wolverine, and these debut trailers seem rather promising.
Normally I’d be very excited to witness the first trailer from an upcoming Marvel Comics superhero flick, but after the execrable X-Men Origins: Wolverine, not even the promise of Logan/James Howlett/Weapon X doing his unhinged samurai thing in a modern retelling of Frank Miller’s awesome “Wolverine in Japan” comic book stories can convince me to raise more than a half-curious eyebrow toward the flick. However, I will say that based purely on the two trailers embedded below – they’re both the “debut trailer,” but the one at right is the domestic version, while the one below is the international – I’m tentatively psyched for this thing.
Those of you who didn’t spend your formative years reading Marvel’s back catalogue (or watching the awesome Fox Kids animated series from the mid-90s), may not be aware that the mutant superhero known as Wolverine spent many, many years in Japan. There are dozens of intertwining storylines stemming from Logan’s time in the Land of the Rising Sun, but the most important thing to know is that in an effort to control his animalistic urges, Logan sought out the teachings of a master swordsman who trained him using the samurai code. This resulted in the modern version of Wolverine who is largely composed yet still capable of unleashing his “berserker rage” whenever some dumb jerk needs to be slashed into a few hundred bloody pieces with a quickness.
Now that you know why this film will feature Wolverine fighting Yakuza analogues instead of Magneto, what do you think of the brief glimpses we’re presented in the trailers? Personally, I like what I see there, though some of the camera angles and special effects seem a bit spotty. That sequence in the domestic trailer where Wolverine is “flying” on top of the train with his claws outstretched looks particularly silly.
Still, I like the premise and the part of me that will eternally remain a fun-loving child desperately wants to believe that this movie will be good. It just has to. IT HAS TO! I don’t know if I can handle the disappointment of another X-Men Origins: Wolverine. No hyperbole: if director James Mangold finds some terrible way to include a mute Baraka-analogue that is somehow supposed to be Deadpool, I will openly weep like a seven-year-old girl who’s fallen off her bike and skinned her knee, on her birthday, twenty minutes after finding out her cat died of feline leukemia.
I’m delicate.
Source: IGN
