It’s a good thing we don’t have adamantium claws getting in the way, because we found ourselves scratching our heads pretty vigorously after seeing The Wolverine. Does Hugh Jackman‘s Logan have an endless wardrobe of wife beater tank-tops? Did Hiroyuki Sanada really make the right choice in leaving Revenge to play a walking example of generational decline? Could we possibly be any more excited for Days of Future Past? Well, we can’t really answer those questions for you, but we do take a stab at these eight. But beware, major SPOILERS are ahead.
1. Is the plot of The Wolverine eerily similar to the plot of Prometheus?
Well, both movies feature a quest that’s spurred by an old man obsessed with immortality (Will Yun Lee in The Wolverine, Guy Pearce in Prometheus) who is presumed dead before it is revealed that he faked his death and is surviving due to extreme artificial methods. (I love the idea of Will Yun Lee’s Yashida at some point announcing, “Okay, I’m going to fake my death. But I’ll continue to run my multi-billionaire dollar company from inside the comfort of this Silver Samurai suit!”) In their respective quests to live forever, both men also seem to have become a bit homicidal.
Also, the heroes of both movies (Hugh Jackman’s Logan and Noomi Rapace’s Dr. Elizabeth Shaw) discover they possess unwanted parasitic intruders in their bodies. And they must surgically remove them. All by themselves. Luckily, Yashida’s medical scanners are on par with the late 21st century technology seen in Prometheus.
2. What is a “love hotel”?
“Love hotels” are lodgings geared entirely for short stays. As in, couples check into a room for a tryst and then check out. They’re geared entirely around sexual encounters, so love hotels may not have the amenities that hotels that accommodate longer stays might have. But they do have themed rooms like “nurse’s office,” “police station,” and “mission to Mars,” as seen in The Wolverine when Logan and Mariko (Tao Okamoto) rent one in which to hide out. Love hotels have existed in Japan in one form or another since the late 1800s, but became particularly popular in the ’60s. Free love, baby!
3. Wolverine showed off some mighty wood-cutting skills. Is that just yet another opportunity for Hugh Jackman to flex his muscles, or something more?
You might be excused for thinking that moment when Wolverine picks up an axe to clear away a fallen tree is a pretty self-indulgent excuse just to see his ripped biceps. Not so! This was a nod to Logan’s on-again, off-again career as a lumberjack, as seen in the comics over the years.
4. Was that “I didn’t know there was a pool there” joke ripped off from Diamonds Are Forever?
Both movies feature somebody getting thrown from a great height into a pool. Both movies then crack a joke about somebody getting thrown from a great height into a pool. You draw your own conclusions.
5. What’s the Silver Samurai like in the comics?
The depiction of the Silver Samurai in The Wolverine is wildly different from that in the comics. There, he wasn’t the father of Shingen Yashida, but his son. He was also a mutant with the ability to charge his katana — kind of like what Gambit can do to playing cards — which, in combination with his silver armor, made him pretty much invincible. In the movie, it seems like his charged katana is the result of technology more than natural ability.
When he made his first appearance, in Daredevil #111 in 1974 fighting the blind hero, Silver Samurai was a professional criminal by trade. He’d end up fighting Nick Fury, Spider-Man, and, yes, Wolverine over the course of his career. And just like in The Wolverine, he’d team up with Viper, who in the comics was more of an international terrorist. But rather than being her employer, he usually served as Viper’s bodyguard. He totally needed a promotion to make the jump to the big screen.
6. What is Trask Industries?
In the post-credits sequence, it’s two years later and Wolverine is standing in line at a U.S. airport. He’s watching a TV monitor and is greeted by an ad for Trask Industries. It’s the kind of ad you’d expect from a major security contractor and weapons manufacturer — it’s all about how it’s going to keep you safe. But given what we know of Days of Future Past, we’d bet that they’re talking about protecting the rest of humanity from the mutants. And that they intend to do so by building giant Sentinel robots.
7. Is Svetlana Khodchenkova’s Viper the campiest comic book villain since Sharon Stone’s cosmetics mogul in Catwoman?
Since Viper’s villainy is pretty much defined by her ever more ridiculous array of costumes, we’d say yes.
8. Wait… Magneto has his powers back and Xavier is alive? How did this happen?
Who cares? As long as it erases the horrible plot turns of X-Men: The Last Stand that saw Magneto robbed of his abilities and Xavier exploded by the Phoenix, we’ll take it. And Bryan Singer, while you’re at it, why don’t you bring back James Marsden’s Cyclops? Dude deserved better than an offscreen death.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt | Follow Hollywood.com on Twitter @Hollywood_com
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