THE WOLVERINE - James Mangold Discusses his Plans for the Film

Director James Mangold planned to start shooting The Wolverine next year, and like many of you I'm really hoping that it turns out to be an awesome movie. The story takes place in Japan is based on the first solo Wolverine mini-series from 1982 by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller which sent Logan to Japan in a story involving the ninja clan the Hand. 

Mangold recently did an interview in which he talked about his plans for the film, and here's what he had to say about where we will find the character.

You could actually just tell a story about this amazing character from the start, just the way they do when you really read a comic. You don’t have to spend the first hour saying how they were born; you can actually just find them in an emotional space, in the middle of action, and what happens is you’re not crowded with cutting to nine other action heroes. You can really make a movie about this dude.

On the feel an environment on the movie:

It’s a kind of adventure following such a unique character also in a really unique environment. I mean, the fact that half of the characters in this movie speak Japanese, this is like a foreign-language superhero movie that’s as much a drama and a detective story and a film noir, with high-octane action as it is anything like a conventional tentpole film.

On writing the script:

Mark Bomback and myself have done a tremendous amount of writing on the movie. There’s not a page that hasn’t been worked and reworked and rethought and story-boarded. So it just is what it is; I mean, kind of the part of connecting to the movie and developing the scenes and finding the locations and devising the action is all about not only making it good, but also in the process making it your own.

On why he is making the movie:

I think part of the reason I’m doing this picture has been because it isn’t to me a conventional superhero movie. It isn’t an origin story, so I’m freed from that burden, and it also isn’t a save-the-world movie, which most of them are. It’s actually a character piece; I actually think it has more in common with The Outlaw Josey Wales and Chinatown what we’re doing, than the conventional, ‘will Wolverine and his compatriots save the world from this thermonuclear device’ question.

On why this movie will be unique:

I think that this movie is much more an intense psychological and action-packed character piece, that’s much more about Logan getting lost in this very unique and insulated world of Japanese culture, gangster culture, and ninja culture. The fighting is going to be unique because it’s all influenced by Japanese martial arts.

On the character Wolverine:

I think more than anything, it’s a character piece, asking really interesting questions that are what pulled me in about what it means to be immortal. What is it to live forever, when you lose everyone you’ve ever loved? Either you watch them get killed, or you just lose them by attrition. What is it to feel the burden of saving mankind through all of its mistakes, over and over and over again. What’s the toll it takes on you as a living being that is somehow living this Frankensteinian, eternal life? And there’s a lot of interesting dramatic questions we’re going to deliver on as well as some really inventive action.

I like to think that we’re out to make that Wolverine movie that people have been looking forward to seeing, which takes on some of the darker and more intense aspects of the character, and his own journey, that have not necessarily been possible in the origin story that they did or obviously when he’s sharing so much time as a character with so many others in X-Men.

Closing thoughts:

It really just was a simple choice. Do you want to jump on board and take this thing on, with such a cool environment and a world, and this moment when they might actually explore the character? [And] there was so much intriguing in there that I thought could be mined and something really interesting done with it.

Mangold is a solid director that had directed some great movies such as 3:10 To Yuma, Walk the Line, Knight and Day, and Copland. It sounds like he's going to give us the Wolverine movie we've all been waiting for. Hopefully Fox let him do it his way. I love what he had to say in this interview, and I'm excited about what he wants to give fans. What do you think?

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