Though its release date is only a few months away, James Mangold‘s summer tentpole “The Wolverine” has yet to boast a trailer (a fact likely to be remedied soon). There are a ton of images and descriptions to satiate fans in the meantime, but now, rather than just unveil another sneak peek at the film, the director has revealed a few of his key pieces of inspiration for the project, and they are intriguing.
The film, which Mangold has described as finding Hugh Jackman‘s Logan as a “soldier who is cut loose” and a “samurai without a master” in Japan, is already shaping up to be a unique entry to the “X-Men” franchise while still hewing close to the comic’s origins. Mangold’s batch of cinematic influences wholeheartedly contributes to that thought too, as they draw on example from westerns (“The Outlaw Josey Wales”), samurai epics (“13 Assassins”), and Wong Kar-Wai (“Chungking Express”).
The themes of isolation and longing discussed by Mangold definitely come through strongly in his selection, which you can view below with a series of trailers. Take a look to see where the director is coming from before “The Wolverine” hits theaters July 29th. [via Rope of Silicon]
1. “Chungking Express”
2. “The Outlaw Josey Wales”
3. “The Samurai Trilogy”
4. “Floating Weeds”
5. “Black Narcissus”
6. “Happy Together”
7. “13 Assassins”
8. “The French Connection”
9. “Chinatown”
10. “Shane”
Uh-huh. Does anyone really believe "The Wolverine" will have any stylistic relationship to "Chunking Express" or "Black Narcissus" in any meaningful way? This is just standard Hollywood propagandizing. Pretending that a blockbuster product is going to be something artistically meaningful. The time of the Hollywood artistic auteur is dead, these guys should stop pretending otherwise. There is nothing wrong with commercial cinema! I think there is a place for both artistic and commercial cinema, but let's not pretend these commercial films have any connection to these art products.