James Mangold has been expanding on what we can expect from forthcoming superhero flick The Wolverine , focussing particularly upon what the Japanese setting brings to the party.
“The wonderful opportunity for me with this film is that 90 per cent of it takes place in Japan,” says Mangold, “and even though other elements remain constant from the other pictures, namely Hugh Jackman, we kind of got our chance to reboot the tone and go a little darker and a little deeper than they’ve gone before with this character.”
“There is a significant amount of Japanese spoken in the movie, and the cast is almost entirely Japanese. So there is this wonderful sense of cross-pollination between a very Western character and a far Eastern culture, and I think it’s very cool and something we haven’t seen so far.”
“I think there is a lot of ways that Japanese film, Japanese fighting, Japanese martial arts have had an effect on this movie. And certainly the movie is dripping with Japanese tradition both cinematically, fighting-wise and philosophically as well.”
Co-starring Hugh Jackman, Will Yun Lee and Tao Okamoto, The Wolverine opens in the UK on 26 July 2013.
