@WolverineMovie tweeted that advance tickets for THE WOLVERINE go on sale shortly, including these striking new photos of Hugh Jackman as the title character.

Will Yun Lee

Will Yun Lee spoke to Empire Magazine (click link for full interview) about his role as Kenuichio Harada, a character who is depicted as Silver Samurai in the comics.

“I play a man named Harada and he’s kind of a mysterious character, and the way the movie is structured he’s definitely involved in a lot of the relationships between Hugh and Tao and some of the different characters, but you never really know what side of the line he falls on. He’s part of some of the great action sequences you’re going to see.”

On action scenes and stunts:

“I had an incredible stunt double called Jeremy Marinas and I’ve never seen someone flip so much in my life! That’s where insurance gets involved… But the 87 Eleven stunt team let me do as much as I could. Whenever you’re fighting with weapons, there’s a level of reality because people don’t understand that these are still metal or hard rubber with sharp points that if the timing’s wrong you could definitely get hurt. There’s nothing like working with an actor who doesn’t know what they’re doing, because you’re always in fear of losing an eye. Thankfully, Hugh’s timing is impeccable.”

Rila Fukushima

Empire Magazine (click link for full interview) also spoke with “Yukio” actress Rila Fukushima, who calls her character a “badass” and says that she found her weapons training for the film both “challenging” and “fun.”

“Wolverine travels to Japan to see his old friend, Master Yashida to talk about his immortality. My character, Yukio is working for the powerful Yashida family, for the guy that Wolverine met years ago. So I’m the one sent to find Logan and bring him to Japan. She’s pretty tough. A badass! She’s highly trained in martial arts and is a bodyguard for the Yashida family.”

On fighting and weapons training:

“Once I got the part, I started training for three weeks before we started training. It was challenging, but I had a lot of fun. I learned Japanese swords and Bo staff and to fist fight, plus some knife work. At first, I learned a little bit of everything, mainly katana and Bo staff. My character is the type of girl who can fight with anything. She can fight with a cell phone probably! Anything she finds. For this film, I had swords, staffs and my fists. I learned some gymnastics too. I can’t spin in the air, unfortunately, but I learned basic things.”

James Mangold

/Film (click link for full interview) spoke with director James Mangold, who went into detail on the process behind making the film and using a variety of influences from both the original “X-Men” trilogy continuity and the Chris Claremont and Frank Miller comic book arc.

“I think it would have been almost silly to try to make a movie with the same actor and essentially reboot by adding more of the existing characters. I wasn’t trying to do that. I was trying to free myself tonally. Script-wise working on the film, one of the things I tried to walk the line between was what I really loved about the original Claremont-Miller saga and what had already been set in place in the X-Men universe in the movies and in the comic books. In a sense not to flagrantly contradict what has come before but to just feel like as a piece of tone, as a piece of filmmaking, the movie can exist separately. It kind of exists in its own energy, in whatever I’m doing. I wasn’t just trying to pick up wherever someone else left off.”

On reports of him working with “Marvel consultant” Mark Millar:

“I’ve actually never met Mark. He’s been working on a script the whole time. One of the things that just showed from the studio’s point of view, I haven’t traded emails with him and talked to him with what I’m up to, but the reality is… I think what Mark’s doing and more so what people here are trying to do is just make everything line up in some way, but also at the same time to keep each filmmaker being able to tell a story that works. I honestly have felt, and maybe it’s the luck of this particular project or maybe it’s the way that things are going to operate now, but I feel that we’ve just done what we’ve felt like we should do and the studio has supported it. It’s honestly been a really lovely process.”