20th Century Fox recently held a press screening for THE WOLVERINE “Unleashed Extended Edition” which is available now in Digital HD and on Blu-ray December 3rd. In attendance were IGN, who spoke with director James Mangold about the footage added to the film and why the alternate ending of Wolverine receiving his iconic comic book costume was left out of the film (it appears on the Blu-ray as a deleted scene).
“I love when Yukio tells [Logan] to stop being a dick in the car,” says Mangold, laughing, when asked about the extended scenes. “There are sillier things, but maybe not, more subtle things — there’s a piece when Mariko and Logan run in from the rain, where they come in the house and turn on lights, and in the theatrical cut you go right to a teapot boiling. It’s quiet and just behavior, but I like the slower transition through it all. I love the scene between Hal [Yamanouchi] and Hiro Sanada, the old man Yashida and his son, where he tells him he’s been disinherited. There’s a lot of little pieces, little things I love, little things I’m glad to have back.
“The action’s fun to have back, but for me as a filmmaker, it’s more than that — Also, there’s a sequence when he’s on the rooftop at the Love Hotel, where he gets attacked by these guys, that we had a great deal of question whether we should do or not. It was partly a ratings issue and partly whether it was too much. I think we went back and forth, but I’m glad to see it in, because I think it looks really cool. It’s a cool sequence.”
Featured on the upcoming Blu-ray is an alternate ending deleted scene which shows Logan on board the jet being directed by Yukio to open a gift box, which contains his iconic comic book costume. “I made it up on set,” says Mangold. “Honestly, first of all, I kept hearing and seeing from fans who were just begging to see this wardrobe, and I kept thinking as we were shooting, “How can I do this? How could I ever service this desire for people to see it?” And there was a point where I just asked the prop department to make me a gift box. So when I did that scene on the plane with Yukio, with RIla [Fukushima] and Hugh [Jackman], I had no costume. The studio hadn’t approved of making one or doing anything, but I thought, “Let’s just shoot a couple takes where he opens the box and reacts to it, and I can figure out what to put inside the box later.” There was just a point later in the cutting room where I put it together, and I thought, “It’s kinda sweet.”
Photo courtesy of IGN.
I could care less about deleted scenes. If they are deleted, that means they were no good.
Deleted scenes aren’t always bad. Some of Storm’s best character development scenes were deleted in X1.
The Extended Cut makes a great movie even better. There is a lot more blood in this one (they would never have gotten the PG 13 rating with the final Ninja fight scene!!! ). The extended scenes add to the characters and the film feels even more coherent.
One of the best films of the genre for sure and it does not need to hide behind THE DARK KNIGHT!