Look Hugh’s Here: Wolverine Footage at Comic-Con

No wonder Wolverine rushed to San Diego.

I’m not at Comic-Con, which is fine with me. I hear the traffic’s terrible. So there. Fortunately, lots of other people are, and therefore I am able to pass on the happenings. This comes courtesy of ComingSoon.

Rumors had been flying around that Wolverine footage would screen at Comic-Con, so when it happened, it wasn’t quite a surprise. What was, though, was the appearance of Hugh Jackman, fresh from wrapping the film in Australia (all the little girls may have been busy screaming over Robert Pattinson at the Twilight panel, but I’ll take Hugh any day). Jackman thanked the fans for “making his career,” which is very sweet of him, but makes me a bit angry at the comics fans for embracing him as Wolverine; if X-Men had failed, just think of the tremendous career Hugh would be having on Broadway as an incredibly talented song and dance man! The theater’s loss is Comic-Con’s gain. Anyway, Jackman also spoke to Len Wein, the creator of Wolverine who was in the audience:

“I waited a long time to thank you personally and I wanted to shake your hand, mate. It’s one of the best comic book characters ever created and as an actor, it’s a challenge to play and I’ve just done it for the fourth time, and I still feel there’s more to find out and that’s down to you, from your great mind and heart creating a great character.”

(Maybe we can compromise–Wolverine: The Musical?)

Here’s ComingSoon’s description of the footage:

“…it begins with Jackman’s Logan and Liev Schreiber’s Victor Creed dressed in military gear in a detention cell where they’re being interrogated by the younger Major William Stryker, played by Danny Huston. He says, “You were sentenced to death for decapitating a senior officer. Your sentence was to be carried out by a firing squad at 1000 hours. How’d that go?” Then Wolverine said, “It tickled.” We see the two of them put in front of a firing squad who shoots at them, but they escape and we see Logan walking away as the building explodes behind them.

Stryker continues asking them if they’re tired of running and denying their true nature and tells them he’s putting together a “special team with special privileges” referring to the early stages of Weapon X or Alpha Flight. As he says this, we see brief glimpses of all the other characters in the movie, including Taylor Kitsch’s Gambit, who looked amazing in action, Lynn Collins as Silverfox, Kevin Durand as The Blob, and even a short glimpse of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool.

Most of the non-action scenes in the footage were dialogue sequences between Jackman and Schreiber with them talking over whether to take up Stryker’s offer, and this is obviously what’s going to lead to the long-time friends having a difference of opinions that leads to their age-old conflict. Logan says to Creed something about wanting to make a difference and asks how he’d like to get started, at which Creed tells Logan, “We didn’t sign up for this. Who do you think you are? This is what we do! Become the animal.”

From there, we get a few scenes of the experiments done to Logan to turn him into Wolverine, which looks like it was designed after the classic origin tale told in Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” story with him bursting out of the vat with the adamantium spikes coming out of skin. There was also a brief glimpse of Logan as a boy in a kimono with his claws extended which harks back to images from “Origins” and Frank Miller’s take on the character’s roots in Japan.

We see a few quick bits of Wolverine fighting some of the characters, including the Blob and Gambit, but the best moments are when he’s taking on Sabretooth (of course)–sorry, Tyler Mane, but I think Liev Schreiber is going to make a lot better Victor Creed–and the clip reel ended with Wolverine hanging from the top of the helicopter while it’s flying through the air.

Well! There you go. It’s almost as if you were there, isn’t it? Hang on, there will be more.