[Update: Watch the first Wolverine teaser here!]
Iron Man 3 kicks off the summer 2013 movie season in comic book style, but it's not the only Marvel property hitting theaters this summer against Man of Steel. Hugh Jackman returns for another solo X-Men outing in The Wolverine, a standalone film aimed to make audiences forget about X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The marketing machine is revving up and Twentieth Century Fox is releasing the first trailer for The Wolverine this week. Teasing Logan's journey to Japan, new photos and a new poster have been released, offering fans their very first legitimate look at several of the key supporting characters.
Coming Soon shared this exclusive new poster for The Wolverine which drops the artistic style of the first poster in exchange for a rough photoshop job of Logan in berserk mode surrounded by ninja warriors.
If anything, the one-sheet does at least honor the idea that The Wolverine will showcase Logan's rage like we've never seen on screen before. The more interesting imagery can be found in the gallery of new stills shared by EW which offer the first official look at Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova) in a surprisingly true-to-the-comics green costume, holding Logan in an interesting contraption. Does that have anything to do with Logan's enemies finding new, never-before-seen methods of making Wolverine vulnerable?
[Update: Another, better poster - click to enlarge]
The images also throw Yukio, Wolverine's young ally in the film and the reason he heads to Japan, front and center with multiple shots of her wielding different weaponry. Lastly, there are more images of Logan in his black suit, claws out, and a pair of images with him and his new love interest, Mariko, who he falls in love with in the comics and intends to marry.
[gallery columns="2" ids="289450,289451,289452,289453,289454,289455,289456,289457"]
With the film's original concept meant to be a story involving no mutants at all outside of Wolverine, we wonder since that changed which of these characters may possess the mutant gene. We're also still awaiting official imagery on the Silver Samurai villain, confirmed to us directly by Jackman himself at Comic-Con a few years back while promoting Real Steel. We're also still curious on which X-Men character will cameo, potentially teasing next year's X-Men: Days of Future Past.
The first Wolverine trailer debuts Wednesday and will be attached to G.I. Joe: Retaliation in theaters.
The Wolverine is directed by James Mangold off of Mark Bomback and Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay. It stars Hugh Jackman, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Will Yun Lee, Brian Tee, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rila Fukushima.
The Wolverine hits theaters July 26, 2013. X-Men: Days of Future Past hits theaters on July 18th, 2014.
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Sources: Coming Soon, EW