Wolverine: The James Mangold Restoration, The

I have always held what seems to be the prevailing opinion that James Mangold's The Wolverine was one terrible final act away from greatness. This edit proves my faith right. By keeping the focus on Logan's story and rebirth it makes a much stronger second act in the story of The Wolverine that makes me regret that it didn't get a true sequel before the story's end. The edit obviously can only do so much - using a mention of studying biology to explain away some plot details and some dialogue removal to somewhat explain away the rest. It is however, much better than the studio mangled theatrical cut and will be the version of this movie I revisit in the future. There's only one thing that I wish made it into this version - the alternate ending!

A great edit! That finale with Yashida come back to life was always a downer to me, so excising that entirely really helps the film. A lot more small scale, just focused on Logan dealing with his trauma through protecting someone. It’s not a perfect edit, as only what was released on blu-ray was available, not the raw footage, but what was accomplished here was awesome. It was tightly paced, audio and video transitions were excellent, and the story was much stronger. I wish Mangold could have released his original vision. At least we got that with his later Logan.

It’s to bad there’s no english subtitles for the majority of the scenes where the Japanese cast are speaking…well Japanese as a little more context on there motives and actions would go a long way however that’s a problem I have with the theoretical and extended releases along with the bone claws not the edit itself but as for the edit that little trivia about the behind the scenes development and conflict between Mangold and the studio was both interesting and informative.

Just because it’s a comic book based movie doesn’t necessary mean it has to be marketed to children or that it should attempt to outshine or compete with the competition if anything a good comic book based movie should reflect the tone of it’s source material, besides teens and adults need entertainment to.

The Jean Dream sequences as I dub them were really well done with the buildup to the aggressive sequence of hard visual and audio cuts perfectly reflecting Logan’s tortured mind and foreshadowing the battle with this edits intended version of the Silver Samurai in a clever way with the tranquil luminance of the final Jean Dream sequence perfectly demonstrating Logan’s newfound clear state of mind and strengthened force of will to not leave the mortal world.

Yoshida’s shortened character arc now prevents his character assassination in the now erased studio enforced third act and better demonstrates not only the conflict between his own honour bond Japanese ideology but his willingness to abandon said ideology and attempt to continue on living and his short lived soldier to soldier friendship with Logan benefits far more thanks to the removal of said character assassinating third act but speaking of the third act.

The original intended showdown with Hanada and the rest of the ninja’s makes for a far more engaging and brutal climax than that of the tower with some impressive and fast paced fight choreography to boot with some great use of dramatic fade to whites from the explosion to the dream to reality and finally to the airport which effectively helps bypass the tower sequence all together.

Wakeupkeo’s and The Silver Screen Samurai’s names are animated and blended together into the ending credits sequence perfectly and match the style of the first portion of the film’s ending credits though I think the last remainder of the ending credits should have been changed to accommodate for the roles that are now deleted and reduced in the edit.

If this was the theatrical cut then I’m certain we would have had more films of Wolverine in Japan, because this edit was fantastic.
No more silly silver surfer or ridiculous battle scenes, instead just a a more localised storyline one a much smaller scale.
The only critique would be for the unexplained ninjas, but I guess they can be passed off as being yakuza or something, but there just wasn’t really an explanation of why they wanted to take over the company. I don’t recall if the theatrical version did it better.
Anyway, excellent job!

It makes A LOT of difference when you take away the more "fantastic" elements from the film to create a more somber, focused and intense action thriller. I really liked how the edit seems quite seamless at almost every point and the elegance and ingenuity used to make sense of the changes. Very, VERY good edit.