Culture

'The Wolverine' Makes Us Want to Claw Apart Mini-Trailers

If this movie is remembered for anything other than a shirtless Hugh Jackman fighting ninjas, it will be remembered for taking the trailer roll-out campaign to the next level of ridiculous.

By Esther Zuckerman
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This article is from the archive of our partner .

Yesterday, we got a brief look at The Wolverine. Like, a really brief look. Like, a blink-or-you-miss it look. Like, a six-second Vine look. Today, we got a slightly longer look. Like, about 14 seconds more. If The Wolverine is remembered for anything other than a shirtless Hugh Jackman fighting ninjas, it will be remembered for taking the trailer roll-out campaign to the next level of ridiculous.

Director James Mangold first tweeted out the "tweaser"—oh goodness, that word—yesterday:

The Vine doesn't give us much other than a headache. (There is one potential spoiler: the presence of Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey.)

Then today Jackman and MTV's Josh Horowitz introduced about 20 seconds of footage:

We should be getting a full trailer soon. Mangold tweeted yesterday:

Some wires seem to have gotten crossed since a little later he indicated that the 20 second "tease of the teaser" would be skipped, but alas, it came to us and now it's believed that the full trailer is coming tomorrow.

The a lot of not a lot from the film is the source of bemusement and frustration:

We should have expected it would come to this: the "trailer for the trailer" or "teaser for the teaser" is now an established practice with the likes of Prometheus and Looper trying their best to get us psyched to see an advertisement for their film. With The Wolverine's new system in place, British GQ has written the "new rules of movie trailers."

Our take—screw the marketing department who hungers for whatever's viral—just give us the darn trailer already.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.