The Wolverine
Release date: July 26 Oscar prospects: Bad Going through superhero withdrawal in the few short weeks since the release of Man of Steel? Well fear not, because your deprivation will soon be relieved and your addiction will soon be assuaged when Twentieth Century Fox releases the fifth Hugh Jackman-as-Wolverine focused X-Men film on July 26. (And don't give me crap about this not being an X-Men film. I know its sole focus is on Wolverine, but in many people's mind, this will be another X-Men film). Oddly enough, the whole X-Men series has felt a bit out of place, even unwanted, in Marvel's grand plans to take over the universe and forever destroy cinema. This is pretty ironic given the fact that the original X-Men film, released at the beginning of the millennium, arguably started the film industry's obsession with turning comic books into feature length films, and the relatively strong reviews for that film's sequel, X2, gave some legitimacy to the genre. Perhaps it is exactly because the series started the trend that it has seemed out of the hands of Marvel's master strategists, but for whatever reason, it has existed in a world apart from the whole Avengers universe. With The Wolverine though, a semi-origins story on the most popular of X-men set in present and past Japan, Marvel may be trying to hit the reset button with the character. Originally the company had enlisted by Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Black Swan) to freshen up the series, but after getting a taste of the auteur's radical vision for the series (which reportedly included heavy sexual content and brutal violence), the studio decided to play it a little bit safer and ended up settling for James Mangold. Even so, I'm sure the studio still wants audiences to see this as a "new angle" on the character after the so-so results of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but even if Aronofsky had been allowed to do his thing with the character, it was unlikely this film was ever going to see the light of day with the Academy. Possible nominations: Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing