The Wolverine: 10 Movies That Influenced James Mangold

2. Chinatown (1974) Given its standing as a futuristic noir flick, there's likely no way that The Wolverine could escape the shadow of what is arguably the greatest noir movie of all time: Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Set in Los Angeles during a terrible drought, it's up to Jack Nicholson's smooth-talking, nosy private detective to investigate a series of strange events that he believes to be connected to the city's vanishing water supply. As a noir movie, it's perfect. As a homage to noir movies, it's even better. In making his movie as dark and noir-ish as possible, then, Mangold will surely have reached out to Chinatown and taken in a whole bunch of its integral elements: its pacing, its cinematography, its twists and turns, its emotional cues, its devastating ending. Let's just hope the director doesn't take it too far, and have somebody ending the movie telling Wolverine, "Forget it, Logan. It's Japan."