The Wolverine Doesn't Credit Claremont or Miller In Spite of Using Them In Promo Materials

If you've been paying attention to the promotional campaign, cast and crew interviews and other [...]

By Russ Burlingame

The Wolverine Unrated Version

If you've been paying attention to the promotional campaign, cast and crew interviews and other run-up to the release of 20th Century Fox's The Wolverine, it would be almost impossible to miss the fact that the film is based on a story by longtime X-Men writer Chris Claremont and iconic comics artist Frank Miller. Impossible, that is, unless your primary source of information was the film's credits. "Chris Claremont and I went to Times Square and watched The Wolverine, which was based on the miniseries he did with Frank Miller," wrote Sean Howe on the Facebook page for his comics-history book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. "Unfortunately, he didn't get a credit, not even a "special thanks" in the film. Nor, as far as I could tell, did any comics writer or artist, including Len Wein and John Romita, who created the character."

The Wolverine

That's not uncommon, of course; as Mark Waid pointed out shortly after the release of Man of Steel, it costs money to give somebody a credit (although a special thanks wouldn't have cost anything, one assumes), whereas intellectual property holders can generally get away without paying writers and artists provided they don't make it explicit that they're adapting a specific story. And, as we noticed way back when the first synopsis for the film was released, they have managed to avoid using the Claremont and Miller names in writing pretty often. "Based on the celebrated comic book arc, this epic action-adventure takes Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the most iconic character of the X-Men universe, to modern day Japan," says the official blurb for the movie. "Out of his depth in an unknown world he will face a host of unexpected and deadly opponents in a life-or-death battle that will leave him forever changed. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality." Still, given the frequency with which their names were uttered during promotional interviews and the openness with which they promoted the film as being based on a specific miniseries, it is a curious omission...and the fact that Claremont also wrote the comics that serve as the basis for X-Men: Days of Future Past adds another potentially interesting wrinkle.

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