The Wolverine turned out to be a fun surprise, at least for the first two acts. It was a tight, violent tough-guy-in-a-foreign-land movie that ached to be rated R, and was surprisingly quiet; there’s one explosion in the whole movie, and it’s Hiroshima, so it doesn’t really count.
Also, apparently it ached to have forty freakin’ minutes inserted into the theatrical cut. Because that’s exactly what we’re getting.
Well, it’s what people who buy the four-disc collector’s edition are getting. That comes with the theatrical cut, the Unleashed Extended Cut, and the 3D version. Oh, and both versions of the Blu-Ray comes with a set tour for X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
Still, you’ve got to wonder what’s in this extended cut. It’s worth noting that the word “director” doesn’t seem to be anywhere in the marketing materials, except that you have to buy the ridiculously fancy version if you want to hear a director commentary (…come on, really?) So this might simply be “We cut in all the deleted scenes to sell you the $30 one instead of the $20 one.”
That said, it is fairly clear the movie was cut down quite a bit before it came to theaters. The ninja fight that opens the third act in particular was whittled down, which is obvious when you compare the trailers to the movie. So we’ll be curious to see what didn’t make the cut.
UPDATE: Fox got in touch via Twitter to let us know that the extended cut is approved by James Mangold himself. So if you were curious, there you go!