Hugh Jackman was okay. He made a perfectly good Wolverine, even if he’s a bit too pretty and tall for it. And too Australian.
But the guy who was made to play Wolverine – even if he was born 40 years before the character was created – has got to be Tatsuya Nakadai.
Yes, he’s Japanese. But look past that.
Toshiro Mifune gets most of the (well deserved) credit as the king of Japanese cinema, particularly the chambara and jidaigeki samurai films. But Nakadai, who often played opposite Mifune, may have been the real badass. Unlike Mifune, he seldom chewed up scenery, and he conveyed a lot of his attitude silently. Just watch him playing henchmen in Yojimbo or Sanjuro: He doesn’t say much, but he’s got those creepy and intense eyes.
Nakadai shows off his Wolverine credentials in his solo films: Goyokin, Harakiri, and Sword of Doom. Goyokin was the first that really opened my eyes to the potential: Nakadai portrays a master swordsman who exiled himself after watching his brother-in-law commit a massacre to cover up a gold heist. Solitary, silent, and scruffy, he just exhudes a “don’t mess with me” attitude.
His “fallen samurai” role was one he had taken almost a decade earlier in Harakiri, where he played a samurai exposing corruption and hypocrisy in a noble house. Here, too, he’s got his tough guy attitude in abundance, as well as a solid helping of sneakiness and dry wit.
No actor playing Wolverine should be without a psycho berserker side, something Nakadai shows off amply in the pitch-black Sword of Doom, playing a samurai prone to violence and bloodshed. Still laconic and solitary, he’s nonetheless prone to totally snapping and wiping out hordes of opponents; the closing sequence of the film is totally over-the-top, but also very Frank Miller-era Wolverine. Even the recent DVD cover could pass for a Wolverine cover with a few minor alterations:
Nakadai’s got plenty of Mifune and Eastwood tendencies, but also mixes in a sense of genuine menace and occasional evil. While Mifune was always, ultimately, the good guy, Nakadai’s characters often had more moral ambiguity: Sword of Doom offers a guy who could be redeemed, but could also carry on being a complete psycho bastard.
That’s the kind of actor you need for Wolverine. Mind you, you also need one who’s not in his seventies, sadly; although, if you watch the interviews he did for Criterion’s awesome Ran release, he could totally pass for 50. But as soon as someone invents a credible time machine or sophisticated cloning or de-aging techniques, Hollywood can make the perfect Wolverine film.