All 3 Wolverine movies ranked from worst to best

2. The Wolverine

• Release Year: 2013
• Director: James Mangold 
• Cast: Hugh Jackman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Famke Janssen, and Will Yun Lee

The Wolverine premiered in theaters in 2013. It’s the second Wolverine movie, following X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009. There’s a four-year gap, and The Wolverine was released two years after X-Men: First Class, which is largely considered one of the best X-Men movies to date.

In the movie, Logan/Wolverine is still grappling with the death of Jean Grey and the events that took place in X-Men: The Last Stand, which was released in 2006, but because the first Wolverine movie was about Logan’s origin story, we don’t get to see how he’s dealing with those events until The Wolverine.

At the request of an old friend, Ichiro, he travels to Japan and tries to protect Mariko (Tao Okamoto) and finds himself in the middle of a problematic situation. Logan is forced to stop the Silver Samuriai to save Mariko.

While not the best of the X-Men movies, this is definitevely a good movie. It has a lot going for it, and it’s so much better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We also get so much more of the mental and emotional battle that plagues Logan in this movie, which sets up, in many ways, the final film of the trilogy in Logan. 

Now, we’re on to the best Wolverine movie. There’s really no debate about this one!