Disney Plus is adding an underrated Marvel movie this week. On New Year’s Day, the Mouse House’s streaming service will debut yet another film from the X-Men franchise that Disney inherited from Fox. While we’re still waiting to find out how the studio handles the R-rated Logan, January 1st sees its predecessor, 2013’s The Wolverine, become available to stream for subscribers in the US and other territories.
Hugh Jackman’s second solo outing as the immortal antihero has Logan travel to Japan when he’s summoned by an elderly businessman who he saved during World War II. Sucked into a shadowy realm of yakuza and samurai, Wolverine is pushed to the emotional and physical brink as he faces his own mortality for the first time. Rila Fukushima, Tao Okamoto, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada and Famke Janssen co-star.
James Mangold’s first outing in the X-universe isn’t as much of a slam dunk as Logan, but it’s a heck of a lot better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which can also be found on Disney Plus) and is worth a rewatch if you haven’t seen it in a while. Alternatively, you can view it as part of an X-Men or Jackman marathon on the platform, as there’s a lot of mutant-related content and a bunch of the Australian icon’s filmography on D+ at this point.
On the whole, it’s a pretty good entry in the franchise, too. On Rotten Tomatoes, The Wolverine has a critics score of 71%, while audiences rated it 69%. As the Critical Consensus reads: “Although its final act succumbs to the usual cartoonish antics, The Wolverine is one superhero movie that manages to stay true to the comics while keeping casual viewers entertained.”
So, as we sit tight and wait for Marvel Studios to roll out some new content at last, make sure to catch The Wolverine on Disney Plus when it drops onto the platform this Friday, January 1st.