The Wolverine: 12 things we learned behind-the-scenes in Japan

To celebrate unleashing of ‘The Wolverine’ on DVD and Blu-ray, we visited the cast and crew of the ‘X-Men’ movie in Japan to get the facts behind our favourite side-burned mutant’s return, and learn how to take on old adumantium claws himself.

[Jackman Reveals skin cancer treatment]

1. The secretive script Yukio star Rila Fukushima received prior to auditioning was simply labeled ‘Fox Confidential’. Her character was called “Yvonne”, whilst Hugh Jackman’s Logan was listed as “Lance”.

2. Jackman apparently staged his own “Best kisser” competition during final auditions for the part of Mariko. Star Tao Okamoto remembers spending weeks rehearsing her lines, but when she arrived in LA Hugh wanted to improvise something else… “And then we kissed! Which wasn’t written!” she recalls. “I guess he was kissing every girl, to choose the best kisser. He’d always tease me and say ‘You’re the best’.”

3. Rila went through extensive training to convincingly handle a samurai sword like her assassin-esque character, but it wasn’t enough. After damaging a hotel conference room during one solo session, she started hiding her sword in a bathrobe and taking it out to the parks of Sydney for extra practice. “I tried to do it in the daytime as much as possible… because in the nighttime, people got scared,” she says.

4. During the vicious funeral fight scene, action star Will Yun Lee had to hide-out on the roof of Tokyo’s sacred Zojo-ji Temple. Only he kicked loose some of the tiles, resulting in some awkward negotiations for the production team.

5. Hugh Jackman acted as an on-set mentor to co-star Toa, as she’d never acted before. He even gave her advice on how to eat on-screen. “He came to me and was like ‘Try not to eat too much. After this many takes you’re going to be full… And you have to remember which food you touched in which order,’” she said. He helped Tao out when she recently auditioned for a new musical. Well, he was in Les Mis y’know.

6. Stunt performers who’d spent weeks rehearsing fight scenes, had to adapt their moves once they faced Hugh himself on set. “He’s had very big steps. Like a monster stomping towards you,” says stunt performer Hiroo Minami. During one fight scene, James Mangold was so impressed by the samurai sword vs. six-clawed action that he asked for an additional 8 minutes-worth of combat to be added - meaning Jackman and the stunt team had to improvise on the spot.

7. Japanese action legend Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Mariko’s father Shingen, reassured first-time actress Rila about her on-set nerves. “Don’t worry. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m playing this character for the first time in my life, and I’ve never worked with this team. So this is also my first time,” she remembers him saying.

8. Director James Mangold took Tao out of a scene at the last minute, which saw Logan hallucinate kissing three women at one, including Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey and Svetlana Khodchenkova’s Viper. Tao was uncomfortable mirroring Famke’s affectionate actions - apparently including playing with Hugh’s chest hair.

9. Stunt performer and coordinator Hiroo Minami (who doubled for the Green Power Ranger for several TV series) says he got into stunt performing because of Hiroyuki Sanada. For ‘The Wolverine’ he not only met his hero, but double for him in several fight scenes – including the moonlit samurai show-down with Logan.

10. Although the movie was set in Japan, some of the larger action scenes were filmed at locations in and around Sydney, Australia. Mind-blowing fight sequences such as the funeral show-down at the Zojo-ji Temple would film exterior shots in Tokyo, before seamlessly cutting to interior carnage at a Sydney studio. More sprawling scenes saw entire city streets converted to looks like Tokyo’s metropolis.

11. Rila says director James treated the actors like their characters, “almost like method directing,” she says. “Whenever I got tired, James would push me to the edge like [shouting] ‘I don’t believe you!’ [Then] I had a scene with Tao some day, and I was shocked because he treated Tao like an angel… He’s very nice. [But] sometimes for emotional scenes he’s push, push, push.”

12. Although some Japanese audiences have reportedly criticised how ‘The Wolverine’ shows Japan, Tao says people should instead be proud of their heritage: “It’s a sci-fi movie. You know, there’s no ninja or samurais in Japan anymore. But we couldn’t make this movie by ourselves, we needed [the American perspective]… It seems kind of cheesy, but I think it’s nice to remind Japanese people that [those things are] actually cool. We should be proud of that stuff we have.”

The Wolverine is out now on Blu-ray 3D, DVD and Digital HD from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.