When you think of Wolverine, what man comes to mind? Is it a gruff guy in a yellow costume, prowling through grime and muck with his claws popped out? Is it Hugh Jackman flexing his Hollywood muscles? Perhaps he’s a Saturday-morning cartoon character, or the “monster” of a horror podcast. In the PlayStation 5 game Marvel’s Wolverine, developed by Insomniac Games, its mutant antihero is both an amalgamation of his 50-plus years of history and something else entirely: a romantic tragedy.
“This is a story that grown-ups will feel in their bones,” says actor Liam McIntyre, who not only lent his voice and likeness to the title hero but also performed motion capture. “How hard it is to love; how tough it is to be with toxic people for years. Even if they’re not good people, you owe them loyalty or your love, because you know it’s the right thing to do. Being able to tell this kind of love story—this mature story—was cool.”
In September, Marvel’s Wolverine became the newest superhero game on PlayStation 5. Set in its own universe where the X-Men haven’t formed, the game follows Wolverine as he tries to prevent a weapon that could wipe out all mutant life. In the process, he meets Jean Grey (played by Krizia Bajo), a powerful fellow mutant who is part of a small band of runaways targeted by enemy forces.
Insomniac applies its unique design signatures from its open-world wonder, Marvel’s Spider-Man, but Wolverine is a more linear outing in which players traverse endless corridors, alleyways, rooftops, and secret laboratories to fight increasingly stronger enemies. You know—like a video game. It’s Ninja Gaiden in yellow spandex, with all the M-rated violence expected of a comic-book superhero whose first and only response to a problem is to claw his way through it.
Marvel’s Wolverine, released exclusively on PlayStation 5, features actor Liam McIntyre as the popular X-Men member in his own solo video game.
As familiar as Wolverine might be as a video game, its characterization of the famous X-Men member is its real innovation. In contrast to most Marvel media in which Wolverine is a loner pining for Jean Grey from afar, Insomniac’s story is about traumas, past mistakes, and doomed love. No spoilers here, but Wolverine and Jean Grey have history, and players slowly discover the depth of their relationship. In the end, the door is open for more. And Wolverine gets to be a romantic lead who does actually get the girl, if only for a little while.
It’s something McIntyre—who calls the part a dream come true—always saw in the man called Logan. “Back in those days, watching X-Men: The Animated Series, I gravitated towards Wolverine, when normally I would have been a Cyclops guy,” McIntyre tells Esquire. He says it’s Wolverine’s unrequited love for Jean Grey that compelled him for decades. “I was like, What happens if that happened? This Beauty and the Beast thing. What would he be like? So it’s bananas that [our game] is that story.”
Of course, a man can’t dance without a dance partner. “Krizia is a profoundly wonderful actress,” McIntyre praises. “She offered so much every day to create this chemistry and this really romantic, grown-up story.”
While McIntyre admits bias for this new Wolverine—they bear a resemblance, after all—he speaks as a lifelong fan on its merits in bringing new depth to a character with more than 50 years of comic book lore. “I like our Wolverine because he’s dangerous, but it’s from being damaged by everyone around him,” he says. “He knows the horrible things he can be, but he so wants to be more than that. Jean is the first person who gives him permission to forgive himself and to even celebrate some of the danger. You are able to enact real good through this terrifying ability.”
McIntyre follows the tradition of Wolverine actors from Australia. Born in Adelaide, he honed his craft performing in regional theater, doing “tiny black box” plays “for like 50 people [on] stages with nothing on them.” In 2012, he took over for the late Andy Whitfield on the Starz hit Spartacus, about a Roman gladiator who leads an uprising. In video games, McIntyre has accrued a small but impressive list of credits. He’s been the main character of two Gears of War sequels on Xbox, and in the acclaimed 2019 game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, he was Taron Malicos, a corrupted Jedi who punishes players in a late-game boss fight.
After McIntyre was cast for Wolverine came the hard part: getting in touch with his angry side. Over Zoom, McIntyre reclines in a custom gaming chair in his home office. In his relaxed Aussie accent, he recalls watching the teaser for the new game in 2021. He wasn’t cast for the part back then; he saw it as just a fan. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna play the hell out of this,’ because I love Wolverine. Sure enough, fate had plans.”
On the hour-long drive to set, where Insomniac outfitted McIntyre in motion-capture bulbs and formfitting Velcro suits, he got into character with the aid of a playlist curated by another fan on the Internet. “It became the thing I listened to every day. It was a lot of Johnny Cash. A lot of country music and things I wouldn’t normally listen to, but I was like, ‘Wolverine would listen to this.’ That always got me feeling right.”
A screenwriter friend, Dan Hernandez, who wrote Pokemon: Detective Pikachu and the Spaceballs sequel, also shared with McIntyre a list of “canonical” Wolverine comics. They spanned the character’s origins fighting the Hulk to X-Men titles like Age of Apocalypse. “And watching Hugh’s stuff, and X-Men ’97 was out. Just learning everything about who Wolverine could be. Getting our scripts and figuring out, like, I learned this from Hugh, learned this from the Claremont run—just take our script and use the acting bits I have to sort of try and not think too hard about the impossibly huge task that it is.”
He says with a laugh, “People have been like, ‘Is it hard being compared to this? To Hugh?’ I’m like, well, yeah, when you think about it. I tried not to, but now I’m thinking about it.”
All his prep work would be for naught if McIntyre couldn’t actually go berserk. He learned quickly that Wolverine’s rage was more than just scowling faces. “[Insomniac] were like, ‘He’s full feral.’ Feral felt specific; I’ve been angry before but not that kind of angry,” he says. “So I was trying to look at rabid and feral dogs and dog attacks. Things that I can’t believe I’m putting in my search history.”
The ordeal made McIntyre tap into long-forgotten acting classes where he and other actors in study did animal work. He’d be in rooms with adults pretending to be birds or chimpanzees. “You’re like, This is dumb. Twenty years later, I’m trying to work out what happens with the neck, the frothing at the mouth, eyes looking everywhere, and all these things to create something specific to this character.”
As a young actor, McIntyre let himself dream small. He could be the “best friend” in a romantic comedy, maybe. Today, he’s Wolverine, at the center of a story he always felt should be told. “[It is] about family, about love, about what love can do and what love costs. I love that Wolverine’s a badass and a loner, but there’s a good man in there. He doesn’t have gadgets and fancy cars. He’s got claws, a bunch of pain, and an inconsistent memory. He’s a guy who gets beat down as a character design.”
He adds, “Other people stay down. But that’s not Wolverine.”