FAQ

When Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), a renowned 1891 Shakespearean actor currently touring in London, receives a letter from his brother's fiancée Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) informing him that Ben has gone missing, Lawrence returns home to Talbot Hall, the family estate in the small village of Blackmoor, England, to investigate the disappearance only to find that his brother's body has been found, savagely mauled by what the villagers claim is a werewolf. Later, while Lawrence is attempting to get some answers from a local gypsy camp, the camp is attacked by the werewolf and Lawrence is bitten. Soon, Lawrence begins to realize that he is also in danger...and that the werewolf may be the least of his worries.

The Wolfman is a remake of The Wolf Man (1941) (1941), which was based on a screenplay by German-born writer Curt Siodmak. The screenplay for The Wolfman was written by American screenwriters David Self and Andrew Kevin Walker. There is a novelization of the movie, The Wolfman (2010), written by Jonathan Maberry.

No. Van Helsing (2004) (2004) used the Wolf Man character but not the name "Lawrence Talbot," the name of the original Wolf Man.

The Wolfman himself is all make-up and prosthetics, as done by Rick Baker. The transformation scenes, however, are done in CGI. A small amount of shots required a CG "Wolfman double" for when the creature's behaviour becomes too dynamic to be executed by a performer in make-up. However, these shots are only a minority, compared to the overall screentime of the Wolfman itself.

The native language of the Gypsy is Romani (or Rom), a unique language that stems from their ancestral homeland in northern India. Those who recognize the language being spoken in the movie, however, say that it is Romanian, a Romance language descended from Latin and kin to Italian, French, and Spanish. Rom(ani) and Romanian are not the same language, and the substitution of Romanian for Rom(ani) has resulted in much criticism of the filmmakers.

Gwen asks Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin) what she can do to save Lawrence, but Maleva says that there is no cure...only release, if Gwen is strong enough to do it. Meanwhile, Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving) is also hunting for Lawrence, his intent being to shoot him with a silver bullet. Abberline and his men surround the Talbot house and wait, but Lawrence manages to sneak in anyway. He loads a rifle with the silver bullets that Singh (Art Malik) fashioned years ago and goes in search of his father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins). He attempts to shoot Sir John, but the bullets don't fire. John explains that he removed the powder from the shells many years ago. As they continue to fight each other, the moon rises and the change comes upon them both. The fight continues, werewolf à werewolf, until Lawrence manages to toss his father into the fireplace. The elder Talbot is burned in the flames, and Lawrence beheads him, just as Gwen and Abberline arrive. Lawrence jumps on Abberline, biting him, and then jumps out a window. Gwen grabs Abberline's gun and goes after Lawrence. The two of them meet up in the forest, and Lawrence jumps Gwen. She drops Abberline's gun and attempts to calm Lawrence down by saying, "Look at me...you know me...it's Gwen." Just as Lawrence's growling begins to lessen, Abberline and his men arrive on the scene, and Lawrence begins to attack again. Knowing that she cannot stop him, Gwen picks up the gun and fires a silver bullet into him. Lawrence grabs her hand and reverts into his human form. "Thank you," he says with his dying breath. In the final scene, Abberline holds the wolf-headed cane and looks up at the moon, already beginning to feel its pull. As the Talbot mansion burns to the ground, Gwen asks in a voiceover, "It is said there is no sin in killing a beast...only in killing a man. But where does one begin and the other end?"

The Unrated Director's Cut (DC) is almost 17 minutes longer and features a lot of new footage but only a tiny few more frames of violence in the middle of the film as well as one victim dying a different, somewhat violent death. Looking at the other effects, censorship seems unlikely. Especially the first half features numerous new scenes that make the movie a lot more complete. The opening as well as the characters are much more fleshed out. What is shown as a one minute summary in the theatrical cut is now much longer and also slightly different. The relationship between Gwen and Lawrence as well as the somewhat tense relationship between him and his father Sir John make a lot more sense in the DC. Another interesting thing is the short cameo of Max von Sydow as a mysterious stranger who gives Lawrence his cane which is not present at all in the theatrical cut. However, surely observant viewers have noticed the remaining "Assistant to Mr. Von Sydow" amidst the ending credits. The rest of the extensions are a matter of taste but are not bothersome in any way. Noteworthy above all are the new scenes with Anthony Hopkins who plays a much darker character in the DC.

A good place to start would be with the movie that most people consider the original werewolf movie, The Wolf Man (1941) (1941), starring Lon Chaney, Jr. Chaney reprised this role to a lesser extent in four more Universal movies: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) (1944), House of Dracula (1945) (1945), and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) (1948). The Wolf Man may have been "original", but it was not the first, having been preceded by Werewolf of London (1935) (1935), which presents the legend somewhat differently. In The Curse of the Allenbys (1946) (1946), a woman fears that she may be the wolf-woman who is ravaging people in a nearby park. The first teen werewolf was played by a young Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) (1957). In 1961, Hammer Studios got into the wolfman arena with The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) (1961), while in Spain, actor Jacinto Molina (better known to English-speaking audiences as Paul Naschy) developed his own werewolf character, Waldemar Daninsky, and appeared as Daninsky in 11 movies over the years. These include: (1968), Hell's Creatures (1968) (1968), Dracula Versus Frankenstein (1970) (1970), The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971) (1971), Fury of the Wolfman (1972) (1972), Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf (1972) (1972), El retorno de Walpurgis (1973) (1973), The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975) (1975), (1981), La bestia y la espada mágica (1983) (1983), Howl of the Devil (1988) (1987), Lycantropus: The Moonlight Murders (1997) (1996), and Tomb of the Werewolf (2004) (2004).

In the 1980s, The Howling franchise cranked out six werewolf movies including The Howling (1981) (1981), Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (1985) (1985), Howling III (1987) (1987), Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) (1988), Howling V: The Rebirth (1989) (1989), and Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) (1991). Other werewolf movies from the latter part of the 20th century that may be worthy of attention include The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973) (1973), Wolfen (1981) (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981) (1981), Leviatán (1984) (1984), An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) (1984), (1985), Silver Bullet (1985) (1985), The Monster Squad (1987) (1987), Wolf (1994) (1994), Project: Metalbeast (1995) (1995), Bad Moon (1996) (1996), and An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) (1997). More recent werewolf movies include the Ginger Snaps series in which two sisters try to find a cure for their werewolfism in Ginger Snaps (2000) (2000), Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) (2004), Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) (2004), (2) the Underworld franchise, Underworld (2003) (2003), Underworld: Evolution (2006) (2006), and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009) (2009), in which vampires and werewolves both sprang from the same source but have been bitter enemies ever since, and (3) the Twilight Saga, Twilight (2008), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) (2009), and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) (2010) in which vampires fight werewolves over the love of a teenaged girl. Also of note are Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) (2001), Dog Soldiers (2002) (2002), Cursed (2005) (2005), Wild Country (2005) (2005), Skinwalkers (2006) (2006), In the Company of Wolves (2007) (2007), Never Cry Werewolf (2008) (2008), and Van Helsing (2004) (2004).