Hugh Jackman is back as Wolverine and boy is he looking good doing so. The first pictures of the actor playing his signature role in the forthcoming movie named after the character were revealed today, and they appear to ring true to what Jackman had told Empire Magazine earlier in the year.

Back then he'd commented "I had this image in my head of De Niro in that remake of Cape Fear. You were terrified of that character from the moment he took his shirt off and you saw all the tats; you know he was this coiled spring that would rip your head off, no matter how nonchalant he acted. That's who Wolverine is. I always thought of him as being lean, animalistic, not necessarily pretty. He has all this berserkery, and he's terrifying when he loses all reason in blind rage."

He certainly looks animalistic, as these new pictures show. Jackman is looking taut and ripped as Wolverine; he seems a little leaner perhaps than he did in the X-Men trilogy but perhaps more toned as a result, and he wears fierce stare on his face, his metal claws fully open. It's the first real preview of the film that fans have had, but then it isn't scheduled to come out until July 23rd of next year, so from now we can only expect to learn more.