It has been four years since Wolverine unsheathed his claws in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and even though we got a glimpse of the famous mutant in X-Men: First Class, fans have been eagerly anticipating his next solo big-screen adventure. With the arrival of The Wolverine, that day is finally here, but you shouldn't feel ashamed if a little X-Men refresher is in order.

So far, the clips and trailers for The Wolverine all seem to support director James Mangold's assertion that the film is based on one of the character's most celebrated story arcs – a 1982 miniseries by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller – that sent Wolverine to Japan to rescue the woman he loves. While the adventure is one of Wolverine's most memorable sagas, the cast of characters playing a major role in the narrative is relatively small (for an X-Men story, that is).

Here's a brief introduction to some of the major characters that appear to have made the leap from page to screen for the film:

Wolverine

When we last saw ol' James "Logan" Howlett, a.k.a. Wolverine, he was dealing with some bullet-induced amnesia induced at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (While he made a cameo in X-Men: First Class, the events of that film transpired well before X-Men Origins in the character's big-screen timeline.) A mutant with a powerful healing ability and a set of retractable claws in each arm, Wolverine also endured a painful operation that coated his bones – and claws – with adamantium, a fictional alloy that's nearly indestructible. If The Wolverine follows along with the comic that inspired it, the story will likely pick up with Hugh Jackman's feral hero living a solitary, lonely life in the wilderness as he attempts to reconcile the tragic events of his life and avoid human interaction as much as possible.

Yukio

A free-spirited thief and occasional assassin in the comic book story that inspired The Wolverine, Yukio has been both enemy and ally to Wolverine and the X-Men over the years. In the comics, she's a powerful nonmutant who can hold her own against superpowered combatants, and her crush on Wolverine has resulted in the two crossing paths on several occasions. The new film casts Rila Fukushima in the role, and while it appears that her first meeting with Wolverine will take place in North America instead of Japan, the character doesn't seem to have changed much in making the transition to the screen.

Viper

In the Marvel Comics universe, Viper is an international terrorist who originally went by the name "Madame Hydra," having served as a leader of the organization early on in her criminal career. We're unlikely to see that side of the character given Hydra's role in Marvel Studios' Captain America: The First Avenger, but this version of Viper (played by Svetlana Khodchenkova) has seemed to retain some similarities with her comics counterpart. The original story that inspired The Wolverine cast Viper as the partner – both professionally and romantically – of Kenuichio Harada, the mutant villain known as Silver Samurai. Given that we've seen Silver Samurai in the film's trailer, there's reason to believe this relationship will carry over from the book. However, the film does seem to diverge significantly from the comic in making Viper a mutant with a forked, serpentlike tongue.

Silver Samurai

Yet another character who has been both enemy and ally to Wolverine over the years, the comic-book iteration of Kenuichio Harada is a powerful mutant who can generate an energy field around anything he touches – though he generally prefers to focus the field on his sword, using it to cut through nearly any material (except adamantium, of course). He is also half-brother to Mariko Yashida, Wolverine's love interest and the reason (in the comics, at least) for his trip to Japan. The Wolverine casts Will Yun Lee in the role of Silver Samurai, though we've only caught glimpses of him in footage so far, so it's uncertain how much of his comic book history will find its way to the screen.

Shingen Yashida

In the 1982 comic that inspired The Wolverine, Shingen Yashida was the boss of a powerful criminal organization that had turned his once-proud family into a feared arm of the Yakuza. When he forces his daughter Mariko to marry an abusive member of a rival family, this prompts Wolverine's trip to Japan, but the clawed Canadian hero soon discovers that Shingen is a tougher opponent than he anticipated. Actor Hiroyuki Sanada plays Shingen in the new film, and there have already been a few clips featuring Wolverine battling with Shingen, so that rivalry appears to have made the leap from page to screen.

Mariko Yashida

The daughter of Shingen Yashida and lover of Wolverine, Mariko Yashida is one of Marvel Comics' most tragic characters, with her life and heart regularly manipulated by powerful heroes and villains over the years. Played by Tao Okamoto in the film, Mariko is also the half-sister to Kenuichio Harada, whose rage is often focused on her and her role in the powerful Yashida crime family. Given how little we've seen of her in previews for The Wolverine, it's uncertain how much of her role in Wolverine's life will be brought into the film.

Jean Grey

Famke Janssen's ill-fated X-Men character appears in a brief clip from The Wolverine, and though it's pretty clear that her encounter with Logan is part of a dream sequence, it does provide at least one notable difference from the source material. However, even though Jean Grey had been dead for quite a while when the Wolverine story that inspired the film was published, Chris Claremont and Frank Miller did include at least one subtle reference to her subsequent return: a fiery phoenix that appears above an exploding warehouse. With X-Men: Days of Future Past arriving in 2014, could Jean Grey's presence in The Wolverine hint at a similar return in the next installment of the X-Men franchise?

Noburo Mori

We haven't seen much of Brian Tee as Noburo Mori in The Wolverine, but his character plays an important role in the story that inspired the film. A high-ranking member of one of the major crime families, his marriage to Mariko fulfilled some of Shingen Yashida's debts to a rival family, but his abusive treatment of Wolverine's former lover sends the mutant into a frenzy that leaves a long trail of bodies in his wake. It's uncertain how closely the film will follow this narrative, but Tee's character seems primed to play a significant part in Wolverine's violent adventure.

 

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