The following contains spoilers for Wolf Man, now playing in theatersWolf Man is the latest reimagining of The Wolf Man, but makes some major changes to the story that played out in the 1941 classic and the subsequent 2010 remake, The Wolfman. As a modern successor to the classic Universal Monster Movie, Wolf Man takes the concept of a werewolf story and twists it into a new form. While there have been dozens of werewolf movies released over the years, all three versions of The Wolf Man focus on a man, estranged from his father and the home he grew up in, returning only to be transformed into a monster.

However, all three versions use this set up to explore different themes and concepts. While The Wolfman does make changes to the 1941 film and reimagines a major character as a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly villain, they are ultimately fairly similar stories. By contrast, Wolf Man changes the setting and characters in some very major ways, with the resulting tweaks to the main plot and specific nature of the werewolf altered as a result. Here are the biggest differences between Wolf Man and the versions that came before it.

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2025’s Wolf Man Ditches The European Setting

Wolf Man Shifts The Story To The United States

Wolf Man makes a lot of deliberate changes from 1941’s The Wolf Man and 2010’s The Wolfman like reimagining the setting from Europe to the United States, which have serious impacts on the story and characters. In both The Wolf Man and The Wolfman, the events take place in Europe. In The Wolf Man, the Talbots hail from Llanwelly, Wales. The Wolfman shifted the plot to the fictional village of Blackmoor, but kept the story in England.

In both versions, the main character (Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man and Lawrence Talbot in The Wolfman) had moved to America before the events of the film. By contrast, Wolf Man takes place entirely in America. While Blake was raised in a remote section of Oregon away from any major city, he eventually moved to a larger city. This gives all three films a shared aspect of “returning home” for their main character, even while the new film drops the European origins of the story. This shift to a remote location also isolates Blake and his family from any potential help.

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2025’s Wolf Man Is Set In The Modern Day

The Wolfman Is Set In The 20th Century Instead Of The Present Day

The time period of all three films is different, though two of them are specifically designed to reflect the eras when they were released. Both The Wolf Man and Wolf Man seem to take place in their respective present days. As a result, The Wolf Man appears to take place around the 1940s, with the cultural perceptions and available technology reflecting that. Wolf Man largely takes place in 2025, which is established early in the film.

The Benicio Del Toro-led film was overtly placed in 1891 as opposed to the present-day of the story.

The Wolfman was a much more specific period piece. The Benicio Del Toro-led film was overtly placed in 1891 as opposed to the present-day of the story. The result was a far more limited amount of technological resources, as well as a reliance on older weaponry and knowledge about the supernatural. This also meant the weapons to bring down the werewolf like firearms are more archaic, which plays into the ending of the film.

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2025’s Wolf Man Spreads The Infection Through A Cut Instead Of A Bite

Wolf Man Infects People Through Claws Instead Of Just Bites

In many versions of werewolf lore, the curse is spread from an infected creature to an unsuspecting person through a bite. This is how Larry and Lawrence are both infected in their respective films, leading directly to their transformations. In The Wolfman, Lawrence even infects Hugo Weaving’s Aberline this way, ensuring the curse continues even after Lawrence is killed in the film’s ending.

The transmission of the curse is far easier in Wolf Man, as all it takes is a slash from the infected creature to spread the transformation to Blake. Blake also does not heal as quickly as the heroes of The Wolf Man and The Wolfman did after being infected, as his arm wound quickly festers and horrifies his family. This plays into the way Wolf Man presents the transformation more as a disease than a curse.

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Blake’s Confrontation With His Father Plays Out Very Differently

All Three Versions Of The Story Are About Fathers And Sons, But End Differently

All three versions of The Wolf Man play with a dark father/son relationship, but they ultimately play out differently each time. In the 1941 film, Larry Talbot is killed by his father, who bludgeons him to death with a silver cane while unaware the creature is his son. In the 2010 film, Lawrence discovers that his father is also a werewolf, leading to a confrontation where Lawrence ends up killing John.

Wolf Man is more similar to the 2010 film, including a werewolf fight between the main character and their transformed father. However, Blake doesn’t realize his true connection to the other werewolf until after he has already killed his father, unlike Lawrence. Blake also dispatches his father in a more straightforward manner, biting into his father’s throat. Lawrence killed John in a more extended manner, ultimately setting him on fire and cutting his head off.

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Blake Is Married To His Love Interest In Wolf Man

The Talbots Get New Love Stories, But Blake Already Has A Family

In The Wolf Man and The Wolfman, Gwen Conliffe is the main female character. The former had the character working in an antique shop when she meets Larry, with their courtship thrown off by Larry receiving the werewolf curse. Gwen has a more overt connection to Lawrence in the 2010 version, as she had been previously engaged to Lawrence’s brother Ben before his death. Gwen falls in love with the hero of both films, and is left tragically mourning the character after their demise.

While Wolf Man doesn’t have Gwen, the 2025 film’s female lead ends up suffering a similar fate. Charlotte is Blake’s wife in Wolf Man, with their relationship story far more focused on their marital strife than the courtship at play in previous versions of the story. This plays into Wolf Man‘s ultimately different emotional focus on families. Despite being different characters, Charlotte and Gwen from the 2010 film also end the film with similar actions, turning out to be the one who has to kill their infected lover.

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Blake Is A Father, Whereas Larry & Lawrence Weren’t

Ginger’s Role Seriously Alters The Plot Of Wolf Man

A major aspect of Wolf Man is Blake’s struggles with being a good father. Still contending with the lingering trauma from how his father raised him, Blake does his best to not lash out in anger towards his daughter Ginger. Their sweet connection is a major element of the film’s emotional throughline, with Ginger’s empathy for Blake setting her up to be the one who realizes that Blake wants Charlotte to kill him in the ending of Wolf Man.

While the relationships between fathers and sons was important to the previous versions of Wolf Man, neither Larry nor Lawrence were fathers themselves. This is tied to the way The Wolf Man and The Wolfman gave their tragic protagonist a new love interest, whereas Wolf Man introduces the adult Blake with his own established family. This also gives the 2025 film a greater sense of suspense, as the risk Blake poses to his daughter if he loses control of himself helps elevate the tragedy of the situation.

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There’s No Supernatural Explanation To 2025’s Wolf Man

Wolf Man Makes The Curse Into An Infection

In The Wolf Man and The Wolfman, the werewolf curse is seemingly supernatural in origin. Although neither film reveals the true origins of the curse, people afflicted with it are transformed during the night and revert to their human form during the day. The Romani characters in both films are the ones to delve into the rules surrounding the curse, delivering exposition to the heroes (and by extension the audience) about how the curse works.

There are no such characters in Wolf Man, which keeps the true origins of the much more mysterious.

There are no such characters in Wolf Man, which keeps the true origins of the much more mysterious. The affliction is portrayed as a slightly more realistic infectious disease. This reflects the overall more grounded approach to the story, which also removes some of the supernatural strengths and immunities that made Larry Talbot technically immortal in the films that followed 1941’s The Wolf Man.

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2025’s Wolf Man Largely Happens In A Single Night

Wolf Man Ends With The Dawn

In many versions of the werewolf mythos on screen, the plot happens over the course of multiple days or weeks. This allows the werewolf to revert back to human form to contend with the fallout of their uncontrolled actions. Both The Wolf Man and The Wolfman utilize this approach, allowing the main character to appear on screen as a simple human again. However, Wolf Man doesn’t afford Blake that luxury.

After making their way to Oregon so that Blake can settle his missing father’s final affairs, the rest of Wolf Man takes place in a single night. The subsequent attack and transformation all occur within a number of hours, with Blake’s transformation taking much of the night to fully set in. The dawn also does nothing to undo the effects of this transformation, suggesting the body horror suffered by Blake would have been permanent if he had not allowed himself to be killed in Wolf Man‘s ending.

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There Are No Romani Characters In 2025’s Wolf Man

Wolf Man Has A Very Small Cast

Romani characters are central to the set-up of both The Wolf Man and The Wolfman. In The Wolf Man, Larry visits a fortune-teller Bela (played by Bela Lugosi), who informs him of the curse that is about to afflict him. After his death at the hands of a transformed Larry, Bela’s mother Maleva reveals more about the specific rules of the curse. Something similar happens in The Wolfman, which reveals that the villagers of Blackmoor blame the Romani who have camped outside the town. Lawrence visits the camp and it is there that he is attacked and infected with the werewolf curse.

The portrayal of the Romani in The Wolf Man is considered by many to be dated and offensive by modern sensabilities, which may have played a factor in the concept being removed entirely from the 2025 reboot of the franchise.

Maleva remains an important character in the 2010 remake, attempting to guide Lawrence to a possible salvation. By contrast, there are no overtly Romani characters in Wolf Man. There really aren’t many characters at all in the new film, which instead remains primarily focused on Blake and his immediate family. The new film also cuts down on the supernatural elements of the story, negating any need to include stereotypical portrayals of the Romani people as mystics to break down the lore surrounding the curse.

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2025’s Wolf Man Is A Lot Easier To Kill Than Previous Versions

Silver Isn’t Necessary To Kill A Werewolf In Wolf Man

The werewolf of Wolf Man is a significantly more mundane creature than the one that appeared in previous films. For example, the transformed versions of Larry and Lawrence were immune to many sorts of physical harm. The only true weakness werewolves had in those films were elements like silver and wolfsbane, which could hurt and even kill them. This is how both Larry and Lawrence died in their respective films, but subsequent sequels to The Wolf Man revealed that Larry could be restored to life and was functionally immortal.

Blake is a more grounded version of a werewolf, who goes through a horrifying transformation but lacks any clear supernatural attributes. Blake and the other werewolf in the story can be injured with mundane weapons like knives, with Blake killing the other werewolf by biting it through the neck. Blake himself is later killed with a single well-placed gun-sH๏τ. There’s no indication that bullet was silver or otherwise special, underscoring Blake’s mortal state. This makes Wolf Man a more grounded version of the werewolf story than The Wolf Man or The Wolfman.