Includes SPOILERS for Wolfs.
Apple TV+’s Wolfs is led by two of the world’s most renowned movie stars, yet neither of them plays a properly named character in the crime comedy movie. George Clooney and Brad Pitt are at the head of the Wolfs cast, both playing crime fixers who are brought on for the same job, forcing them to overcome their egos and differences to get through a long night of twists and turns. The names Margaret’s Man and Pam’s Man are used to describe the two characters, respectively, based on the different characters who hire them for the job.
At the Wolfs ending, Clooney and Pitt’s characters acknowledge that they’ve spent the entire night of multiple shootouts, car chases, and fist fights together, yet they haven’t exchanged names. They tease the idea that they’ll swap names if they make it out alive before cutting off in the middle of their next gunfight. This keeps the mystery going for a potential Wolfs sequel, but there’s also an important creative choice in not mentioning either character’s name.
Hiding Clooney & Pitt’s Wolfs Character Names Connects To How Distanced They Are From Personal Identities
The Lack Of Names Is Crucial To Clooney & Pitt’s Character Development
A major thematic aspect of Wolfs is the character study of the fixer. The crime fixer is a movie lead archetype everyone has seen before, so Wolfs explores the isolation of such a job from a comedic perspective, examining how sad their lives really are despite how outwardly cool they portray themselves as. Both Clooney and Pitt’s characters are so distanced from their authentic, personal selves that they spend the entire night forgetting to exchange names. This is crucial to their character designs and for the overarching narrative of the film.
Another aspect of Wolfs that the Kid (Austin Abrams) comments on is that Clooney and Pitt’s characters are essentially the same person. They’re grown men who’ve spent decades working this job, and in both cases, they’re more fixer than they are human. The movie shows how similar these characters are, and seeing one another essentially becomes a mirror for them, allowing them to reflect on how far gone they are from their personal identities and their names.
Wolfs Works Great With Just Seeing The Characters As George Clooney & Brad Pitt
Wolfs Is A Star-Centric Movie
Of course, this isn’t to say Clooney and Pitt are anything like their fixer characters in the movies, but the movie works well enough with the idea that the audience can associate the characters with their actors. These aren’t transformative roles where they’re becoming a biopic lead or something of the sort; they’re essentially just playing silly, fictionalized versions of themselves. Wolfs has a lot of meta-commentary in the idea that its two leads are the butt of the joke, which is part of its charm.
