After the trailer dropped earlier today for ‘Logan‘, director James Mangold (‘The Wolverine‘,’Knight and Day’) sat down and shared a bit more about what we can expect from the film! He hasn’t shared the official synopsis with us quite yet but we do know that the third stand-alone Wolverine film has him caring for Patrick Stewart who reprising his role as an aged and ailing Professor X and introduces us to a young X-23 who the government is trying to turn into a weapon. The Reavers are involved and we’re in a post-apocalyptic world though it isn’t fully clear as of yet exactly what happened.
The film has been rumored to be very different than previous films which was something James Mangold intended from the very beginning. The first trailer for the film was planned out in detail by Mangold even down to the music:
“Obviously I have a connection and a fondness for Johnny Cash, and his tone and his message and his music. But the real driver in all these decisions is trying to separate ourselves, in an accurate way, from the other superhero movies. We think we’re going to deliver something a little different and we want to make sure we’re selling audiences on the difference. Sometimes even when a movie’s a little different, the studio’s trying to market the movie just like all the others. [Cash’s] music, in a way, separates us from the standard, bombastic, brooding orchestral, swish-bang, doors opening and slamming, explosions kind of methodology of some of these movies.”
Now, the film is clearly looking to adapt much of the ‘Old Man Logan’ storyline, at least the themes from it, but they’re aware that changes have to be made to have it fit in with the previously established timeline from the X-Men films. This could very well end up as an alternate future and it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in a way that will allow X-23 to return down the line.
“Hugh and I have been talking about what we would do since we were working on the last one, and for both of us it was this requirement that to be even interested in doing it, we had to free ourselves from some assumptions that had existed in the past, and be able to change the tone a bit. Not merely to change for change’s sake, but also to make something that’s speaking to the culture now, that’s not just the same style — how many times can they save the world in one way or another? How can we construct a story that’s built more on character and character issues, in a way as if it almost wasn’t a superhero movie, yet it features their powers and struggles and themes?”
But where in the timeline does ‘Logan’ take place? Well, it is past the epilogue from ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ at the very least:
“We are in the future, we have passed the point of the epilogue of Days Of Future Past. We’re finding all these characters in circumstances that are a little more real. The questions of aging, of loneliness, of where I belong. Am I still useful to the world? I saw it as an opportunity. We’ve seen these characters in action, saving the universe. But what happens when you’re in retirement and that career is over?”
While Logan in the comics could theoretically live young for a much longer timeframe depending on the writer at the time, this Logan is being shown as starting to age and his healing factor is aging with him:
“One of the things we all thought about as we worked on this film is, well, we don’t want to rebuild everything. We want to have some questions. In order to make a different Logan, and a different tone of a Wolverine movie, we felt like we couldn’t hold on to every tradition established in all the movies religiously, or we’d be trapped by the decisions made before us. So we questioned whether Logan’s healing factor causes him to heal without even a scar. We imagined that it may have when he was younger, but with age, he’s getting older and ailing. Perhaps his healing factor no longer produces baby-soft skin. So we imagined he heals quickly, still, but it leaves a scar. The simple idea was that his body would start to get a little more ravaged with a kind of tattooing of past battles, lacerations that remain of previous conflicts.”
Thanks to the success of ‘Deadpool’ it looks like with Hugh Jackman’s last outing as Wolverine we’re finally getting the berzerker which has long been known in the comics and only hinted at in the films:
“[This represents] to me the kind of aggressive, classical Wolverine action that we want in the movie – more of something that fans have been asking for, for a really long time. We’ve been limited in one way or another from giving it to them, but I think we’ve got the go-ahead to really go for it on this picture. So we’re really trying to deliver what folks have always imagined those kind of battles would look like. There is a lot of high-octane action in the movie. We’re just trying to do it very differently and very viscerally.”
I think we can all agree that this potentially will be the best Wolverine film yet but with ‘X-Men: Origins: Wolverine’ we know that it won’t be the worst.
Are you looking forward to checking out ‘Logan’ when it is released next year? What are your thoughts on what Mangold has shared about the film?
‘Logan’ will be popping his claws for one last time on March 3rd, 2017.
Source: Empire
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
