When Hugh Jackman first introduced the concept of his third (and final) Wolverine film to the public, he described it as “Old Man Logan.” That statement carried a lot of weight. The comic storyline by that name, written by Mark Millar, revolves around a wild dystopian future in an alternate Marvel universe. In this dark future, the United States has been conquered and divided by supervillains, and Wolverine has inadvertently killed the X-Men. Even forgoing the deep connections the original story had to characters in the wider Marvel universe, a more-or-less faithful adaptation of the story would have painted a dark picture of Fox’s X-Men Universe as Hugh Jackman left the picture.
After seeing two trailers, Jackman’s final appearance as The Wolverine in Logan now seems pretty far removed from Old Man Logan’s storyline. That said, it still might have more in common with the comics than we originally thought.
In an interview with Digital Spy, Jackman revealed that, like Old Man Logan comics, Logan doesn’t necessarily share the same universe as its source material. In this case, that would be the other X-Men films.
Jackman went into more detail about why they chose to build Logan as its own thing.
“When you see the full movie you’ll understand. Not only is it different in terms of timeline and tone, it’s a slightly different universe. It’s actually a different paradigm and that will become clear.
“It’s a stand alone movie in many ways. It’s not really beholden to time lines and story lines in the other movies. Obviously, Patrick Stewart was in there so we have some crossover but it feels very different and very fresh. [Following the timelines] becomes a chess game that you try to serve, which actually doesn’t help to tell a story and it’s sort of been a bit all over the place. I’m not critical of it – X-Men was the first movie really in comic book [form]. No one thought there’d be another [with] different directors different off shoots.”
This may alleviate some fans’ questions about how Caliban is able to appear in this film after appearing in X-Men: Apocalypse, as well as stop any further conjecture about how Logan will fit into the overall (admittedly messy) X-Men film continuity. In an age of shared universes, this may be a letdown for some fans of continuity, but hopefully, Logan will benefit from the freedom of being its own thing.
“I said this was my last one and they said make the movie you want to make. And so [director] Jim [Mangold] and I had this blank canvas and we wanted to make something really different. Definitely tonally different. I kept thinking The Wrestler, Unforgiven… Early on we had the idea for the title not having anything to do with Wolverine in it but just being about the man. And what the collateral damage of being Wolverine your entire life would be.”
Stay tuned to Screen Rant for more updates and impressions of Logan as they hit.
Source: Digital Spy
- Wolverine 3 Release Date: 2017-03-03
