To this point, very little has been known about a third film featuring Wolverine, the clawed, feral mutant played by Hugh Jackman. (He’s also appeared as Wolverine in five X-Men films.) Speculation has been that the story will follow an older version of the character, presumably based on the “Old Man Logan” comic book arc in which supervillains have taken over the country and Wolverine goes into seclusion.
It never seemed likely that a third Wolverine movie would adapt that story exactly. For one thing, The Hulk is a major character and the film rights to that character belong to Marvel, while Wolverine and the X-Men are with Fox. But director James Mangold (The Wolverine), along with screenwriters Michael Green (Green Lantern) and David James Kelly, are apparently inspired by that arc, taking bits and pieces of it to tell what appears to be the last Wolverine story.
On Wednesday, the promotional machine for the third Wolverine movie started kicking into gear. Jackman tweeted out a photo of a poster for the film. And it’s not going to be called “Wolverine 3” or anything like that. The title of the movie is Logan.
LOGAN pic.twitter.com/IeIvcvFyTE
— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) October 5, 2016
The title seems to imply the end of Wolverine in some fashion. Or maybe the character has already abandoned that identity by the time we encounter him in the film. Jackman told Entertainment Tonight (via IGN) that the movie, which has finished shooting and is now being edited by Mangold, would be “very different in tone, and hopefully different to anything we’ve done before.”
Here’s a look at the actual poster image, courtesy of Mangold.
3-3-17 pic.twitter.com/43M6utakTQ
— Mangold (@mang0ld) October 5, 2016
Mangold also tweeted out a picture of the screenplay’s second page, which makes clear in its introduction that Logan is not like most superhero films we’ve seen.
Page two of our screenplay. pic.twitter.com/5X93NtWuVS
— Mangold (@mang0ld) October 5, 2016
“Now might be a good time to talk about the ‘fights’ described in the next 100 or so pages. Basically, if you’re on the make for a hyper choreographed, gravity defying, city-block destroying, CG fuckathon, this ain’t your movie,” the page reads.
“In this flick, people will get hurt or killed when shit falls on them. They will get just as hurt or just as killed if they get hit with something big and heavy like, say, a car. Should anyone in our story have the misfortune to fall off a roof or out a window, they won’t bounce. They will die.”
Is that for the audience or for the reader of the screenplay? Presumably, a character (whether Logan or some other narrator) isn’t going to be telling the viewer what kind of movie he or she is about to watch. Or explaining that Wolverine’s healing abilities are now diminished and he self-medicates with booze. Unless Logan is channeling his inner Deadpool and breaking the fourth wall to the audience.
Speaking of Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds also chimed in on the Logan poster reveal, via Twitter.
That's my hand holding Logan's in the new poster. #tender
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) October 5, 2016
One other story point to consider: The post-credits scene for X-Men: Apocalypse was likely a nod to Logan’s story. In that sequence, someone is seen taking a vial of blood labeled “Weapon X,” the name of the experiments that gave Wolverine his metallic skeleton and claws. That vial is loaded into a briefcase with an “Essex Corp” logo on it, which alludes to a character named Mister Sinister. In the X-Men comic books, he’s a geneticist who conducts experiments on mutants. Will he be the main villain of Logan?
Logan is scheduled for a March 3, 2017 release. (That’s two weeks before Iron Fist debuts on Netflix.)
[CBR]
