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Tag: james-mangold

  • How Hugh Jackman Says Goodbye to Wolverine in Logan

    Hugh Jackman from Logan
    Hugh Jackman from Logan

    How Hugh Jackman Feels About Saying Goodbye to Wolverine in Logan

    After 17 years, Hugh Jackman is hanging up his steel claws.

    “I knew it was going to be my last one so it … has to be perfect,” the star of “Logan” tells Made in Hollywood reporter Damaris Diaz. “I wanted to be at peace saying goodbye. I wanted to be really happy. I didn’t want to leave a stone unturned. So every bit of it I’ve been very involved in.”

    The Wolverine swan song has a weary Logan caring for an ailing Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart, while also protecting a newcomer — a young a mutant girl, who is very much like Logan, from dark forces trying to capture her.

    “In a way, this is my love letter to the fans, as well as I think to people who have never seen an X-Men film or a comic book film,” Jackman says. “We’re just trying to make a great film, not necessarily a ‘comic book movie.’”

    Hugh Jackman Calls Logan the Most Personal Wolverine Film

    Jackman calls “Logan” one of the most realistic film in the franchise, taking the cast and crew to actual locations.

    “It was hot, it was uncomfortable, it was on the road,” he says. “We weren’t in a soundstage doing a lot of green screen, which a lot of these movies seem to have become now. It felt real and rooted in reality. So that’s what we wanted. But I got to tell you it was hard work, very hard work, but incredibly satisfying.”

    It’s also, Jackman says, one of the most personal of the movies. He knew its success hinged on finding the right young costar for a critical role, and he says producers succeeded in casting child actress Dafne Keen.

    “I was really nervous when I read the treatment,” he says. “I love this idea that this movie is about family and putting a family together and putting Logan in the middle of it because he so doesn’t want to be involved. He doesn’t want to love. Love brings pain. So I thought, How the hell are we going to find someone who can play this role, who’s in the entire movie, hardly says anything, and holds the screen? And as soon as I saw the tape of her, I was just blown away.”

    Hugh Jackman Says He’s at Peace Ending His Run as Wolverine in Logan

    In the end, there’s as much emotion off screen, as Jackman comes to terms with giving up an iconic character.

    “The word is not bittersweet. There’s not bitterness,” he says. “It’s quite sweet. It’s calm. It feels calm. It just feels right. I’m really relieved to feel that. You don’t really know. You don’t know until that last day of filming how you’re going to feel, or when I see the movie. I love this character so much. I actually love this character more than ever. But I don’t feel it’s gone. I can’t feel it’s gone. It’s there with me, that experience is with me for life. I just feel happy. I’m grateful.”

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  • 5 Reasons ‘Logan’ Makes Saying Goodbye to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine So Damn Hard

    [SPOILERS AHEAD. MAJOR ONES. DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU HAVE SEEN “LOGAN.” I’m serious. Like, IN-ALL-CAPS SERIOUS.]

    RIP, Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine.

    The actor has spent the better part of two years promoting “Logan” as his #OneLastTime donning the claws and tank top. Gone are Wolverine’s spandex and unique hair. Instead, our favorite X-Men is rocking a grey beard and grey hair as he embarks on his darkest and most violent adventure yet.

    Director and co-writer James Mangold set out to deliver a definitive and R-rated comic book movie for adults. One that makes it hard to let go of Jackman’s iconic take on the character. There are a lot of good-to-great beats in “Logan.” These five make it the hardest to say goodbye. And even harder for whomever picks up the claws from here.

    1. So Many Great Character Moments
    Not the first thing you’d expect to read in a breakdown of an R-rated comic book movie, huh? Well, it’s even more refreshing to watch.

    “Logan” is largely a character-first western that happens to be a Wolverine movie. It’s about the cost that saving the world has on the very tortured man trying to defend it. A man who has killed more people than he’s had hot meals, a man who sees every one of those deaths in his sleep and wakes up forced to live with that blood on his hands.

    The movie double-downs on what this all means for our weary hero — he drinks constantly to numb the pain that his broken healing factor no longer can, he clings to the belief that he “sucks” at caring about people because “bad sh**” happens to all the people worthy of his care. This manifests dramatically in key scenes between Logan and Charles/Professor X, as the latter — despite suffering from the mutant equivalent of ALS — reminds Logan the importance of family. That the tragic hero still has time to give himself (at least) a sense of a life worth living — he just has to slash through a bunch of bodies first.

    In between all the claw-happy set pieces and violence, “Logan” delivers a resonate meditation on what it takes to be a hero. Sometimes, it does so by pulling on the heartstrings in ways that make your eyes leak tears the way Wolverine’s hands pop claws.

    Of all the Wolverine films, “Logan” comes closest to being the best.

    2. Patrick Stewart‘s Very Old Charles Xavier
    Holy shit, you guys — Stewart delivers an all-timer performance in a role that was previously not given enough interesting things to do throughout the entire franchise. (Unless you count passing off sage wisdom and exposition from the confines of a cool wheelchair interesting.)

    Maybe 15 minutes in, we’ve heard Charles say the word “fu**” or its derivative several times. That’s worth the price of admission, but “Logan” has more in store for the X-Men’s caretaker and father figure. They actually give him — and the actor — new and challenging things to play as a 90-year-old mutant burdened with the most dangerous brain and mutation on the planet. His condition manifests in the form of psychic seizures. Remember how Professor X stops time in the first two X-Men films? Okay, so, his seizures are like that — only the more violent version of that. So violent, they end up coming scary-close to putting the people Charles has sworn to protect in comas — or, as we latter learn, in the grave.

    The performance is a tricky mix of comedic and heartwarming, haunted and heroic, and it’s one Stewart pulls off effortlessly.
    His best scene, and one of his last, occurs in the second act, after Logan has carried him to bed before embarking on a side mission with the farmer and father who has taken them in. Charles tells Logan something we’ve heard only in voiceover in the second trailer, which comes off even more powerful in the completed scene: “This is what life looks like… People who love each other. A home. You should take a moment. Feel it. You still have time…”

    Sadly, time runs out for Charles at the hands claws of a surprise assailant. (The reveal of which is better left for seeing in theaters). Yes, Xavier dies. Worse, he’s murdered. And even worse, he dies before he can get to the tranquil life on the ocean Logan’s been saving up and chasing down for him. Before he can see whether or not Logan takes his aforementioned poignant, haunting advice. This movie is dripping with tragedy, and only a pro like Stewart knows the exact amount to give that story so it can be told effectively — and emotionally.

    3. The R-Rated “Berserker” Action
    “SNIKT!” indeed. The shackles of PG-13 ratings are gone. In their place, lots of claws through the head and face.

    “Logan’s” hack and slash approach to action grows repetitive — you can only come up with so many new ways to stab skulls. At the same time, it’s done at times in a very minimalistic way — no wire-fu, like in previous “X-Men” films. It all builds to a mostly satisfying oner, with Wolverine going full “Berserker Rage” to deliver wants fans have waited nearly 20 years to see.

    4. X-23
    Laura (newcomer Dafne Keen) is to “Logan” what Eleven is to “Stranger Things.”

    Huge chunks of her screentime are spent silently observing and reacting to things, and Keen excels with her intentionally minimalist work. But the real revelation comes toward the film’s third act, when she finally speaks — and punches Logan in the face. Keen’s performance gets increasingly complex as the story demands X-23 shed some tears in battle, in a scene the gives the young actor a chance to (mostly) hold her own opposite a veteran like Jackman.

    5. Wolverine’s Last Stand
    The final fight, as refreshing as it is not taking place inside a factor or lair or involving a repeat of the crap that mired the ending of “The Wolverine,” it doesn’t quite pack the visceral or emotional payoff necessary to fully bring it home. Especially Wolverine’s death scene.

    I told you — there were spoilers. And yes, Canada’s most famous mutant export finally dies. He goes out not in a blaze of glory, or even with a chance to kill the one baddie our hero has a legit beef with. He dies realizing X-23, his daughter/clone, can go on being something different than the lab made her to be. All before spending one of his last breaths feeling what both that sense of family Charles spoke about and death — that which this almost-immortal mutant has spent a life immune to.
    As “it was just okay” as the climatic action beats are, these final moments spent with a dying Logan are, for the most part, a gut-punch. Their impact fades quicker than we had hoped, given the character’s legacy and popularity. But credit must be given to Mangold for ending his R-rated, big-budget Marvel movie on an emotional note. That takes balls to give the audience a lump in their throat as they leave the theater.

    An effort that hopefully sends them back in for a second viewing.

  • ‘Logan’ Director James Mangold Can’t Wait for You to See His ‘Comic Book Movie for Adults’

    “Logan” director James Mangold really wanted to make an “adult comic book movie.”

    “We have adult Westerns and adult science-fiction movies, but somehow comic book movies — even by their nature and titles — seem like they’re for 12-year-olds,” he recently told Moviefone at a press event for his latest film, which will reportedly be Hugh Jackman’s last time going snkit as Wolverine.

    Mangold got want he wanted with “Logan.” As 20th Century Fox, the home of the X-Men films, was finding success with its R-rated “Deadpool,” the studio announced the final chapter of the Wolverine saga would share the same kid-inappropriate tone.
    Hugh Jackman reprises the titular role for the film, which has long been teased to adapt parts of the “Old Man Logan” storyline from the comics. “Clearly we drew a lot of inspiration, not only from ‘Old Man Logan,’ but other sources,” Mangold revealed.

    The director, who also co-wrote “Logan,” described Mark Millar’s original take as Clint Eastwood in the Western “Unforgiven.”

    “I think the idea that I wanted to explore further was the idea of being in kind of twilight, of being over it, of losing faith,” he added. From the moment Mangold started mapping out the plot of “Logan,” the story also became about X-23, the female clone of Wolverine, played here by Dafne Keen.
    “The biggest thing that’s inspiring from the comics and the storyline, besides drawing from a sense of place and setting for ‘Old Man Logan,’ was also drawing upon the X-23 comic books and the charting of that character and the launching of the character,” he explained.

    Mangold wanted more “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Paper Moon” than the typically sexualized actress playing a younger superhero, which led to a central question: “How do you make an adult, intense movie, but you involve the issues of children coming to terms with the darkness of the adult world?” The filmmaker told Moviefone that he sees a longer shelf-life for X-23 beyond “Logan,” so perhaps there’s room to explore her story further in the future.

    “Logan” hits theaters March 3.

  • ‘Logan’ Footage Reveals the Most Badass Kid Since Eleven in ‘Stranger Things’

    X-23 is the new Eleven.

    “Logan” director James Mangold noted during a press preview of the film that actress Dafne Keen is only 11 years old (soon to be 12), but she’ll no doubt draw comparisons to the popular character from Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” Why? Because both are tough-as-nails, they barely speak, and they pack some seriously badass abilities.

    Marvel fans long speculated that Keen’s character in “Logan” was the fan-favorite clone of Wolverine. This was further egged on by teaser imagery on social media naming her Laura, which many presumed to be Laura Kinney. Fox finally made the news official to press in the best way possible — by screening the first 40 minutes of “Logan.”

    In the comics, Laura was the 23rd attempt to clone Wolverine, hence the name X-23. A secret organization attempted to re-create the Weapon X project, which laced Logan’s skeleton with unbreakable adamantium. Because the mutant’s genetic sample was so damaged, the team could not retrieve the Y chromosome to create a male clone — but they could clone a female equivalent.
    The film offers a different scenario more aligned with the world of the X-Men movies. We pick up with Hugh Jackman‘s Logan in the year 2029, a time when there hasn’t been a mutant birth in 25 years and the species has virtually died out. (Also, tigers are extinct. The future is that bad.)

    It’s also a time where X-Men comics exist within the same space, elevating mutants to a certain degree of celebrity.

    “The interesting thing for me was the idea, and in show business many of us experience this in more regular ways, but just when legends are made human, and what happens when a legend is living under the weight of all of the bulls**t and hyperbole,” Mangold explained to press after the footage screening.

    “Who is the Real Paul Bunyan and did he really have Babe the Blue Ox, or was it really just a large ox and it got exaggerated? And so the idea for us was this idea that they live in a world in which the legend of them exists, but it’s not really what happened, completely — or is it?”

    It’s through this concept where we find Logan working as a limo driver in El Paso, Texas, ferrying bachelorette parties, socialites, frat bros, and all manner of ilk through and around the border of Mexico. (There also seems to be a certain wall on the border that parallels more recent events in our present.) Adding insult to injury, Logan’s mutant powers are failing — which we see in the opening scene, where a dreary Logan wakes up to find a gang trying to steal his tires, it takes much longer for his healing abilities to kick in and his third claw doesn’t always extend fully.
    Logan hangs his hat in an abandoned warehouse/factory in the middle of the desert, where he and his roommate, the albino mutant tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant), care for an ailing Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart). This Charles is unlike any version of the character we have seen before; he’s very old, suffering from the mutant equivalent of alzheimer’s, and he loves to say the F-word. A lot. It’s hilarious.

    Logan and Caliban take turns administering daily medication to Charles that helps keep his untamable telepathic powers in check, while his confines — a tipped-out water tower — offers further protection as the minerals in the metal work to keep his abilities contained within the space.

    Soon, they get to meet Laura.

    During an early scene, in which Logan is waiting for a client just beyond a rain-soaked funeral, he’s approached by Gabriella (“Fear the Walking Dead” actress Elizabeth Rodriguez). To her, Wolverine has become a heroic symbol, and she begs him to help her.
    Logan, having shed this visage long ago, shakes her off, thinking that’s the last he will see of her. Later, after retrieving more of Xavier’s meds — which turn out to be regular aspirin — Logan is surprised by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook, above), a mysterious man in black with (naturally) a bionic arm. He’s looking for Gabriella because, as he says, she “took something of mine when I wasn’t looking” and hopes Logan might have encountered her.

    Although he tries to stay out of the situation, Logan encounters Gabriella again. She used the limo service to lure him to a motel room, where, exasperated and bleeding, she claims Pierce is her angry boyfriend trying to take their daughter, Laura, who’s keeping to herself in the parking lot. They need to get to North Dakota by Friday or else they’ll “miss our chance to cross.” (Where are they crossing? Unsure. But it is implied that the final intended destination might be Canada, Logan’s ol’ stomping grounds.)

    Logan later returns to the hotel and finds that Gabriella has been killed. Laura, being a resourceful girl, hides in the trunk of his limo and is taken back to the warehouse. Though she doesn’t say much, Xavier uses his abilities to communicate with Laura, promising they’ll help her while trying to explain to Logan that she’s just like him.
    We don’t learn what he means by that until Pierce shows up with The Reavers. While Logan is outside, men begin flooding the warehouse to apprehend the girl. The sound of gunfire and screams rip through the air, and Laura calmly walks out of the building, stained with blood and holding the decapitated head of a Reaver, which rolls like a bowling ball to her tormenters.

    Pierce tries to convince Laura to come with them, but his coddling expression turns to terror as two adamantium claws slink out from each set of knuckles.

    X-23 mashes together the inventive acrobatics of Scarlett Johansson‘s Black Widow with the ferocity of Wolverine’s berserker rage to deliver a fight frenzy worthy of the film’s R rating — and when the Reavers seem to have an upper hand on the little serial killer, she has those two extra blades in her feet to assist.

    She also runs up the front of the moving limo and into the sunroof as easy as we would get up from the couch to grab something from the fridge. Yep. She’s that badass.

    “She will even get more amazing for you guys when you see the rest of the movie,” Mangold promised.

    He and co-writer Scott Frank didn’t want to fall into the same “easy screenwriting tricks” in their approach to bringing a hispanic X-23 to the screen. “The first idea that occurred to me was doing ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ with these characters, and that’s kind of, believe it or not, what evolved into this,” Mangold said.
    Their in-depth search for an actress led to Keen, who performs a lot of the stunts herself.

    “I wanted to take the kind of cute stink off Laura,” Mangold added. “I didn’t want it to turn into kind of Kewpie-doll actress. I was really nervous about that, and it’s one of the great things happening in cinema now — is that language, we’re relying less. Movies are becoming more and more bilingual, and multilingual, and it’s actually making us as directors tell stories, again, more with eyes, and camera, and in collaboration with our actors.”

    In this regard, “Logan” packs the added significance of existing within our modern political climate — as we approach the age of President Donald Trump, a man who’s made defamatory blanket remarks on the hispanic population, here comes a blockbuster film that introduces a female hispanic superhero to a major movie franchise.

    “I think we’ve all felt what’s going on in the country right now, for several years, so I mean, I don’t think we’re — I’m not Kreskin, to make an old reference,” Mangold joked. “But I did, you felt this going on. You feel what’s going on, and I’ve felt it for a long time.”

    According to him, the film couldn’t take place in a “contemporary moment,” choosing instead to project an America years away.
    “When I was a kid, I’d imagined what it would be like in 25 years, and I didn’t imagine that my hometown would pretty much look exactly the same way as it does now, and that this Jetsons idea of the future is not so such a reality,” he explained.

    “As a lot of the world looks pretty much the same, with some styling changes, but the undercurrents of stress that you’re feeling, I just imagined everything we were feeling now. I didn’t quite imagine what was gonna happen over the next 18 months, but that I imagined it percolating.”

    “Logan” hits theaters on March 3, 2017.

  • Patrick Stewart Looks Old AF in Our First Look at Professor X in ‘Logan’

    First, a poster and title for the new Wolverine movie. Now, our first look at a very old Professor X.

    “Logan” director James Mangold tweeted a camera and make-up test revealing how Patrick Stewart will look in what could be his last appearance as Charles Xavier.

    The film is expected to take place years after the events of “The Wolverine,” and center on an aging Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who struggles with a diminished healing factor. Enter Professor X, who is also clearly succumbing to the effects of aging — but what does senility mean for a psychic mutant.

    We can’t wait to find out when “Logan” hits theaters March 3, 2017.

  • ‘Wolverine 3’ Has a New Title, Poster, Release Date, Script Page, Deadpool Joke

    Cast members Ryan Reynolds (R) and HughOld Man Logan — or just “Logan” — will return to theaters one last time in March. Hugh Jackman revealed the official title of his third Wolverine film in a billboard photo, and director James Mangold shared the poster on Twitter with the March 3, 2017 release date in clear view.

    Mangold also teased a copy of Page 2 of the “Logan” script, for anyone who wants to zoom in close and get some early spoilers. (Warning: There’s an f-bomb right at the top of the script page and more curse words after that.)


    Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool in the same universe as Wolverine (and made his own debut in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) continued his bromance with Jackman by quickly tweeting this poster joke:


    He wins everything just for that perfect hashtag.

    Jackman’s final Wolverine film is rumored to be based on the Old Man Logan comic book storyline, and the script page above adds more weight to the theory. Like “Deadpool,” “Logan” will be rated R. Fox producer Simon Kinberg previously confirmed the story takes place in the future, adding that it’s “a very radical, bold, different Wolverine than you’ve ever seen in any of these movies. […] [I]t’s kind of like a Western in its tone. It’s just a very cool, different film.”

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