Earlier this month an alternative ending for The Wolverine surfaced online, which showed Yukio (Rila Fukushima) handing Logan (Hugh Jackman) a briefcase containing Wolverine’s classic yellow suit. While it was ultimately cut from the film, the fact that director James Mangold is returning for a sequel seems to bode well for the costume finally making it to the screen, and Mangold has spoken about the scene during an interview with IGN, revealing how it all came about.
“I made it up on set. Honestly, first of all, I kept hearing and seeing from fans who were just begging to see this wardrobe, and I kept thinking as we were shooting, ‘How can I do this? How could I ever service this desire for people to see it?’ And there was a point where I just asked the prop department to make me a gift box. So when I did that scene on the plane with Yukio, with Rila and Hugh, I had no costume. The studio hadn’t approved of making one or doing anything, but I thought, ‘Let’s just shoot a couple takes where he opens the box and reacts to it, and I can figure out what to put inside the box later.’ There was just a point later in the cutting room where I put it together, and I thought, ‘It’s kinda sweet.”
Mangold then went on to touch upon his approach to the sequel, which is currently without a release date, nor confirmation about whether Jackman will return for his eighth outing as Wolverine: “Yeah, I think the thing I’d love to make sure we do is that we find a way to not to turn it into a “Will the world survive?” movie — I think that that worked for us here — but also not to make the same picture again. I think the key thing for me, you heard me talking about how I construct scripts, is just figuring out the key relationships and just what it’s about, what theme the whole thing is going to be about. I’ve got a good angle on it but I’m not ready to talk about it yet!”
Originally published November 21, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
