Warning. Major Logan spoilers follow…
With this year’s Logan, director James Mangold and star Hugh Jackman delivered a rather fantastic end to Jackman’s 17-year stint as the fan favourite mutant superhero Wolverine, culminating in an emotional climax where Logan makes the ultimate sacrifice in order to save his clone/daughter Laura and her young mutant friends from his other clone, X-24.
While lots of tears were shed over the final scenes, James Mangold has revealed to CinemaBlend that he doesn’t view the conclusion of the film as a downer – quite the opposite in fact, as he sees it as a happy ending given the suffering Wolverine has endured throughout his life.
“Something gets born of every tragedy. In many ways, I look at the movie and I realize what a happy ending it is. At least from the perspective of Wolverine’s character. I think, unlike anything you have seen in the previous seven or eight movies, he’s happy in his final moments on this earth. He’s happy. He feels somehow satisfied, and I think that’s something very few of us might be able to say in our parting glances from this world. That we suddenly taste and know everything and feel like we got to experience everything. And I think in some way, and Hugh’s performance is really transcendent there, he communicates that and leaves us more moved than bereft.”
SEE ALSO: Logan producer says casting a new Wolverine is “not something I can think about”
Meanwhile, in a separate interview with Collider, Hugh Jackman has admitted that he was initially reluctant to pull double duty as X-24, and wasn’t sure how fans would react to the character:
“I was very skeptical of having X-24 being played by me. I understood what it represented and thematically the idea of battling himself, which of course is right at the core of this character that we never fully got to, so I kind of loved the externalization of that. But I also know that myself as an actor and fans of Wolverine come up to me in the street every day and go, ‘We wanna see that full berserker animalistic crazy off-the-wall Wolverine,’ right? That we don’t feel we’ve fully seen it, so I was like, ‘Jim if we introduced halfway or near the end of the movie that full berserker animalistic crazy Wolverine and he’s somehow fighting our hero, audiences won’t know what to feel.’ And I remember him saying, ‘Trust me, trust me, trust me.’ And I was a bit of a pain in the ass on that one, I was like, ‘I’m just not sure. Let’s keep exploring it and exploring it.’”
However, Jackman went on to reveal that his fears proved unfounded, particularly given the way that X-24 was introduced to the audience: “When I saw the movie it’s just clear, for some reason I think because he skewers Patrick Stewart in that moment the audience just sort of hates him. We did some subtle things, I changed the bridge of my nose, I wore contacts — I just wanted him to look a little different from myself. And I think by that point we’d created already the Wolverine that people wanted to see. So anyway, that was one of my examples of being wrong.”
SEE ALSO: Logan director James Mangold teases Dafne Keen’s return as X-23
In the near future, a weary Logan cares for an ailing Professor X in a hide out on the Mexican border. But Logan’s attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant arrives, being pursued by dark forces.
Logan reunites Hugh Jackman with The Wolverine director James Mangold and also stars Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Merchant, Dafne Keen, Eriq La Salle, Elizabeth Rodriguez and Elise Neal.
Originally published May 19, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
