Hugh Jackman and Willem Dafoe continue their “Actors on Actors” video interview (they discuss superhero films here) where Hugh Jackman offers up the reason he hung up his Wolverine claws is due to none other than Jerry Seinfeld, which also happened to be an inspiration in part for the Logan movie.
Hugh Jackman recollects working on the first X-Men movie where Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was actually an assistant to producer Laura Shuler Donner at the time, and Jackman remembered how Feige’s office resembled a comic book store as comics and merchandise were all over the place.
Hugh Jackman then went on to say how it has been 17 years later, and that he had dinner one night with his friend Jerry Seinfeld and asked about the end of the Seinfeld series and how did he decide to do it. Seinfeld offered that “you should never spend everything creatively because it’s almost Herculean to start up again. You should always have something in the tank. Leave the party before it gets too late kind of theory, and then somehow it spurs you into the next thing.” On his way home in the cab, Jackman told his wife that this movie will be the last and came up with the idea for doing Logan with director James Mangold.
“I woke up the next morning with this very strong idea, which Jim Mangold and I have been working on, of treating it not like a comic book movie in any way, treating him not like a superhero, but as a human being, who’s lived a life of violence,” Jackman said. “Let’s make a movie about the ramifications of violence, and I was thinking the Wrestler, I was thinking Unforgiven. That kind of thing, and the moment I had that thought, I was super-charged, super excited, absolutely sure I wouldn’t play it again and very nervous because it’s 17 years.”
