Hugh Jackman stars one more time as Wolverine in the upcoming Logan movie, which is set in the future and sees Wolverine as an older version of the character.
James Mangold: Logan is an attempt to kind of bring an end to the line of Hugh’s amazing performance as Wolverine, and the ambition of doing that is to try and make an adult film about Wolverine. To make a movie for grown-ups. We are not trying to make a four-box ‘something for everyone.’ We are trying to make a movie that stands out and is a little different because it’s a grown-up movie, a grown-up drama. It also features intense action.
James Mangold continues with talk of what was most important for him to make the Logan film.
James Mangold: I think for me, the thing that was most important was, neither of us wanted to make another “comic book movie.” We wanted to make something that felt different. That had a tone that was unique. That was leading us to some place new and going some place deeper. The movies I remember in my life are movies that move me. Not just spectacle. Sheer spectacle. I think we’ve gotten to a place with computer graphics where people can put literally anything on screen, and the video games we play, we can see anything we can imagine on screen. So spectacle is not enough. I think what movies owe us more than ever, in an age when you can make anything happen, is the thing that’s hardest to do and most tricky, which is to move us, to make us feel.
Mangold also talks working with Hugh Jackman.
James Mangold: This is my third movie with Hugh Jackman, so we’re great friends, and one of the great joys of that is: a) you look forward to going to set every day to work with this great comprade of yours, but also that we have a short-hand with each other. We know what we’re after. What we’re after is always asking more of each other, and going deeper and going some place further. I think one of the great things for me and this collaboration with Hugh, is that this is never just a pay check to him, and he’s never satisfied. We’re just kind of [mimics Hugh Jackman with a scruffy voice] , ‘Oh, I l know how to do it,’ like turning in his Old Logan performance. He’s always looking how to go deeper. How to go further. How to reveal new aspects of the character.
James Mangold touches upon the biggest challenge in making Logan, in which he says it’s not a big-budget extravaganza like some of the other comic book movies out there.
James Mangold: I think the biggest challenging part is being confident, because also so many of these other films have more money, frankly, and more kind of just spectacle. To being confident in believing that a movie like this can function on the power of drama, first. You know, instead of having some super villain or planets colliding. That the movie first and foremost, it’s dramatic engine is running on the emotional relationships between the characters.
James Mangold talks how Logan will be different than those other big-spectacled comic book flicks.
James Mangold: In some ways I leave that for audiences to judge, but that the thing we are trying to do differently is trying to invest in character. A lot of these movies are a collection of set pieces of action with very shot little connective things basically showing how we go from action piece ‘a’ to action piece ‘b.’ We wanted to make a movie that’s really a drama. If you cut out the action, what you have is a powerful drama about interesting characters. Whether that makes us different or not, I’ll leave others to judge, but it was our goal to earn the audience through feeling real. Really feeling human or feeling intimate. Someone told me that the movie made them feel like you might walk out to the street and run into this Wolverine. That it’s not taking place in a different universe, but our own.
“Logan,” has a March 3, 2017 release directed by James Mangold starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Stephen Merchant, Doris Morgado, Eriq La Salle and Dafne Keen as X-23.
