And in this reality, Logan’s healing factor
is fading as he gets older. It was an idea
Darren Aronofsky had mooted when he was
attached to make The Wolverine: certainly
Logan has greater healing powers, but does he
recover completely each time? Shouldn’t there
be scars — at least for a few years — for
massive injuries? And might his healing factor
not weaken with age? “There was one test
where I was completely disigured,” says
Jackman. “Which I loved, and they [the studio]
were like, ‘Okay, we’ve given you almost
everything. Can we pull back just a little?
Instead of 29 scars can we have, like, 16? Or
three?’” They settled on keeping the scars
largely off his face, but his body is a patchworkof damage and suffering that would make
Frankenstein proud.
Worse, the toxic adamantium on Logan’s
bones is slowly killing him as his powers fade
— something inspired not just by comic-book
history but by Jackman’s own experience with
metal poisoning. “I had high mercury levels
from eating tins of tuna,” the star reveals. “My
doctor said, ‘You’re meant to be ive,’ whatever
that number means, and I was at 37. The effect
of metal poisoning, on what for Logan would
be a massive level, would be depression,
tiredness, massive joint pain. The adamantium
will eventually kill him. I loved the metaphor
of his weapon being the thing that’s killing
him, on every level.”Richard E. Grant’s
Dr Zander Rice,
a nemesis driven
by more than
simple revenge.Stephen Merchant
takes a break from
comedy as mutant
nurse Caliban.EXPLORING OLD MAN LOGAN,
THE STARTLING STARTING POINT
FOR THE NEW FILMIN 2008, AT the end of his Marvel run,
comic-book legend Mark Millar had one last idea
for Wolverine: he wanted to visit the character
50 years on. “I always saw Wolverine as a Clint
Eastwood-type mysterious guy,” he says. “And
that was my inspiration for doing Old Man Logan
— I thought if the early Wolverine stories were
The Man With No Name, then the final one is Bill
Munny from Unforgiven.”
As Millar’s story opens, we find Logan on
barren land, living a simple life with his wife and
kids. Mysterio has massacred all the superheroes
and times are dark. The villains now rule,
including the Hulk and his inbred hillbilly family,
who run California like ganglords. Logan,
meanwhile, due to immense trauma, is now
a pacifist who hasn’t popped his claws in 50
years. Naturally, things don’t stay like that. When
the violence comes, it’s extreme and bizarre.
Although some shots in the film are identical
to the comic panels, James Mangold’s film takes
only the germ of the story as inspiration. “Jim
definitely used the book as a template, but
he’s done his own thing with it,” says Millar.
“Something more serious, more emotional, more
adult, a dark sci-fi thing. Whereas mine was like
a crazy Mad Max.”
Crazy indeed. Millar had enjoyed such
a successful run at Marvel, by this point they
were letting him do what he wanted, he says. “So
even [with] the most objectionable stuff in Old
Man Logan, nobody batted an eyelid. The Hulk’s
fucking his cousin, and they were like, ‘Yeah, that
sounds good, go ahead.’” Neither, he says, did
they mind him killing all their superheroes. “That
was my goodbye, that was me leaving. Sayonara!
Here are all your characters, dead!’” ALEX GODFREY
LAST ACTION HERO