MARCH 10, 2017 EW.COM 25We’re pretty sure Jackman’s got the rent covered now. After eight films and
$3.6 billion in global ticket sales, his run as Wolverine has set a longevity record
among superheroes. In the almost two decades he’s been playing this one char-
acter, there have been two Batmans, two Supermans, and (we’re approximating
here) 26 Spider-Mans. But now it’s over. Jackman’s life as the 150-year-old mutant
comes to a gritty, gutsy, hard-as-adamantium end inLogan.“I had decided before
that this is it,” he says. “I couldn’t have made the movie unless I knew that.”
Directed by James Mangold (The Wolverine),Logan is a brutal and unexpected
final chapter. The year is 2029, and mutantkind has essentially disappeared. The
X-Men have been decimated, their exploits reduced to colorful comics like some
dime-store Jesse James pulp fiction. A crankier, creakier Logan has sheathed his
superpowers in exchange for a bourbon-soaked life in the shadows. He drives a limo
in hopes of saving up for a yacht so that he and an ailing Charles Xavier (Patrick
Stewart) can live out their days of future last on the seas. The plan hits a snag whenLogan encounters Laura (Dafne Keen), a
wild child with abilities frighteningly similar
to his own, and with a sinister government
agency on her trail. “He’s convinced the
world is better without him in it, that what-
ever good he’s done, the bad far outweighs
it, and the shame is so heavy that if he could,
he would just check out,” Jackman says.
“But he’s got this responsibility.”
Anyone who meets Jackman learns
immediately how good an actor he is. Most
people capable of believably stabbing
swarms of armed goons to death aren’t as
warm, voluble, and unfailingly polite as
Jackman. And tall! At 6'2", he stands almost
a foot taller than his character in the comics,
and he greets everyone with a hearty hand-
shake. He is, in other words, the opposite
of his alter ego in every way except one.
“Logan is a rough guy who doesn’t give a
hoot about anybody,” saysX-Men producer
Lauren Shuler Donner. “But way down
inside, you get a peek that there’s a really
good-hearted, decent man in there that will
ultimately do the right thing. That’s why we
love him.” Jackman’s Wolverine and his
endless quest for redemption have given
the X-Men series its bruised beating heart—
and it almost never happened at all.( Clockwise from left )Jackman; with Dafne
Keen and director James Mangold on set;
in the desert; on the run with Keen(THIS SPREAD) BEN ROTHSTEIN/FOX (4)
Go topeople.com/pen or download the PEN app to stream an extended interview with
Hugh Jackman, available now on the People/Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN)