Mangold shot an R-rated script, and says
Jackman took a pay cut to ensure the studio-
mandated, PG-13 back-up scenes would not
be used instead. Moreover, that R-rated aim
was established long before Deadpool showed
it could be commercially viable. “It kind of
annoyed me because people said, ‘Now you’re
going to be R-rated,’” says Jackman. “But guys,
we’d had the script for 18 months! It was a
weighty decision for me because I get stopped
every day by 11- and 12-year-olds. I kept saying
to Jim, ‘If we’re going to oficially exclude them,
we better have a really good reason.’”
Gory ight scenes see characters chopped
up with ruthless abandon: a particularly nasty
moment in one trailer sees Wolverine stab a
soldier up through the chin, the tip of his claw
reappearing out of the top of his victim’s head.
“I love that berserker part of him,” says Jackman.
“You see a lot of it in this. It’s the worst side of
him and it’s out of control.”
The gloves are off, the claws are out and the
blood will splatter. “What we’re seeing here is
a kind of unvarnished, unslicked-up version of
what it might be like to really be a superhero
in his 200th year, roaming the Earth, trying to
igure out how to participate in a world that
never seems to get better,” says Mangold. The
title relects that scaled-down approach: these
solo ilms have gone from X-Men Origins:
Wolverine to The Wolverine to Logan. This time,
it’s a personal story, about a man who feels hismutant powers are a curse. “That’s always been
really his dilemma, coming to terms with who he
is,” says Jackman. “All of our dilemmas, maybe.”
Not that coming to terms with violence, or
yourself, is a new idea. At the end of Shane, the
hero says that “killing... is a brand that sticks”.
Logan has always known that much; it’s part of
the contradiction between animalistic ighter and
tragic hero that makes him so fascinating. The
corrosive effects of violence drive this drama,
and if it works as Mangold and Jackman hope,
Logan will be a high note for the mutant ighter
to inish on. Just like Seinfeld, he’ll be master of
his domain.LOGAN IS IN CINEMAS FROM MARCH 2.Logan wrangles with
the Reavers. Is this the
end for The Wolverine?