LOGAN Director James Mangold Talks About Killing Off Wolverine
James Mangold’s Logan was a hell of a great film! I loved how it so beautifully and brutally brought an end to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine story. It was a heartbreaking story, especially because it ended with Wolverine dying to protect a bunch of mutant kids.
The filmmaker recently talked about the decision of killing off Wolverine in an interview with CB, saying:
"The process is a lot less of a committee than you'd think. It was really Hugh [Jackman] and I at first. It seemed logical, that if it were going to be his last film, that he's either going to ride off onto the horizon or die, that you need to have some kind of curtain on his story. That's a logical assumption, right?
"You either have the Shane ending where he rides off on the mountain to parts unknown, which had largely been the way his character was resolved in every proceeding movie or you'd kill him. But the reason the choice was at our feet was because you needed the sense of closure. You needed some sense of an ending if you were going to end, if you were dealing with the legacy of Hugh's many performances and many films, and trying to set this part in some definitive way."
Killing off the character was such a bold move as studios aren’t too keen on killing off the most popular characters in their franchises. But they did it, and it was a pretty powerful moment. To Fox’s credit, though, they did not give any pushback at all. Mangold went on to say:
"Frankly, even the studio didn't even have nervousness about it, because it felt like an event. It gave the movie, on a simple level, the reality that while it may not feature as flamboyant or expensive action as some other movies, that the must see of the movie was going to be because it would be the end of a legend."
Logan gave the perfect ending Jackman’s version of the character, and for the most part fans are happy with how it turned out. We know that we’ll eventually see a new version of Wolverine from Marvel, but it will be interesting to see when that happens because everyone will compare the new version of the character to Jackman’s.