Hugh Jackman slices and dices one last time as Wolverine
LOS ANGELES: After eight movies over 17 years, Hugh Jackman returns this weekend for his final hurrah as Wolverine in ‘Logan’, an edgier, darker take on everyone’s favourite hairy, metal-clawed mutant anti-hero.
Jackman, 48, had agreed with director James Mangold that if he was going to reprise his iconic role as the cigar-chomping loner one last time, it should be the first R-rated outing in the ‘XMen’ franchise aimed at a more adult audience.
“Hugh and I didn’t want to do it if we couldn’t do something very different,” Mangold said at a preview in Los Angeles of Twentieth Century Fox’s 2017 slate.
“We both felt like we had made the last movie and we also felt like... there’s a slew of comic book themed films, superhero movies - whatever you want to call them -- and I, for one, am feeling kind of an exhaustion watching them, generally.”
‘Logan’, which takes place more than 50 years after the events of ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ (2014), sees Wolverine/Logan ageing, weary and vulnerable.
Sporting an unkempt grey beard, he drinks his days away on the Mexican border, picking up black market drugs to treat the dying Professor X, played for a seventh -- and also final -- time by acclaimed British thespian Patrick Stewart.
Logan is snapped abruptly out of his torpor when a mysterious woman begs him to protect a young girl -- a stunning debut by English-Spanish newcomer Dafne Keen, 11 -- who has powers remarkably like his own and is being pursued by dark forces.
Jackman first played Wolverine in 2000’s ‘X-Men’, his acting debut in Hollywood, sparking a reemergence of superhero movies and kicking off a franchise that has so far clocked up US$4.4 billion in box office receipts.
Director Bryan Singer had considered a number of big names for the part, including Edward Norton, Russell Crowe and Keanu Reeves.
He settled on Dougray Scott but the Scottish star had to drop out and Jackman was brought on board at the last minute.
Since then, the Australian actor has slipped into Wolverine’s skin in ‘X2: X-Men United’ and ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, before fleshing out the character’s back story in the prequel ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’.
There was a cameo in ‘X-Men: First Class’ and starring roles in ‘The Wolverine’, and ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ before another brief appearance in ‘XMen: Apocalypse’.
The instalments have ranged wildly in quality, with ‘Days of Future Past’ receiving almost universally glowing reviews while ‘Origins’ was hammered by the critics. — AFP