James Mangold On Setting The Wolverine After X3
By Cody "The Thorverine" Ferrell on Jan 08, 2013 with Comments 0
Hugh Jackman will return for his sixth outing as Wolverine in James Mangold’s The Wolverine hitting theaters July 26. Director James Mangold talked about the upcoming film with EW where he discussed the movie’s chronology and why it’s important that it is set after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand.
Mangold started off by stating that the film does borrow from the Claremont/Miller comic book series that sees Wolverine all alone in Japan, but it doesn’t follow the source religiously. He says the characters are there and a lot of the story beats from the source is there however. The film is set after X3 and all the other films that came before it, but it also serves as a standalone movie.
It’s set after X-Men 3, but I wouldn’t call it a sequel to X-Men 3. You have a choice the second you enter a world like this with a huge amount of comic books, backstories, three movies, a Wolverine origins movie … You have decide where you’re going to exist in relation to all these other things, particularly if you’re working with an actor who actually played the character in other films.
The director went on to explain why he decided to set the movie after the events of all the other films. Mangold emphasized it was important to find a Logan who is “stripped clean” of his duties to a team and even a sense of purpose.
Because of some of the themes in the Claremont/Miller saga. I felt it was really important to find Logan at a moment where he was stripped clean of his duties to the X-Men, his other allegiances, and even stripped clean of his own sense of purpose. I was fascinated with the idea of portraying Logan as a ronin – the definition of which is a samurai without a master, without a purpose. Kind of a soldier who is cut loose. War is over. What does he do? What does he face? What does he believe anymore? Who are his friends? What is his reason for being here anymore? I think those questions are especially interesting when you’re dealing with a character who is essentially immortal.
It was only to my advantage to set it after the X-Men films because the X-Men had effectively ended at that point. A lot of the key characters had died. There was a sense if I’m locating this film not five minutes after the other movie, but a period of time after that last X-Men movie, I can find a Logan who is living separate from the world. He is no longer a member of some superhero team.
The other advantage to the films chronological setting is that you don’t have a sense of how it will end. In a prequel you know things will go well because you’ve seen where the character is now. With this setting everything is wide open.
I felt the most liberating thing about coming after the other movies is you don’t have to hand it off or end it in some way that meets up with a previous film. For creative freedom, I didn’t want to have to, essentially, land this film in Wichita because that’s where the next one takes off from. It helped me to be really free, and in some ways be more loyal to Claremont/Miller, without having to be tied to other films.
You can read the rest of Mangold’s comments where he talks about his relationship with Hugh Jackman and how big a fan of comic books he was as he was growing up by clicking here. Everything we’ve heard about The Wolverine so far makes it sound like we are getting the Wolverine movie we’ve been waiting for. What do you think of Mangold’s reasoning for setting it after X3?
Source : Entertainment Weekly
Cody "The Thorverine" Ferrell
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