Today we got the first teaser trailer for Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine 3, the film that star Hugh Jackman says will be his last as the clawed X-Men character. But interestingly, this final outing for Jackman looks like it may track thematically with where Logan was when we first met him on the big screen 16 years ago. There’s a symmetry shaping up here for Wolverine, and it could prove to be the perfect high note for Jackman to go out on.
Some spoilers follow for the original Old Man Logan comics story from 2008.
In the original X-Men movie, which was released as superhero cinema was just exiting the Dark Ages in the year 2000, Jackman’s Logan is a lone wolf, a pained and tormented character who lives life on the road, apparently subsisting on a mix of cage matches for cash, cheap cigars and stale beer. While we’d later learn his full backstory, Logan’s initial introduction to moviegoers was as an amnesiac with no real sense of where he came from or how he came to be Wolverine. He was painted as a lost, sad character all alone in the world.
Of course, the irony of Logan has always been that the guy who can recover from any wound or injury can’t truly heal in a meaningful way when it comes to the emotional and mental anguish that he has suffered in his very long, very difficult life. But in that first X-Men movie, it’s his encounter with Anna Paquin’s also troubled (and in trouble) Rogue that allows him to begin to rebuild. To take those first tentative steps to joining the X-Men, who will in time become his family. To heal, as it were.
Now in Logan, it looks as though the character has once again hit a low point in life. Mutantkind in general, it seems, is also not doing so great. “The world is not the same as it was,” he says. “Mutants… they’re gone now.” What that means exactly is unclear at the moment, though in the original comic book arc Old Man Logan -- which this film clearly takes its inspiration from -- it is revealed that Wolverine actually murdered the X-Men himself while under the influence of a mind-game illusion. It’s unlikely that 20th Century Fox and director James Mangold would go so far as to kill off all the X-Men in Logan -- although for all we know this film is set in an alternate future of some kind, as is the Old Man Logan comic -- but we do glimpse Wolverine at a funeral in the trailer.
Rogue and Logan in the first X-Men film
Whatever the case, and whoever Logan is mourning, he’s clearly fallen on hard times again, as has his old friend and mentor Professor Xavier. But again, the arrival of a young girl in Logan’s life is the trigger event that will bring him back in line with his heroic nature, and no doubt back to some kind of sense of inner peace. In X-Men, that girl was Rogue, a lost and scared mutant, and now in Logan it’s the mysterious character being played by young actress Dafne Keen.
Mangold is keeping the identity of Keen’s character secret for now, but speculation has it that she’s playing someone from the comics known as X-23 (a.k.a. Laura Kinney). She’s a clone of Wolverine, but shares what is essentially a daughter/father relationship with him. (In the trailer, Xavier tells Logan, “She’s like you… very much like you.”) Whether this pans out or not is kind of beside the point, however, as once again we are seeing a story onscreen about Wolverine having to put aside his self-imposed exile from the human/mutant race and return to being an actual person in order to help a young girl in need.
Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman in his X-Men swan song, Logan
(And in fact, Logan has a history of befriending adolescent and teenage girls like this in the comics. Pairing him with Rogue in the first X-Men movie felt like a surrogate for his relationship with Kitty Pryde in the comics to some degree, and it was always a fun conceit to see the fierce, animalistic Wolverine teaming with a wisecracking kid who had a totally different perspective on things like Kitty or Jubilee.)
“Logan, you still have time,” we hear Xavier say at the end of the trailer. Time for what, is the question? Time to become whole again, perhaps? To find redemption by diving back into the fray to protect and nurture a child once more, a kindred soul who saves Logan as much as he saves her? I don’t think any of us want to see Hugh Jackman stop playing Wolverine, but if this is his last shot at the character, I can think of no better way for him to go out.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
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