Full spoilers follow for Logan.
As the final chapter in Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine saga, Logan is a film that puts a definitive button on the character’s journey. It also takes Wolverine, Professor Xavier, and newcomer Laura (X-23) to some very interesting places, while also establishing a scenario for the X-Men team itself that most studio franchises would balk at. As such, spoiler talk is essentially inevitable when dissecting the most compelling aspects of the film.
Which is exactly what went down when I met with Logan director James Mangold to discuss the new movie. Mangold, who also helmed 2013’s The Wolverine, is always a great filmmaker to talk to, a smart and funny guy who offers thought-provoking insight into the whys and hows of his films. Read on for our full chat.
One more time, full spoilers follow for Logan.
IGN: Can we talk about Shane? Obviously it's an important influence on Logan and you love the movie. I've seen you tweet about it, but can we talk about the influence of Shane on Logan?
James Mangold: It's the influence of Shane on me. It's a gigantic film for me -- from the first time I saw it on The Million Dollar Movie or some after-the-movie show on television and to recently presenting it at the Motion Picture Academy when they restored it. I think it's a remarkably beautiful piece of movie making. It's one of the first kind of location, Technicolor films ever. It is one of George Stevens' far greatest films. It does see the world through the eyes of a child, which was also important in this film. It explores with incredible economy the allure of the dark hero, how appealing and attractive that is. In the case of Shane, one of the things you can even see [in Mangold’s film] 3:10 to Yuma is the way Logan Lerman's character idolizes Russell Crowe's character and kind of almost falls in love with him even though he's threatening the life of his own father. I think in many ways all these things are really powerful themes. I also love in Shane that the villains have good reasons. There's a really powerful scene where the lead villain in Shane … delivers a short monologue about why should I be giving my land away to you people? I lost brothers. I fought bloody wars to get this valley. And the government changed some laws and now I have to give it up. Everyone has a reason and it's not as simple as black and white.
IGN: So the idea of Laura looking up to the comic-book version of Logan, and Logan is trying to tell her don't be what they made you to be -- the real world version of what that comic is... It winds up being an optimistic story because he's trying to break her out of this path. But it's also an anti-franchise kind of story, isn't it? Fox would presumably want sequels and Laura in future movies and all that stuff. Was that ever a consideration?
Mangold: Well, I think that “don't be what they made you,” which is what he told her, is something that he's trying to live by all the time -- which is that they made you into a weapon. Don't be a weapon. I think it's too simple to say it's anti-franchise. I do think it's interesting. I thought when Scott Frank and I wrote those words the first time that we would have more push back from somebody [at the studio]. But we just decided what the hell, let's do it. And we never got it. Because I think it's very interesting. I think the idea of dealing with the whole X-Men world behind this movie is something that you can wonder, did it all happen? Did it not all happen? They already made such spaghetti out of it, traveling to and from time now... but the idea that's always true is that the stories about these characters are always slightly exaggerated or dramatized compared to the real deal. And so when you're suddenly making a movie about the real character, it only makes sense that he might look back at the kind of depictions of their exploits as being exaggerated. But I think we're making both points in the movie because, again, we're getting into spoilers area, but by the end of the film he's been fighting doing what's in a comic book because he says it's not true but by the end he finds out effectively that it was. So that... in the end, I'm not sure we're not affirming faith in comic books in a greater sense than denying it.
IGN: There's a lot of sad things that happen in this movie, but ultimately I think it's really uplifting. Would you agree with that?
Mangold: Yeah. I think the last scenes for Logan in the picture are some of the happiest of his life. And that despite the fact he's at the edge of his own mortality, I think he's feeling things he's never felt before. And he's tired. I think that -- and there's a really wonderful alignment of the, what is it? Nine movies he's made? -- the longevity of the performance, the longevity of this character that's been alive for 200 years, the weariness and the difficulty of his life and how much pain his life has embodied and him fading from this earth, it becomes a kind of release that, in more than normal ways, we understand may be a very well due rest.
IGN: It’s such a crazy, effective scene where Xavier is having his seizure/time-freeze thing that’s affecting everyone around him, and it goes on for so long and it just seems to build in momentum. Can you just talk a little bit about where that came from and also how no-holds-barred it is? I mean, as Logan approaches the bad guys, they're defenseless. And I was like, is he going to just cut their guns? Is he going to just cut their arms? He's gonna... [laughs]
Mangold: [laughs] And he just kills them.
IGN: Every one of them.
Mangold: That was very much for me what fans have been wanting. It wasn't really about the blood, but it was about the mercilessness of it. It was about this idea, not unlike Bill Munny's past in Unforgiven or Shane's past in Shane, that these guys were killers. And that Logan, when you get him angry and when he's pissed, is a f#@king stone-cold killer. There is no two ways about it. That's the shame he lives with, is that he's not a guy who just does only what he has to do. He's a guy that puts you down. Forever.
IGN: And of course, in the real world, you can't just do what you have to do in the real world, I guess. You have to do the hard...
Mangold: Right. I think that people even recognize that if they were in a similar circumstance they'd make sure that these people were put down.
IGN: Can we talk about this idea that Xavier killed his students? It's a crazy thought and it's a twist on what happens in Old Man Logan, which is interesting for comic-book fans going in expecting it's Logan who did it and it's like, “Whoa, it's Xavier!” Who was, of course, their father in many ways. Did you ever think, “Are we really going too far with this?”
Mangold: I don't think there is such a thing as going too far. I mean, honestly, I don't. Unless someone stops you, I think it's my job to go too far. I mean, I'm so lucky to be given the director's chair in one of these situations. My responsibility in a sense is to push it to the max because that's what comics did. There was nothing comics ever did that they couldn't find a way to reverse or revise or get around. But the fact is, we don't say exactly who got killed. But the reality for me was that I wanted to feel that shame. Because suddenly, more dawns on you than just that there were causalities at the X-mansion. What dawns on you is the kindness of what Logan has been running from and trying to keep Charles from knowing. And that that in itself becomes something that we can all connect with because so many of us have an elderly family member or someone that we've never told that someone has passed on or something that they did went south because we don't think they can handle it. And that that kind of domestic struggle with meta-truths is really interesting to me.
IGN: It finally dawns on him in this moment of sort of complete happiness. That's when he realizes it. It's really a beautiful moment.
Mangold: The movie has a lot of Freudian overtures too. That he ends up being killed by a kind of doppelganger, a dark doppelganger of Logan. And in a way, not unintentionally, it's not until this dark side of Logan in X-24 is killed that Logan gets a chance to open up, almost as if this demon self -- his Weapon X self -- by seeing his own Weapon X self, his past, destroyed in front of him, he's released in some way. It's all really interesting.
Logan is in theaters now.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
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