James Mangold

Logan looks like no other superhero movie we’ve ever seen before, and Hugh Jackman and James Mangold have been especially plugging its desolate, dingy look. They’ve given us image after image, all of which have kept this really great post-apocalyptic western look. Today, They’ve given us one more in preparation for tomorrow’s new trailer, which Jackman seems very excited about.

While we’ve known for a while that Logan would probably be the last appearance of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, we sometimes undersell how much of a landmark that truly is. Jackman was one of the first actors to make a long-term commitment to playing a superhero; furthermore, he’s one of the few actors who actually retired from the character rather than being replaced or rebooted by the studio. What Jackman has gone through in the past few years should help set the stage for the current generation of Marvel actors, people like Robert Downey, Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson who will likely step down from a role rather than have it taken from them.

If you’ve spent the past few weeks caught up in holiday and family time, you might have missed the announcement that Cliff Martinez would no longer be writing the music for Logan, ostensibly the final movie in Hugh Jackman’s decades-long run as Wolverine. As pointed out by sites like Birth.Movies.Death, at some point in the last few months, director James Mangold had quietly brought back Marco Beltrami, the composer from 2013’s The Wolverine, to bang out a soundtrack for the March release. And now, thanks to the director’s Twitter account, we’ve got our first look (listen?) at the music for Logan

Since the earliest news that James Mangold would direct a spinoff about Wolverine surfaced, anticipation has been high. But even as the film gained a cast, a title, a release date, and a trailer, the many fans impatiently awaiting Logan didn’t know what the film was about, not really anyway. It was understood from the jump that Mangold had drawn influence from Mark Millar’s fan-favorite run of Wolverine comics titled “Old Man Logan” for the film. Even then, however, public knowledge of its premise was spotty at best beyond “Hugh Jackman, long in the tooth, prowls around a post-apocalyptic future.”

With buzz reaching fever-pitch levels a full three months before the March 3 release date, James Mangold’s Logan could very well be the first true Event Film of the year. His sparse, dystopian, Western-tinged reinterpretation of the X-Men mythos has fans tittering with great expectations, and the Johnny Cash-scored trailer teased a performance of unprecedented toughness from Hugh Jackman as a battle-scarred Wolverine. A new batch of supporting characters also goosed the expectations of comics diehards, learning that they could expect to see the young X-23, Reaver leader Donald Pierce, and Morlock member Caliban. Today brings an eye-opening first look at Stephen Merchant as Caliban, and fittingly so, those eyes are mutated and inhuman.

Another day, another movie image. This time, it’s another artfully composed photo from the set of Logan, showing an older Wolverine walking around the side of a car. It’s a really gorgeous image, the colored lighting and vibrant sunset in the background evoking a kind of neo-noir feel — which is good new for those of us who wish superhero movies would try venturing into other genres every once in a while.

It’s tougher than it seems for a superhero movie to get an R rating. These days, most of them fall somewhere around the PG-13 spectrum, which allows teen audiences easy access to the comic book movies usually geared toward them, as well as families to bring the smaller kids whose favorite toy is their oversize talking Hulk hands. But Logan is a superhero movie of a different sort, so it needs a rating that puts it in a different category from the other X-Men movies. To achieve that R rating, probably through violence and language, the star Hugh Jackman apparently took a pay cut so that the film could get there.

For the past month, director James Mangold and the official wponx Instagram account have been keeping us intrigued with a series of beautiful black and white photos from Logan — the upcoming Wolverine sequel that marks Hugh Jackman’s final outing as the iconic hero. The latest image shakes things up a bit, offering a full-color sneak peek at Old Man Logan and his new friend, a young mutant named Laura, or, as she’s known to comic-book fans, X-23.

Have we mentioned that the official Logan Instagram is gorgeous? Have we said that enough? Because it is, and two new photos show off a couple more small details of the film. We’ve seen the trailer, and while it’s in color and not black and white like the Instagram account, I certainly hope that the movie keeps some of the atmospheric-ness of its photos to give us a more contemplative superhero movie that the Instagrams hint is possible.

Possibly my favorite part about the current production publicity of Logan is the set’s Instagram account, economically named @wponx. It’s been active for this latest round of shooting, about a month, and has delivered us a bunch of cast and set details while also doubling as a simply stunning black and white photography account. The latest photo, posted yesterday, shows the Wolverine in standard Wolverine fighting pose, standing over what appears to be a body in someone’s backyard.