For Hugh Jackman, Logan was a deeply emotional project. The 2017 superhero-cum-western marked his final performance as Wolverine, having played the character for nigh-on two decades. With the dust now settled on his departure, Jackman has opened up a little more about filming Wolverine’s death scene, and here’s what he told Anne Hathaway as part of Variety’s Actors on Actors issue:
“I knew it was going to be my last one way before we wrote it. I made that decision. There was a weight of expectation that I’d been carrying. I was super invested.
I felt so in it. I was working with a director that I worked with three times before, who I trust implicitly, Jim Mangold. I remember when we shot that scene, we were shooting very high altitude, and there were thunderstorms going off everywhere, and we had to shut down. He just said, ‘We can’t do this big stunt scene. But we’re just going to do the death scene.’ I’m like, ‘Like, now?’ He goes, ‘I’m just going to have you and Dafne [Keen], and if you could just do that.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’ He knew that’s best for me.”
As Jackman says, with so much invested in the character, his departure was always going to cut deep. But he needed the right production to convey that on-screen, and thankfully he got it. Not every movie has a perfect scene, but everything came together in this one.
Despite vocal calls (and increasingly fervent rumours) that Jackman will be returning as Wolverine for a post-Fox appearance, it’s understood he has no intention of doing so. In fact, last month we heard that he had turned down the chance to star as the MCU’s Wolverine, which marries up with his repeated commitment to never returning to the part. Good for him I’d say.
I’ve never made a secret of my appreciation for what all involved achieved with Logan. Eschewing traditional tropes of the genre in favour of gritty, stripped down drama, it succeeded spectacularly, giving its eponymous anti-hero the send-off he deserved. It’s thoroughly worth your time if you haven’t seen it – though you might have to catch up on the preceding X-Men movies for some context.
Got any thoughts of your own? Drop us a comment below. We may not be seeing anymore of Hugh Jackman in the X-Men universe, but I think we can be content with what we got. Logan was a stonking way to bow out. That’s for sure.