In an interview with Empire Magazine, director James Mangold revealed that the currently in- production The Wolverine will take place after all the previous X-Men movies, debunking the assumption that its timeline was in between 2000’s X-Men and its quasi-prequel 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
“Where this film sits in the universe of the films is after them all,” Mangold told Empire. “Jean Grey is gone, most of the X-Men are disbanded or gone, so there’s a tremendous sense of isolation for him.”
Up until now, both Mangold and Jackman have been adamant on separating The Wolverine from the previous films, describing it as a stand-alone adventure with no big screen baggage to adhere to.
“We’ve deliberately not called it Wolverine 2 because we want it to be placed and feel like a standalone picture,” Jackman told the Coventry Telegraph in August. “With an all-new cast and setting it in Japan, it’s going to give us a whole new visual aesthetic.”
“The approach to character means we won’t be overloaded with mutants and teams and the like, so it’ll be more character-based. I think in many ways it will feel like a completely different X-Men film,” he said.
If you recall, one of the two post-credits teasers at the end of the 70’s set X-Men Origins: Wolverine placed Logan in Japan with amnesia, hinting the next big screen installment would take a major cue from The Wolverine, the iconic ’80s comic book storyline by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. But Mangold has now set the record straight that the upcoming film goes beyond all the other X-Men adventures.
“That’s something that for me was very important, that I land in a very specific place in his timeline,” Mangold revealed to Empire. “I wanted to be able to tell the story without the burden of handing it off to a film that already exists and having to conform to it. The ideas of immortality reign very heavily in this story and the burden of immortality weighs heavily on Logan. For me that’s such an interesting part of Logan’s character that is nearly impossible to explore if you have a kind of league or team movie.”
Mangold’s intentional mention of Jean Grey in the interview also gives credibility to the recent reports that Famke Jansen flew to the Sydney set to shoot scenes in the film. With the new timeline in context, it makes more sense now that the telekinetic Mutant could make an posthumous appearance.
Check out this new picture of Jackman from the film that appears in today’s issue of Empire Online, which we previewed yesterday, showcasing the five Hobbit covers.
Note that Logan has no Adamantium on his claws here, so obviously there will be flashbacks involved in the film.
SOURCE: Empire Magazine
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