By: JD Hardin
At SDCC last year, Hugh Jackman teased that the next Wolverine would be based in part on Old Man Logan. For those that aren’t familiar with the 2008 eight issue series, here’s a little background.
The Xavier mansion is invaded by a large group of villains (many of whom were believed dead). Wolverine begins evacuating the younger students as it seems that the X-Men vanished immediately after the attack began. Cornered, Wolverine slaughters every invader ending with Bullseye. As soon as Bullseye is dead, he is revealed to be Jubilee. Mysterio appears and reveals that every villain had in fact been an X-Man. Overwrought with grief, Wolverine attempts suicide by allowing a train to run him over, while this didn’t kill him, it was the symbolic death of Wolverine.
He spends the next 50 years in exile, consumed with shame and guilt, vowing to never unleash his claws again. In his absence, the United States is conquered and divided between a group of supervillains consisting of The Abomination (later conquered by The Hulks), Magneto (later conquered by a new Kingpin), Dr. Doom and The Red Skull who claims the title of President. Logan eventually settles down and has two children in what was Sacramento, now known as Hulkland. Taking occasional contracts to pay bills to the incestuous descendants of The Hulk and She-Hulk, Logan takes a job from Hawkeye with the simple task of escorting him and a secret package to the capital city of New-Babylon. At the end of this long and very eventful journey, Logan is forced to kill Red Skull in his own trophy room with Captain America’s shield, and use parts of Tony Stark’s armor to fly back home. Upon his return, Logan finds his wife, son and daughter have been killed by The Hulks. Slaughtering his way through, Logan finally confronts and kills Bruce Banner.
Old Man Logan has had a great reputation with fans and readers. So much so, that he made a return in the recent Secret Wars event and continued a new ongoing series after Secret Wars was concluded.
Now, it’s pretty safe to say that Fox will not follow the comic anywhere close to directly due to separation of Marvel and Fox. However, with Patrick Stewart playing Charles Xavier with a failing memory and the big screen debut of a very young X-23 and the villain Mr. Sinister, it’s safe to say they may have created a decent story on this one. Fox studios definitely messed up by allowing a teaser get leaked, but they made up for it by officially releasing a trailer this morning. Calm down, I’m giving you both.
First up, the leaked teaser.
Last but not least, the official trailer.
Let’s look at this objectively. For a Wolverine movie, it appears very low violence. That may be due to the fact that for a majority of the Old Man Logan story, Logan is a bit more than hesitant to use his claws. Another possibility, there’s a great deal of violence in the film, but Fox is hoping to save that for later trailers or to refrain from spoiling the action. Judging from the scars that Logan is sporting, I believe it’s safe to say that Fox has stayed true to the slower healing rate that is a trademark character detail for Old Man Logan. It also seems that Fox is attempting to introduce X-23 in order to replace the standard Wolverine. Since Secret Wars, X-23 has been a part of the X-Men under the Wolverine mantle.
Set to open March 3, 2017 we expect high opening weekend numbers and lofty reviews. But, something still bothers me. With the relative failure of X-Men: Age of Apocalypse and Fantastic Four falling flat on it’s face, Deadpool and Wolverine seem to be the two saving graces of the Fox Marvel Universe. However, with the much protested departure of Hugh Jackman, will Fox be able to continue with Deadpool carrying the weight alone?
The Nerdery 