Though it may have verged on wishful thinking some months ago, Logan is now officially an Oscar-nominee. And so too is The Boss Baby…
In all seriousness, though, the fact that James Mangold’s R-rated masterstroke has been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay is a true watershed moment for superhero films, and proof that the Academy is now beginning to stand up and take notice of a genre that is fast beginning to mature before our very eyes.
With that in mind, the director’s now doing the press rounds ahead of the big night next month and in a recent interview with The Credits, he revealed a few interesting things. One of which was what Wolverine is truly afraid of – and the answer might just surprise you.
“Given that this was Hugh Jackman’s last Wolverine movie, the question I needed to answer was, ‘What is Logan most frightened of?’ He’s not frightened of the end of the world, he might welcome it,” said the director. “He’s not frightened of his own death, he might welcome it. He’s not consumed with vengeance for a specific villain, he’d rather live life in isolation. But it dawned on me: Logan is completely phobic about intimacy.”
Continuing on, Mangold said that in order to put the titular hero in a vulnerable state, they turned him into a father figure:
“We wanted to put Wolverine in a much more vulnerable state than we’ve ever seen him in, so we created this character piece where Logan’s needed by an ailing father figure and he’s needed by a daughter. This makes him supremely uncomfortable.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he spoke about the film’s R-rating and the freedom that afforded him, saying:
“This movie could not legally be marketed to children, which means there’s no Happy Meals, no action figures, no advertising on Saturday morning cartoons. I don’t have to worry about the attention span of a 12-year old. I don’t have keep the story ‘up-cut’ to keep kids engaged. I only have to think about pleasing grown-ups. From writing onward through the directing, I had the freedom to make a more sophisticated movie.”
The writer/director was also quick to stress that with Logan, it was important for him for audiences to feel the toll that all the bloodshed has taken on Wolvie’s soul.
“I have a lot of misgivings about violence and PG ratings. A PG film might show hundreds of people dying, falling off buildings, getting mowed down by rapid fire guns, but you don’t feel the deaths because the ratings system dictates the amount of agony being played by the actor.
In a weird way, that makes violence more palatable because when we excise the upsetting bits, we de-sensitize ourselves to death to the point where it’s almost like shooting ducks at a carnival. We wrote a movie about a character struggling with the PTSD from three lifetimes of mayhem and violence, so it was important to feel the toll all that bloodshed has taken on Logan’s soul.”
On Sunday March 4th, all eyes in the film industry will be trained on the 90th Academy Awards ceremony when Jimmy Kimmel takes to the stage. And you can bet that we’ll have our fingers (and toes!) crossed in the hope that Logan makes history – if it hasn’t already.
