Logan Director Sheds Light On The Film’s Near-Future Setting

The year is 2029. Wolverine, now one of the few mutants still alive in James Mangold’s dystopian future, is a jaded, world-weary husk who spends his days caring for an ailing Professor X. Sound familiar? It should. That’s because it’s the general premise of Logan, 20th Century Fox’s imminent action-thriller poised to close the book on Wolverine’s gripping saga.

It’s a fairly radical departure from the X-Men movies of old, and if there was ever any doubt that James Mangold’s character drama is worlds away from your typical superhero movie, one need only look to the lineup for this year’s 2017 Berlin Film Festival, where Logan is to stage its world premiere. But why 2029?

As Mangold tells Comic Book, the date was far enough away from Days of Future Past that it afforded enough creative leeway to engineer Wolverine’s swan song as intended, “clear of existing entanglements.”

“It’s year 2029 when the movie takes place. There’s an epilogue scene in Days of Future Past which is 2024, or 2023, something like that. I just wanted to get far enough past. My goal was real simple: it was to pick a time where I had enough elbow room that I was clear of existing entanglements. Part of the way I think these films stop being fresh (these films being franchise comic book movies) is when you find yourself making essentially a television series with $200 million episodes where you’re literally just picking up where the last one left off and you’re making a mini-series. Then, it’s impossible to do something fresh, meaning essentially you’re just a director on the 14th episode of a television show picking up where the last one left off and people are going to be really startled by any discontinuity or changes.”

In a separate interview with Fandango (via Screen Rant), James Mangold addressed lingering questions over Logan‘s official rating. Previously confirmed as a “hard R,” the fact that the MPAA is yet to dish out an official rating for Wolverine’s curtain call has raised some concern online, but the director stresses that the radio silence comes down to a delay in communications more than anything else. Besides, after today’s action-packed international trailer, the idea that Logan will be released as a PG-13 is practically inconceivable.

I guess… thing is, we haven’t gotten through the ratings board yet. What you’ve seen might be the unrated version! That’s a good question that we’ll have to uncover. It’s uncomfortable to talk about ratings only to the degree that we’re not supposed to talk about ratings. Not because we’re clearly making a hard film, but because we’re not supposed to say what the rating should be since that’s the job of the MPAA and we don’t want to make them angry.

Logan will be with us on March 3rd.