Over the weekend we took a stab at guessing what exactly the story for James Mangold‘s The Wolverine may hold and precisely how it fits into the X-Men timeline. We got news that Jean Grey (aka Famke Janssen) may have a cameo, a tease before other franchise members also fitting into Matthew Vaughn‘s upcoming X-Men: Days of Future past. Now the big picture is coming together as Mangold sat down with Empire to give a few details.
Off the bat, he confirmed in no way is this film a prequel, saying, “where this film sits in the universe of the films is after them all. Jean Grey is gone, most of the X-Men are disbanded or gone, so there’s a tremendous sense of isolation for him.” If Grey indeed cameos, perhaps he is just trying to throw off us track, but the director also said most of the “Japanese noir” action takes place in Tokyo, with Hugh Jackman‘s solo journey, so perhaps just a few flashbacks will be thrown in. He also dives into some of the immortality themes with Logan, something I’ve always wanted the films to explore. Check out his quote below, followed by a new still from the film, complete with Wolverine’s bone claws.
That’s something that for me was very important, that I land in a very specific place in his timeline. 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.
Also starring Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hal Yamanouchi, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima and Brian Tee, The Wolverine arrives on July 26th, 2013.