The Wolverine 2

The first X-Men movie opened on July 14, 2000. A child born early that year would have just turned 17 by the time the tenth entry in the X-Men series, Logan, hits theaters next month. That is fortunate – viewers are going to need a driver’s license to get into this movie, which possesses the hardest R rating of any American superhero movie in history. In the past, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine would swing his razor-sharp adamantium claws and bad guys would simply fall to the ground. There was never any visible evidence of his brutality. There’s more graphic violence in Logan’s first scene – severed limbs, gruesome disembowlings – than in all of the other of the Wolverine and X-Men movies combined.

It took a while for Logan to quit the coy act and give us some footage, and now that they finally have, what a gorgeous movie it looks to be. Two new TV spots for Logan debuted today, which show off the mutant’s impaling skills and introduce us to his enemies, the Reavers.

Here at ScreenCrush, we have already done two different lists of recent trailers with sad covers of popular songs.

Unlike a lot of superhero movies, Logan seems to have kept its cards pretty close to its chest. Even though we’ve known the rough outline of the film for a while now, it wasn’t until this past week that we were finally treated to a full synopsis of the film. And while the footage we’ve seen has been enticing, it’s also been pretty carefully curated to reveal as little of the big picture as possible. In other words, James Mangold and Hugh Jackman have set the hook and now are just cruelly letting us run ourselves out.

Because superhero movies are based on comics that already exist, most of the time fans can predict roughly what a movie is going to be about with only the smallest bits of information. Logan has been particularly close-lipped about the official plot, but that hasn’t stopped us from figuring out the bare bones of it simply based on who’s involved. We know it’ll involve Caliban, because he’s, well, in it, and we also know that we’re diving into the X-23 storyline, because she’s in it too. A new, wordier summary than the one Hugh Jackman graced us with a few weeks ago has hit the Internet, and it basically confirms everything we’ve figured out.

Logan is coming out in a little more than a month, and while we don’t know the exact story yet, we’ve gotten a ton of behind-the-scenes looks and trailers and posters showing us just how different and dark this movie is going to be.

Christmas may be over, but 20th Century Fox has a last minute gift for all you Wolverine fans: To commemorate the iconic hero’s original comic-book debut, the studio is giving away 1,974 frames from the upcoming final trailer for Logan. It’s a limited edition giveaway deal (obviously), but if you head to Logan’s new viral website and enter your info, you can receive a postcard with one of those 1,974 frames — to hang on your wall or send to a friend, or maybe shove in a shoebox with the keepsakes from your other exes.

Every new image from the upcoming Logan seems to work as hard as it can to drive the same point home: THIS MOVIE WILL BE DARK AND GRITTY. This superhero movie is not like other superhero movies, because of death and seriousness and a Children of Men-esque color palette. While the constant reminders are getting a little old, it’s still pretty exciting that a superhero movie featuring a character as popular as Wolverine is choosing to go a different route, opting for realism (as much as it can, that is) and emotion rather than becoming a special effects soup. The new Logan poster continues the trend with a design that’s all the more intense for its simplicity.

Ryan Reynolds’ wish for a proper Deadpool and Wolverine crossover movie may never come true, but the actor has apparently achieved something pretty close with a small cameo in Logan. According to a new report, the actor recently filmed a scene for Hugh Jackman’s final bow as Wolverine, though it’s unclear if we’ll actually see the two characters share the screen when Logan hits theaters next spring.

Up until now, the identity of Richard E. Grant’s antagonist in Logan has been a mystery. Earlier rumors pegged the British actor as Nathaniel Essex, aka Mister Sinister, the man behind that Essex Corp. briefcase in the post-credits scene from X-Men: Apocalypse. More recently, another report suggested that Grant is actually playing a surgeon connected to Wolverine’s origins and the creation of his clone, X-23. Thanks to a new photo from the upcoming Wolverine sequel, we have an answer — and our first look at Grant’s shadowy villain.