Logan

Superheroes are usually all about flying around, big fights, and being larger than life. In Old Man Logan, the outgoing creative team of Andrea Sorrentino, Jeff Lemire and Marcelo Maiolo mixes that with a slightly different approach. In this series, Logan remains pretty grounded. His costume becomes a brown leather jacket, and most of the time his fights are pretty brutal, and mostly involve people getting straight up punched in the face. And it all hinges on Sorrentino's take on Wolverine. It's leaning heavily on realism, with sharp blacks that add a noirish vibe.

When the first teaser images for Logan landed online last fall, there was something particularly intriguing about them — aside from the fact that this is Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine, of course. The photos were mostly in black and white, leading some to suspect that maybe the film itself was black and white. That suspicion was laid to rest with the arrival of the first teaser, but it might not have been entirely off.

Logan is in cinemas this week, and everyone's going crazy for the even-more grizzled and even more violent take on Wolverine. While the film is loosely based on Old Man Logan, a Mark Millar and Steve McNiven tale from several years ago, the comics incarnation has taken on a life of his own in recent years. Marvel has announced Ed Brisson and Mike Deodato as the new creative team on Old Man Logan title, pitting the dystopian-future version of Wolverine against The Maestro, a version of The Hulk from a very different dystopian future.

When Logan finally fades to black, it brings Hugh Jackman’s 17-year run as Wolverine to a close. It is an emphatic and definitive ending, not just to Jackman’s Wolverine series, but also to the X-Men franchise as a whole.

Hugh Jackman isn’t the only one saying goodbye to the X-Men. Sir Patrick Stewart has decided that Logan will be his last appearance as Professor Charles Xavier as well, after appearing as the character in six other X-Men movies.

Logan works on many levels, mostly as a swan song for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. We’ve known for ages that this would be his last run playing the character, and Logan gives him an appropriately melancholy, moving send-off. But, had Marvel and 20th Century Fox been able to reach some kind of deal before Jackman made the decision not to sign on for another movie after this one, his Wolverine might have stuck around.

After Logan’s runtime was increased by a whole three minutes from the version that screened for critics, we all hopped on the post-credits scene speculation. Would it tease Deadpool 2? Would it further wrap up Wolverine’s story? Would it hint at the next Wolverine-less X-Men movie? Better hold your horses, because James Mangold himself has now said that Logan has no post-credits scene after all.

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Every month (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

When you go see Logan on March 3, you might want to keep your butt firmly planted in the theater seat after the credits roll, bub. In what is hardly surprising news at all, there is post-credits scene attached to Wolverine’s latest (and last) outing, and though we don’t know what it is just yet, it probably won’t be long before someone lets the cat out of the bag. Until then, feel free to speculate away.

It’s been nearly 17 years since Bryan Singer’s X-Men movie ushered in a new era of superhero movies, and in that time, we’ve seen studios crank through actors with alarming frequency. We’ve seen three Spider-Man, a handful of Batmen, three Punishers across the big and small screens, and dozens of big-budget Marvel and DC movies break records at the box office. In the midst of all this chaos has been Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, the one actor-character combination that seemed immune to bad reviews and flagging box office numbers. And with Jackman set to take one final turn as Wolverine in Logan, the actor is taking a little time to stop and reflect on his impact in Hollywood.