Logan

It boggles my mind that it’s been almost 17 years since the very first X-Men opened in theaters. Where did that time go? There was one X-Men movie, I blinked, and then there were 10. It’s like some crazy time paradox; maybe when I wasn’t paying attention Hugh Jackman went back in time and stopped Jennifer Lawrence from killing Peter Dinklage.

Since arriving in the mainstream Marvel Universe following Secret Wars, Old Man Logan has taken on a life of his own as a standout solo star, and his adventures beyond the original eight issues have been expanded upon in great detail. However, what a lot of people forget is that Mark Millar actually wrote a sequel to "Old Man Logan" at the same time as he was writing the original, as part of an experimental attempt to link his work-for-hire superhero comics with his own creator-owned franchises.

Some wondered, when it was announced that a third and final Wolverine movie was happening in 2017, if this meant that we’d see another appearance of his frenemy Sabretooth (brought to life onscreen by Liev Schreiber in 2009). Well, he didn’t end up in Logan, ultimately, but there was a plan in the works at one point to have him arrive for a few scenes towards the middle of the movie.

In the superhero movie business, ratings have until now seemed like a pretty simple business. The way to get the biggest audience while also keeping in as much fantasy violence and perilous situations to stay true to the comics was to shoot for the middle ground, a nice, nonthreatening PG-13. No full-on nudity, no blood splatter, and relegate your one allocated f-word to Wolverine. But the times, they are a-changin’, and superhero movies are changing right along with them, starting with shooting for the more mature, edgier R-rating. As it turns out, this is exactly the direction audiences want them to go.

A couple weeks back, 20th Century Fox released the final runtime for Logan — and it was a few minutes longer than the version that screened for press and industry folks, leading many to speculate that there was a post-credits scene attached. Given previous rumors that Ryan Reynolds had filmed a Deadpool scene for the Wolverine sequel, it was reasonable to suspect that perhaps Logan had a teaser for Deadpool 2 attached at the end. James Mangold denied these rumors, on all counts, but we now know exactly what is attached to Logan, and it both isn’t and is what you think. Spoilers ahead!

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.