Logan

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.

It’s been rumored for some time that Hugh Jackman’s big Wolverine farewell might very well receive an R-rating, and the massive success of Deadpool only strengthened that possibility. Up until now, however, it was unclear if Logan would actually hit theaters with an R — not for lack of trying, as both Jackman and director James Mangold have expressed an interest in delivering the red-band goods. And it looks like they’ve done just that.

How about that last Logan trailer, huh? While the first trailer will probably be remembered as the one that got everyone excited for a mature Wolverine movie, the second trailer  —  even without the Johnny Cash music playing in the background  —  is the one that really sets the hook. What was hinted at in the first go-around now feels lived in and personal; Hugh Jackman’s Logan has never seemed more tired, and Dafne Keen’s X-23 has never seemed more dangerous.

The most jarring line in the new trailer for James Mangold’s increasingly buzzy Wolverine spinoff Logan comes when the gruff mutant informs his young charge, “This is the real world. People die.” He tells her this after seeing one of her vintage X-Men comic books, and informing her that the team’s actual exploits bear little resemblance to what’s on the page. It all sends a clear message: this is a film unlike the solo Wolverine pictures that came before it, distinctive both in its high stakes and self-awareness. It’s a sharply written moment, but the new clip doesn’t linger on it for too long before getting to the good stuff — in this instance, a young girl cutting off an adult man’s hands.

Logan looks like no other superhero movie we’ve ever seen before, and Hugh Jackman and James Mangold have been especially plugging its desolate, dingy look. They’ve given us image after image, all of which have kept this really great post-apocalyptic western look. Today, They’ve given us one more in preparation for tomorrow’s new trailer, which Jackman seems very excited about.

While we’ve known for a while that Logan would probably be the last appearance of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, we sometimes undersell how much of a landmark that truly is. Jackman was one of the first actors to make a long-term commitment to playing a superhero; furthermore, he’s one of the few actors who actually retired from the character rather than being replaced or rebooted by the studio. What Jackman has gone through in the past few years should help set the stage for the current generation of Marvel actors, people like Robert Downey, Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson who will likely step down from a role rather than have it taken from them.

If you’ve spent the past few weeks caught up in holiday and family time, you might have missed the announcement that Cliff Martinez would no longer be writing the music for Logan, ostensibly the final movie in Hugh Jackman’s decades-long run as Wolverine. As pointed out by sites like Birth.Movies.Death, at some point in the last few months, director James Mangold had quietly brought back Marco Beltrami, the composer from 2013’s The Wolverine, to bang out a soundtrack for the March release. And now, thanks to the director’s Twitter account, we’ve got our first look (listen?) at the music for Logan

2017 promises to be the biggest year yet for superhero movies, with eight confirmed major studio releases between February and November --- and a still unconfirmed ninth release expected from Fox. Highlights of the year include the first solo superhero movie with a female lead in over ten years, the first Spider-Man movie set in the extended Marvel Cinematic Universe, and an inexplicably gritty reboot of Power Rangers. There's a lot to look forward to, and a few movies to be skeptical of, so the editors of ComicsAlliance have decided to rank this year's eight confirmed releases in ascending order of excitement. We've tallied our editors' individual votes to arrive at a definitive list of the most (and least) anticipated superhero movies of 2017.

Since the earliest news that James Mangold would direct a spinoff about Wolverine surfaced, anticipation has been high. But even as the film gained a cast, a title, a release date, and a trailer, the many fans impatiently awaiting Logan didn’t know what the film was about, not really anyway. It was understood from the jump that Mangold had drawn influence from Mark Millar’s fan-favorite run of Wolverine comics titled “Old Man Logan” for the film. Even then, however, public knowledge of its premise was spotty at best beyond “Hugh Jackman, long in the tooth, prowls around a post-apocalyptic future.”

When the hullabaloo about Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool possibly having a cameo in the next Wolverine movie erupted last week, everyone involved in Logan was quick to put those rumors to rest. But that might not mean we’ll never see the two X-Men in a movie together. After everything had died down, Reynolds had a chance to reflect and mentioned that he would be totally down to team up with the Canadian superhero, but there’s one big obstacle to get past: for all intents and purposes, Logan will be Hugh Jackman’s last run as Wolverine.