Wolverine 3

What’s exciting about the new Wolverine solo movie Logan is how dark and creepy it looks compared to the superhero movies that have come before. It’s definitely a more mature turn from our favorite curmudgeonly X-Man, where danger and death are a lot closer and more realistic than they used to be. Giving his all to the creepy-factor is Stephen Merchant, whose albino Caliban we’ve seen in two photos already, and who looks a little different from the version of the character we saw in this summer’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Now, a third Caliban photo has been revealed, this one possibly odder than the last.

It’s tougher than it seems for a superhero movie to get an R rating. These days, most of them fall somewhere around the PG-13 spectrum, which allows teen audiences easy access to the comic book movies usually geared toward them, as well as families to bring the smaller kids whose favorite toy is their oversize talking Hulk hands. But Logan is a superhero movie of a different sort, so it needs a rating that puts it in a different category from the other X-Men movies. To achieve that R rating, probably through violence and language, the star Hugh Jackman apparently took a pay cut so that the film could get there.

Future advertising executives of the world, take notice: the official Instagram account for 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Logan is how you build up to the release of a movie. For the past few months, Logan has released a series of black and white photos that tease fragments of the new mutant-free world inhabited by Wolverine and Charles Xavier. Rather than simply share images found in the final movie, the Instagram account has put together a collection of photos meant to keep their social media audience engaged leading up to the film’s release. The photos serve as a kind of art installation for dedicated fans of the X-Men franchise.

Have we mentioned that the official Logan Instagram is gorgeous? Have we said that enough? Because it is, and two new photos show off a couple more small details of the film. We’ve seen the trailer, and while it’s in color and not black and white like the Instagram account, I certainly hope that the movie keeps some of the atmospheric-ness of its photos to give us a more contemplative superhero movie that the Instagrams hint is possible.

Possibly my favorite part about the current production publicity of Logan is the set’s Instagram account, economically named @wponx. It’s been active for this latest round of shooting, about a month, and has delivered us a bunch of cast and set details while also doubling as a simply stunning black and white photography account. The latest photo, posted yesterday, shows the Wolverine in standard Wolverine fighting pose, standing over what appears to be a body in someone’s backyard.

March 2017 isn’t that far away — in just four months, we’ll be heading to the theater to check out Logan, featuring Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine. That’s kind of a big deal, considering the actor has portrayed the iconic X-Men hero on screen eight times, with the upcoming Wolverine sequel serving as his ninth film in the franchise. As such, we’ve really been enjoying director James Mangold’s frequent photo updates, which are likely to become more frequent in the months ahead.

Last week’s Logan trailer showed a very different vision of Marvel’s favorite mutant, about as far cry from an X-Men movie as we ever expected. If you feel the third Wolverine movie could use a bit more yellow spandex, however, check out this fan mash-up of the Logan trailer with Wolverine’s animated counterparts.

By now, you’ve all had a chance to watch, and re-watch, and re-re-watch, the trailer for Logan. What makes the film look so special  —  what separates it from the herd of superhero adaptations  —  is how little it looks like a superhero movie. If you knew nothing about Wolverine, you might think it’s just a fantasy or science-fiction story about an aging warrior tasked with looking after the future of his people. It’s an old tale in other genres but a breath of fresh air for a franchise typically more interested in fight scenes than pathos.

With its trailer debut this morning, Logan solidified itself as something separate from the wider X-Men cinematic universe. With Hugh Jackman and Sir Patrick Stewart the only two connections to the other X-Men movies, we’re left a little puzzled as to how Logan fits into the wider timeline of events. Luckily, director James Mangold is here to explain away our confusion, and why he picked that particular Johnny Cash song.

He’s the best there is at what he does. And what he does is make gritty spinoff X-Men movies.