Original subtitles

We got ourselves an X-Men fan.

Maybe a quarter of it happened, and not like this.

HUGH JACKMAN: It seems to me that the strength of Wolverine

is more the humanity than his superpower.

In exploring his character,

I really wanted to get to the heart of who that human was.

JAMES MANGOLD: Putting superheroes into very real situations

that we all can connect with,

to me, is a way to suddenly reveal new aspects of these characters

that we hadn't seen.

There was a longing on our part to try to take a more classic approach,

do a more character-based story.

What a disappointment you are.

It was clearly going to be of a very different nature

from the way the other films in the franchise have been seen before.

STEPHEN MERCHANT: It seems to be tapping into some sort

of classic American storytelling.

It feels both, kind of, old-fashioned and new and fresh at the same time.

It's a movie about family. It's a movie about love.

HUTCH PARKER: It's much more dramatic, it's much more real.

It's entirely different than we've seen Logan.

I am fucked up. And | cannot get you there.

I want the audience to feel everything.

I want them to be outraged, I want them to laugh, I want them to yell.

(SCREAMS)

I want them to, by the end, feel like

they've got to know fully and understand this human,

this man called Logan.

Save the "not okay."

Meaning it's... Boom! She looks at you, get her attention. "Not..."

Make sure she has your attention.

-Got it. -Give her a lesson.

Then pull her out and kind of go, "Do you have..."

But, like, really throw it away. "Do you have phone chargers?"

Just underplay it, and let's see if it works. Here we go.

MANGOLD: The only thing that made us interested in going around again

was the idea of doing something very different.

Notjust different in storyline, but different in tone.

JACKMAN: We both wanted a movie that was a standalone movie,

that wasn't necessarily intermingled with the history of X-Men movies,

the timeline of X-Men movies,

or characters that had been set up or gone or died, or whatever.

We wanted something to feel very different, very fresh,

and ultimate/y, something very human.

MANGOLD: I think both Hugh and I wanted to find a way

to make a movie about these characters that was actually a dramatic film.

LOGAN: lt is better this way.

Because | suck at this.

Bad shit happens to people I care about.

You understand me?

PATRICK STEWART: Rather than being a multitude of different characters

with different objectives and intentions and story lines,

this is one overriding storyline,

which I really responded to ve/y, very strong/y.

MANGOLD: In terms of narratives, we were actually taking more

from the Craig Kyle X-23 series of comics

than we were from Old Man Logan.

JAC KMAN: Obviously I've read Old Man Logan

and there are elements of that,

but there's more differences than similarities

and that wasn't what we were using as a template.

Everyone frame up on A.

The most powerful effect Mark Millar's Old Man Logan had on me

was its setting and its look.

The story involved a lot of characters we didn't even have the rights to,

but also the story is vely bleak, and I wanted to make a film with heart.

There was a time when the action movie

was still character-based and not spectacle-based.

And the superhero film has become kind of like the Western was in the '50s.

There are dozens of them a year.

Wolverine.

I knew it was you.

JACKMAN: lhad a vision of something closer to Unforgiven,

in not necessarily the story but what Unforgiven did for the Western.

Where the lead character, Clint Eastwood,

there was so much fan following and history

and he kind ofjust turned it on its head a little bit.

Now, Old Man Logan, having spoken to the writer,

is absolutely inspired by Unforgiven.

So, I like to see the connection more in that way.

SCOTT FRAN K: On the last Wolverine movie,

we were always talking about Outlaw Josey Wales.

So, the Western was always a part of our conversations

whenever we were talking about the Wolverine character.

It's so big on you right now, it's kind of deadifying you, the...

And what I wanna feel is just the, "Fuckl I don't wanna do this!"

-That's nice. Nice. Nice. -Yes.

It's a superhero movie but within that, we try to create a subgenre,

so that you feel like you're seeing something different.

PARKER: I think Wolverine's essential/y a Western character.

That's what he is at his essence, he is an out/aw,

he is a character with a great moral code, at odds with the society in which he lives.

I know you're still good inside.

I know you want to help us.

You don't know anything about me.

MANGOLD: I think the Western motif came really naturally to the film

the second we reduced the scope of the movie to something more intimate.

The Westerns that we all love and remember

are rarely about the battle of X or Y or kind of the winning of a great territory.

They're really about, "Will this farmer get to keep his land?

"Will this man hold on to his family?

"Will this dark family control this county?"

The questions are local, and yet they seem huge.

Three, two, one, action!

Stay up with him. Suffer, but stay with him.

Turn, look, see what happened, then go.

You're involved in this, you lose the guy,

"Shit!" Beep! Beep! Someone's honking at you.

You look back, then the guy's waving you through.

Good, cut. We got it.

PARKER: Jim is one of the finest dramatic directors that I know.

I think his skills with regard to performance,

and drama in general, are remarkable.

He is a director who can express very clearly

what he thinks a scene is about, or a character or a relationship is about,

and then he's prepared to throw it all away and do something different,

and I think most actors find that exciting,

that they are not being restrained within certain parameters of directorial objective.

He's an amazing writer, and when we worked on the last Wolverine,

and on Kate & Leopold, the first movie | did with him,

there were scripts that had been written, then he directed.

I was really excited about the possibility of what would come if Jim had a clean slate,

a blank canvas, and that's what we had.

MANGOLD: I had this kind of Strange vision in my head

that I just wanted to make a road movie with these characters.

The idea of almost trapping myself as a filmmaker,

putting them in a car and putting them on the highway,

would kind of tie my hands.

We couldn't do something about worlds colliding or an alien invasion.

The movie would essential/y force itself to operate on a more intimate level.

Jim's very keen on establishing the relationships between people

and really making sure he burrows into those interconnections.

RICHARD E. GRANT: He likes to subvert what is the obvious way of doing something

to try and find another way around it,

so that it doesn't fitjust the cliché of this big dramatic moment.

He does everything to play against that, or divert that.

DAFNE KEEN: I think he's a good director. It's fun working with him.

Lots of directors just tell you what they want you to do,

but he says, "Just make it real."

The trickiest thing about writing and directing superhero films is,

if someone is invincible, if someone cannot be hurt,

they're essential/y kind of uninteresting.

JAC KMAN: The beginning of this movie, Logan is very lost.

He is despondent, he's older, there's quite a few more gray hairs,

but he's not well, he's sick, he's physically sick,

and, I would say, spiritual/y and emotional/y not in a great place.

He's long past the stage in his life

where he reacts to people 's pleas and cries for help.

He has come to the conclusion

that generally when he helps, things end up worse off.

You're coming upon a man who's getting poisoned from the inside out.

His Skeleton, made of Adamantium, is leeching inside him and he's suffering.

So, we 're finding a character in extreme distress.

MICHAEL GREEN: He's not a hero anymore, he's a fucking mess.

His body doesn't behave like it used to.

His morality doesn't engage like it used to. He's just getting by.

A|| of the elements that made Logan "Logan," Wolverine "Wo|verine,"

are here in this movie.

It's just that all the circumstances are different

and that's what makes this so interesting,

that the guy's struggling, really struggling,

To go back and be the person you've been trying not to be

in order to do the right thing,

that's always an interesting notion for a character.

He's always been, in this role, kind of grumpy,

but not as grumpy as in this one.

He's really grumpy.

The issues that the character is confronting

are the most challenging ones he's come upon.

It's been important for Hugh each time that we give him a journey, as an actor,

that was engaging and interesting and fresh for him,

so we had to work hard to find new ground.

MERCHANT: He still seems interested in finding new elements,

digging under the surface,

so I think that's a great testament to him.

He's not complacent about this character,

that he's still burrowing into it and finding new ways of exploring him.

PARKER: It's the best I've ever seen him as Wolverine.

I think it's the best I've ever seen him, period.

FRANK: The reason, if the movie works at all,

works because Hugh Jackman committed 1,000% to playing this role,

and to playing it without compromise,

to playing him older, broken, angry,

all the things that make him wholly unappealing,

and somehow manages to find humanity underneath all of that,

and to make him heroic at the same time,

and that goes well beyond anything that was on the page.

STEWART: The thought of Wolverine and Hugh Jackman

cannot now be separated.

The man and the role have merged.

| don't mean to say that you need to be scared of Hugh Jackman,

that he might actually rip your neck open at any moment.

Actually, there's no other actor/ know

who is less likely to do something like that than Hugh.

What's so extraordinary to me is just seeing the contrast between the real Hugh,

who couldn't be more lovely and sweet-natured and generous,

and then him having to put on that gruff, taciturn man

dealing with his darkness and his demons, who seems so far from the real man.

KEEN: It's the opposite of him, it really is.

Because he's very nice and funny and sings all the time

and tells jokes and stuff,

but then, when he's Wolverine, it's a kind of total change.

Like, suddenly he's a grumpy man who hates you,

and then they say, "Cut," and he's smiling and telling jokes.

-Ow, ow. Ow! -(LAUGHS)

(GRUNTS)

JAC KMAN: It seemed to me that Wolverine may be one of the darkest,

most complex characters in the comic book universe,

and every time, for the last 17 years, I've seen PG-13,

a little part of me has winced, going,

"Wolverine would never be in a PG-13 movie.

"I don't think he would ever watch a PG-13 movie."

Just nothing about him seemed PG-13.

FRAN K: There's a manifesto in the script, a little two-paragraph thing that we wrote

about how the violence was going to feel,

how it was going to appear, how it was gonna be portrayed,

that it was gonna be meaningful, impactful and have Iasting consequences.

I didn't want to make just a more violent, more sexy, more explicit, obscene movie.

| wanted to somehow make an adult movie.

I've hurt people, too.

You're gonna have to learn how to live with that.

PARKER: It's the tone of this character who is full of rage, and at times, self-Ioathing,

and an anger towards the world that has shunned him.

JACKMAN: I was like, "This will not be a movie driven by a rating."

It's not R-rated because of the violence,

even though there is a myriad of violence in it,

that's not what defines it as R-rated.

That R rating is more about the subject matter,

the way the characters are treated, the wa y violence is depicted.

MANGOLD: When you make a movie rated R,

it resets everyone how they're thinking about the movie.

They instantly understand this is not a movie for children.

So, suddenly, they don't expect you to be making a movie

that's gonna appeal to 9-year-olds.

With that anticipation gone,

you suddenly are making a movie about more grown-up themes.

JAC KMAN: It was just basically taking off the seatbelt,

taking off any kind of restriction and, "Let's just dive into this character."

MERCHANT: It feels more grounded, and it's certain/y tough,

and at times, extremely violent.

(GRUNTING)

(SCREAMING)

Who are you?

You know who | am.

You're the man who puts me to sleep.

We both could use some sleep.

No! No!

(G ROANS)

JAMES MANGOLD: The starting point of the film

was really about creating a situation

where you find Logan caring for an ailing father.

And struggling to provide protection and medicine and love and care

for someone who is losing control.

PATRICK STEWART: The history of Charles Xavier, right up to the last movie,

was one in which he was in command, in control,

giving the sense that when Charles Xavier was on the screen

everything was gonna be all right.

Well, that's all changed.

And it becomes perfectly clear when we first encounter Charles.

And he's old, he's i||, but most importantly, he's dangerous.

(EXCLAIMS)

MANGOLD: Charles Xavier with a degenerative brain disease

is very different than you or I,

meaning that he's the most powerful brain in the world

and he's Iosing control of it.

So, it's also a little like having a nuclear missile hidden in this tank.

Only, one that you love

and one that you're t/ying to keep comfortable.

HUGH JACKMAN: Charles is not in a good place.

His mind is going, he doesn't remember things,

he doesn't understand why he's there, at times.

STEWART: He's at peril, and the person who looks after him,

mothers him, nurses him, supervises him, argues with him,

picks him up off the floor when he's fallen down, is Logan.

MICHAEL GREEN: Why does Logan bother to show up for Charles?

If you asked Logan, he would say he's doing it because he owes him.

But if you look at his face, you'll see it's because he loves him.

| thought that was a very relevant theme. Many people are caring for older parents.

Many people are going through this as we live longer.

JACKMAN: I think what I love about what Jim wrote is,

you see the frustration of caring for someone like that,

and that person not understanding or knowing.

It's very real, in a way, domestically real.

STEWART: For Charles and Logan, the roles have been reversed.

Essentially you always felt that so long as Charles was attending to Logan,

and there with Logan,

that the powers that Logan had would be controlled.

And in this film, the roles are reversed.

Xavier is the vulnerable one, and Logan is his minder, his keeper,

his controller, if you like, protecting him.

Take these now.

We have to get out of here. It's not safe here anymore.

And you can't have an attack out there, you understand?

When Jim suggested Patrick in this part, at that stage of his life,

I just thought, "This is so perfect."

MANGOLD: Patrick has always kind of played a cool cat,

someone who has it all together, is in control,

is kind of pulling the puppet strings, if anything.

And | think one of the things that was really attractive

when I first started telling Patrick about what we were thinking of doing,

is it gave him a chance to play weakness, frailty, fear, anxiety, crotchetiness,

things he rarely gets a chance to be.

CHARLES: Stop it. For God's sake, | can do this myself!

LOGAN: Yeah, well, you're not doing it. Just get on with it.

CHARLES: Not with you standing there.

LOGAN: Trust me, I'm not Iookin'.

JAC KMAN: He was so into this.

I think, a little like me, after 17 years, he looked at the script

and saw a full opportunity to dive into the deepest part of these characters.

STEPHEN MERCHANT: Patrick, for all of his years of experience,

for a|| of the Shakespeare he's done, a|| of the stage work and all the movies,

he's still willing to discuss and to find new ways into it.

We shot all his stuff first, and he just came in on day one.

Even in rehearsals, he was ready, he was off-book, he knew every line.

MERCHANT: The thing with Patrick is it's just that voice.

It's just, when he starts talking in that voice,

and he's made up and he's lit, he's that man,

and you just stand there watching, believing, and just absorbed by it.

You're just hypnotized by the gravitas that they bring.

| can barely remember the lines.

It's a heartbreaking, beautiful, Iayered, textured, complex performance.

At times, unbelievably Iucid and clear.

You see the relationship with he and Logan as very sort of father-son, in all its colors.

| guess you prefer me pharmaceutically castrated, rambling on like a Iunatic.

So much easier for you.

LOGAN: Easier? Jesus!

There is nothing easy about you, Charles, nothing!

Yes, yes, please be like the rest of the world...

blaming someone else for your boring shit.

JACKMAN: Pride, disappointment, anger, frustration, it all plays out.

And what he does with so little is just really heartbreaking.

DAFNE KEEN: With Patrick, it was funny, because he would also tell jokes and stuff,

and he was a bit more like his character. It was very fun, shooting the scenes.

JAC KMAN: I'II never forget, we were in the back of the car,

and we had finished this great scene we have in the car

where we're having this argument,

and Dafne, who is 11, she's just on the seat, watching, and we call cut,

and Patrick goes... (SIGHS)

And Dafne said, "What's the matter? Are you hot?"

And he goes, "No, Iwasjust sad."

He goes, "|'|| never get to do that scene again." (CHUCKLES)

And she goes, "Well, you've got lots..."

He goes, "No, you don't understand, Dafne.

"You will understand that the hardest thing about film is

"when you get a great scene like that,

"you only do it for one day in your life and then it's gone."

And he looked at her and he said, "Make sure you do theater.

"Because when you get a great scene,

"at least you get to do it for six months every night."

And he goes, "And then you're ready for it to go."

But in that moment, I saw this man 's joy in what he's doing.

He reveled in this character, and it shows.

MANGOLD: I think this is what's so beautiful in Patrick's performance,

you see the character you knew,

you see him kind of bubble up and come up in a really human and beautiful way.

And I think it's one of Patrick's great performances.

I think it's really astounding.

Playing Charles since, what, 1999, 1998,

has been a delightful and entertaining experience.

And I hope, for all of us, it will be a Iegacy

that we satisfied the requirement of that legend and those characters.

You.

Who the hell are you?

Hey! | asked you a question. Who are you?

You know who she is, Logan.

No, | don't.

Does she remind you of anybody?

Laura and several other kids are mutants that were actually produced in a lab,

taking DNA from various mutants and mixing it together

and creating embryos, and therefore kids.

It's probably the least science-fiction part of our story,

is the idea that embryos are gonna be created in a petri dish,

and we 're gonna be cutting and splicing different genes together

and different qualities together, however we want it,

and eradicating diseases

and bringing in certain qualities and creating humans as we want them.

KEEN: She's a child, but she's a kind of strange child.

She's very different.

She loves violence when she gets angry but then at the same time,

she loves unicorn T-shirts and pink and stuff like that.

She's not my child.

But I love her.

You may not love her.

But she is your child.

MANGOLD: Laura, in this film, represents a kind of prima/ challenge to Logan,

whether he's gonna figure out how to love,

whether he's gonna figure out how to give a shit,

or kind of risk himself and stick with it.

And what's so interesting and peculiar about Laura

is that this particular kid happens to be one that is genetically saddled

with the same rage, temper, blades, volatility and mood swings as her father.

Last ride.

You're welcome.

MANGOLD: He's got a real challenge on his hands

because he's got a child as problematic as the parent.

SCOTT FRANK: In previous incarnations of the movie,

she was talking all the time from the beginning

and it was a little wise-cracky relationship, it was more expected.

And I thought it'd be better to fool the audience,

not in terms of whether or not she speaks, but in terms of her level of intelligence.

Let's think she's an animal.

Let's think she was created in a test tube and she is this very feral creature.

(YELLS)

And then you gradually begin to see how much more aware she is of things,

how much smarter she is, what she notices,

and she's a lot sharper than anyone, certain/y Logan, gives her credit for.

Their relationship is very much at the core of what the movie is,

because it's the relationship through which

he sort of comes to reconnect to his own humanity.

JACKMAN: This is a very difficult part to cast.

She's genetically got Wo|verine's DNA.

So, there are elements of him in her personality and her physicality,

and that's not easy to pull off.

I found it hard to pull off when I was 30, let alone an 11-year-old girl.

I was really happy when they told me that I got the part.

It was very fun filming.

PARKER: She loved making this movie.

She couldn't get to work early enough.

Her parents had trouble getting her to sleep at night.

MANGOLD: Scott and I had the idea that Laura should be mute

for most of the movie, not speaking,

and then when she does, we put another impediment between Logan and her,

in that she's speaking Spanish.

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

What? Shut up.

Shut the fuck up!

MANGOLD: So, instantly we needed a kid who was bilingual,

who could speak fluent Spanish,

who would be credible as a child raised in a Mexican facility,

which is where the Transigen lab is located.

We began a search for Latino kids between nine and 12

that could handle action, could act,

and could speak English and español.

We must have seen 1,000 kids.

STEWART: Both of Dafne's parents are actors.

An English actor whose work I've always admired,

and her mother is a ve/y fine and distinguished Spanish stage actress.

Dafne Keen is a sharp kid,

and she's physical, she's daring, she's fearless,

and she's a really good actress.

James showed me a clip of her audition on camera,

and he said, "I'd just like to know what you think of this."

She was playing the scene and it was very, very good.

And then on the clip she asked the director,

could she improvise the scene?

And she went into her own version of the scene

in a mixture of Spanish and English,

and it was one of the most extraordinary bits of audition tape

I had ever seen in my life.

JACKMAN: It's 2,000 fucking miles, you've been sitting in the back,

you cou|d've fucking talked to me this whole time.

(KEEN YELLING IN SPANISH)

JACKMAN: Shut the fuck up!

Mason, Rictor, Caden, Bobby and Charlotte.

Who's that?

Mason, Rictor, Caden Bobby and Charlotte.

Who is that?

Who is it?

Montana. Montana!

What?

-What about it? No. -Montana.

Yes, your mom, she read a lot of stories, your mom made this up.

This is all bullshit. You understand?

Yes, I know, I know. I've read it, I've seen it. This is a comic book, okay?

This is all just fantasy. It's all just pictures, made-up pictures.

Yes, okay, | understand.

Yes, okay, fine, yeah.

This place here, okay? This does not exist. Listen to me.

This does not... No existo. Eden, no existo.

There is no Eden. You understand?

Si! Si, si. Eden.

No, there is no Eden, there is no Bobby, there is no Rictor.

There is none of it. This is all just some big fucking lie.

I know where fucking Montana is, and I'm not taking you there!

PARKER: There are qualities you can't ask of somebody to deliver.

A level of strength, a sort of stage presence,

and a maturity that still doesn't really make sense to me.

It felt like she could do this most difficult thing of, on the one hand,

being this emotional kind of co-star with Hugh and with Patrick,

and on top of that, then also manage the physicality, which is pretty demanding.

She was really a remarkable discovery.

JACKMAN: And she came in for the audition,

there's a scene where she punches me in the arm,

and I went home and I had bruises all over my arm.

No offense to all those guys I've fought,

but I've never gone home with bruises until that day.

She's the most Ievel-headed, amazing kid. She is a phenomenal, phenomenal actress.

It was a real honor to share the film with her.

MERCHANT: For someone so young, she seems so self-possessed,

and she just does it, she just gets it, she just understands what's needed.

STEWART: She's a child who performs

with the weight and seriousness and intensity and diversity

of a very experienced and worldly actress.

JACKMAN: She doesn't speak for the first 90 minutes of the movie,

everything has to be communicated through her eyes and her expression,

and her heart, and you get it all.

MANGOLD: Sometimes you don't have to do much and in this case,

you get Dafne and Hugh and Patrick together,

our rehearsals before we shot were amazing

and I was already wanting to cut off the rehearsal because I wanted to be shooting.

I always am frightened in rehearsals

that I 'm missing the first moment the scene comes to life.

My goal is to always get...

The moment the scene blossoms, I wanna be filming.

My greatest fear is that I'm rehearsing and the scene feels great,

'cause then what's gonna happen is a month later you're gonna be shooting

and you're gonna be going, "It's not the same."

So, most of what I do is, I get the actors together,

in this case you're talking about Dafne, Hugh and Patrick, and they hang.

They work on the scenes, they get to know each other,

they trust each other, they become friends.

Hugh is a father himself

and was really, just, comfortable talking and working with a kid,

and Patrick was incredibly generous and lovely with her.

And you just began to see the energies just naturally developing between them.

You want me to get there basically as he reaches...

Yes, and |wou|dn't even mind if you go, "Logan," and you take...

And for another, something wrong,

you take a step toward him, like, up around the corner.

Caliban in Marvel Iore and X-Men Iore

was kind of on the dark side of things for a long while in his life.

What I chose to, kind of, examine in this movie was

finding him as a character who had already turned,

regretted what he'd done with his past and kind of turned to helping

and is serving almost, kind of, babysitter for Logan.

JAC KMAN: It's really important for the dynamic

that exists between Charles and Logan

that there was the third wheel and he's the perfect foil.

And the dynamic between the three of them works perfectly.

You're saving to buy a Sunseeker.

"Sun" is the keyword.

| hardly see myself cowering below decks like Nosferatu.

D0 you?

Folding your underpants, and making him spotted dick.

PARKER: I guess you'd call him kind of the uncle.

Stephen Merchant plays him, he does a brilliantjob

bringing his, kind of, acerbic wit but tremendous humanity to the character.

MERCHANT: In this film, I play a freakishly tall albino mutant.

It's typecasting. I mean, they barely need to do any makeup to make me sort of

ghostly and albino-like.

What a chameleon. He's made a dramatic shift in this.

Every day, seeing him, he's just stark white.

He's almost seven foot tall.

So he's just got one of the coolest characters in the film.

MANGOLD: Stephen just came in and read and he's a remarkably good actor,

and of course has all these unique aspects of personality that he brought to the role.

MERCHANT: I had auditioned With Jim,

I sat there and I was expecting to do my lines then be sent away,

but Jim was incredibly animated, he got up on his feet,

he was reading the other lines, he would...

At one point, he took the lines away from me, he said, "You don't need these"

and he made me take my glasses off and then he got me up and then

he grabbed a bag from the casting woman and | had to use that as a prop.

So, it was a veiy live/y, very physical audition,

which I was a little bit kind of oven/vhelmed by

'cause I don't mind improvising and rolling with the punches

but I felt a bit like, "Crumbs, I 'm not quite prepared for

"this level of playfulness and animation."

So, | kind of left thinking, "Well, I don't think that he's gonna

"have responded to that."

I never felt like I'd nai/ed it but it turns out

he could see that by prodding me in certain wa ys,

he was getting the reaction that he was looking for, which was great.

A year ago, you asked me to help you.

And God knows I've tried.

But | can't help you, Logan, not really...

if you're not going to talk to me.

STEWART: He is an extraordinary performer

and his characterization in this film are very original and unexpected.

And indeed, funny at times too.

Take the gun. Dump the body.

Text me when you're on the way back.

You have anything else you need?

Food for the kid?

JAC KMAN: He is funny in this. He is also dramatically really, really strong.

Takes it very, very seriously. He did a lot of preparation,

a lot of makeup time, but I think he is fantastic.

MERC HANT: Jim wanted my physicality

to be more hunched and ravaged, almost like an old man before his time,

like the world has beaten me down, perhaps through kind of i|| health

and through the fact that I struggle to live in this daylight

'cause I have problems coping with the sun, so we 've played with that

and the voice and him wanting just for me to seem

lived in and weathered and almost exhausted.

I'm gonna need you to do one more thing for the good guys...

and track one more special mute for me.

MANGOLD: One of the reasons I love Boyd

is I'm always looking for a new shade,

I'm really tired of that, like, 11 on the volume knob of crazy villain.

And again, not unlike the spectacle, I just wanted to step back.

I wanna go, "What if we cast these as real people?"

And yes, we have these crazy appendages and yes, all that's still there,

but we're not hamming it up every moment.

I think he's a gifted actor, he does a remarkable job.

BOYD HOLBROOK: What drew me to this role was how it was written.

Donald was such a personality for me

and | loved that he was drawing out a lit bit of his flamboyant side

and how engaging he is.

He finds humor in things when it's most inappropriate.

JACKMAN: I actually told him when I read the script I thought,

"That's one of the hardest parts to pull off."

He is the villain. But like all great villains, you're gonna wanna watch him.

I think the greatest villains, like the Alan Rickman

or Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs,

you can't wait for them to get onscreen,

and Jim wrote a character that loved to just chat.

I heard you was in Phoenix.

But then, last night, some friends of mine in Texas HP called...

and told me they found three dead cholos in a pullout on 54.

Not unusual, I know.

Except one was missing a hand, another one a leg.

So they was thinking...

it was either an escaped tiger or Freddy Krueger.

JACKMAN: You look at the page and you go,

"Wow, man, this is three pages of dialogue,"

but he had a really brilliant way ofjust letting it roll off his tongue

and no take was ever the same, and he was really into it.

MANGOLD: Why don't we do this in order?

Boyd brought sort of a charm and... You get the sense that he likes mutants,

even though he's tasked with hunting them down,

he sort of has a soft spot for them.

So, there's almost a sort of joy that he takes

in his relationship with them, even as it's perverse.

Jesus, Wolverine, seeing you like this just breaks my damn heart.

As soon as I rip it out of your chest, fuck-stick.

(G ROANS)

MERCHANT: Boyd was quite a Iaid-back guy,

but he's able to switch on this real intensity when he's playing Pierce.

Like, he really throws himself into it. I wish I had that level of technique.

He really did a superb job of giving that breadth and that dimension to the role.

Playback!

MANGOLD: The wonderful thing among really good actors

is they instantly know when they're with really good actors.

It's like tennis players. When you hit the ball, you get it back,

and how you get it back is how you're gonna swing next.

-There's a lot of reflection. -There's a lot of reflection, yeah.

-Off my pale skin. -(LAUGHING)

MANGOLD: So, my biggest job is to get really good actors together,

and then sometimes managing is stepping back.

What I'd love is for him to have a clean entrance into your shot.

For Hugh and I, and everyone else involved,

we really worked hard to pretend we were not making a superhero movie.

Maybe we weren't even pretending. We felt we were making a dramatic film

that happened to feature these established iconic characters.

And I hope people walk away from the movie

as feeling like they watched a credible, moving,

dramatic film made by artists who give a shit.

Good, cut! Moving on. Very nice, thank you.

Cut!

MAN: (ON RADIO) It's 2029.

Why are we still talking about mutants?

JAMES MANGOLD: The movie takes place in the year 2029.

| wanted us to land in a place where we could still see ourselves,

and the here and now, but maybe just a little worse

or a little bigger or more exaggerated.

PATRICK STEWART: James has created a world which is recognizable

and familiar and everyday and in its way, commonplace.

And yet wrapped in this maelstrom of fear

and excitement and danger and the need to escape.

There are no new mutants. Understand?

Hasn't been a new one born in 25 years. Not anywhere.

HUTCH PARKER: Mutants are a dying breed

and that casts a whole new sense to the reality,

the world that Logan now finds himself in.

This movie doesn't have to pay service to these other films.

It gives you an opportunity to really do something completely unique.

But setting the movie in the near future is one of the biggest challenges for us

because we didn't want to have all these gadgets and gizmos

distracting us from the intimate story.

So we 've created a very unique approach where we 've stripped even/thing back.

MANGOLD: While the movie is taking place in the future,

it almost kind of feels slightly retro in a way.

The kind of cultural struggles we 're having right now,

the sense of disconnection,

people living disconnected from one another,

all of that we tried to incorporate without going nuts

and making the movie kind of a dystopian fantasy.

AU DOUY: We have automated trucks that are driving across country,

which is actually probably only a heartbeat away.

We also have automated threshers that are harvesting com in Kansas.

In the background of some shots, we have an automated street sweeper.

MANGOLD: I wanted it to be resembling our world. I remember 25 years ago,

people would talk about what the future's gonna be like and here it is, 25 years later,

and New York essentially looks the same,

you know, L.A. essentially looks the same.

The cars change, fashion changes a little, the music we 're listening to.

It can either be the sad or most beautiful thing about humanity,

but the truth is that we don't change that fast.

(SCOFFS)

See?

You're not the only one that's been enhanced.

MANGOLD: Donald Pierce leads a group called the Reavers,

who are made up of a whole different bunch of amputees

and different kinds of damaged guys with unique Iimbs,

mechanical Iimbs, cyborg limbs built on.

HOLBROOK: Donald has an extensive background in the military.

So he is genetically engineering them notjust to get a robotic Iimb,

but to have it that much more functional.

| love the idea of this kind of hardcore, tough as nails bunch of amputee warriors

and that's what I wanted to retain and explore.

(LAURA SPEAKING SPANISH)

This is a long way.

You understand? I am not taking you to North Dakota.

PARKER: It was really important to Jim that we get off the stage

and that we go to practical locations

and shoot it in a way not a lot of movies get made anymore.

MARIA T. BIERNIAK: Jim wanted real places.

He wanted to use real environments and not have to go to a place

and totally remodel it to make it look like

a film crew came in here and scenic-ed it out.

AU DOUY: John Mathieson came on as our DP, who is absolutely terrific

and was really into the idea of using a lot of practicals and available light

and creating a vely realistic, grounded look for the movie.

MATHIESON: There's not one glamorous, clean moment in this film.

You know, everyone's grubby, dirty, bruised, cut.

We can be rougher and truer

and walk into a location where the light is unflattering or it's hard.

It's middle of the day, hot, burning, shimmering desert,

and white skies, not blue skies,

There's a few puffy clouds here and again but it's uncomfortable.

PARKER: John 's an incredibly talented guy.

He's got a résumé that anyone would be proud to have,

and for all of us, I think, we want to get it to be more real, more in-camera,

less digital, less artificial, in whatever ways we could do that,

and we were lucky enough to get John to come and help us do that.

MATHIESON: It's like a road movie to me

and very real, closer to those road movies of the '70s.

People on the run, got to move, got to run, got to get away, people in flight.

(ENGINE REVVING)

PARKER: The Iandscapes that we were able to incorporate

really did impact the filmmaking.

It informed the actors, it informed production design.

MANGOLD: We wanted to create this sense of a cross-country journey,

heading northward from the EI Paso area to the Dakotas.

AU DO UY: Jim, from the veiy beginning, wanted to get a lot of different looks.

From the dry desert, New Mexico and Texas and Oklahoma into Kansas,

up through South Dakota, North Dakota and then ultimately, the border of Canada.

BIERNIAK: François and I actually had time to go out, poke around and see

what was available and what was out there and we would come back with locations

and it would inspire Jim to change certain things in the script.

AU DOUY: With a movie of this size,

it's virtual/y impossible to take 400 people on the road through America.

So the real challenge was to try to figure out

how to land in basically two states and try to get a big look.

MANGOLD: You're gonna start in the EI Paso terrain,

which we used New Mexico for.

Then you're gonna move slowly into farmland,

which we used southern Mississippi and northern Louisiana for.

We did our stage work in New Orleans.

And then as you move into the Rockies,

we actually return to the highlands of New Mexico,

almost on the Colorado border.

| think you will feel that you're seeing a real journey

in a way that I don't think is quite the same as when we do it digital/y.

There is a bit of color arc in the film in that it starts hot and dry

and they kind of come up to this more green, verdant place.

AU DOUY: There're a lot of natural hues and natural tones

that have been inspired by

the colors of the Mexican desert and the colors of EI Paso,

and going through Kansas and up to the border north.

So, we've been augmenting that with some blues

and warm golds and things.

Trying to create kind of a rich look.

In most of these movies, you are under tremendous pressure

to be bigger than the last one.

To do something bigger, more fantastic in scope,

Iouder, more intense, and we in a sense withdrew from that entire challenge.

So, one of the biggest challenges for the production designer on this film was,

"How do I build these sets? Create these spaces but do it in a way

"that it doesn't feel like just another one of these pictures?"

AU DOUY: Our sets were built

like they were really locations and they had hard ceilings

and a lot of practical lighting and then he would augment that

to create a very believable world.

MATHIESON: Français' designs are not symmetrical or pretty,

they are odd and unusual and real.

You didn't know when you were in a studio,

you didn't know when you were on the road.

(TRAIN BELL DINGING)

We live in this sort of derelict smelting plant,

as people inevitably do in comic book movies.

No one's living in a nice little house in a cul-de-sac somewhere.

They're living in an abandoned smelting plant.

| don't even know what a smelting plant is.

STEWART: It's a bizarre set, but it's Charles' home.

It's a grim and uncomfortable and unpleasant place.

You can 't blame them for wanting to get away from it.

MANGOLD: When I first started writing the script

I actually had them starting in Kentucky

and Charles was being kept inside a bourbon tank.

And then at some point I moved it to south of the border

and that's when François and I started working on different looks.

AU DOUY: One of my favorite sets was the exterior of the smelting plant

because it was a full build.

Jim wanted to create a chase and a choreography

all through the eight-acre site.

And so, it was really creating a world from the ground up.

François made a model of the smelting plant.

And it had this water tower. I've got water towers in other films of mine.

Bridges and water towers I 'm forever fascinated with,

and then at some point, you know,

us talking about different arrangements of these buildings,

it fell over, and it suddenly looks like a spider

with its legs kind of sticking

like a dead insect or something Iying on its side.

There's actually a little water treatment plant or power plant out there.

It's a very little structure and we built around it,

basically, on top of it.

And then added the various elements

that we needed to kind of complete the environment.

I, personally, if | was living there, I would have had a good sweep.

I'd have got a broom, I'd have picked up some of the garbage,

I'd have made it more of a home.

If you are planning to blow your brains out...

could you wait till you're out on the high seas?

| just mopped these floors.

We're standing outside the smelting plant, which is Logan's hideout.

We're supposed to be

somewhere in the desert in Chihuahua, Mexico, outside Juérez.

And we searched for about five months to find the right location to build this set

and we found it here about an hour outside Albuquerque, near Rio Rancho.

The set's made up of about five main structures

that take up, like, 1.35 acres. It's quite a big set.

There's Charles' tank, that's a fallen water tower.

Then we 've got the main building,

which is where the kitchen is and where our heroes hang out.

And we've got Logan's bedroom and the shower room.

It's been repurposed.

And these series of catwalks that are designed

to appear like we're taking ore out of the ground,

and then up into the main building for processing.

New deal. Cranes move in down there.

AU DOUY: And what's wonderful here is you can look in 360 degrees

and not see any signs of homes or habitation.

So it's really a phenomenal location.

When we started, it was squeaky clean, brand new when we moved in.

So we went through over a period of about two months

and started cladding the entire place

to make it look like it had been forgotten and abandoned.

MATHIESON: Charles is kept in an old tank, which is rusted,

it's like a colander, it's got lots of holes in it, rust holes.

It also has that feeling of the universe and the stars

and that he is connected with everything.

MANGOLD: The reason I kept gravitating toward a tank

was I wanted something that still had some echo of Cerebro,

and also the idea that you're trying to somehow insulate or contain

the power of his brain in some kind of reflective material

that would reduce how many people he could hurt if he had an attack.

You're waiting for me to die.

AU DOUY: It's sort of a bittersweet end to him

where his happy days and his most powerful time

in the previous films was in this spherical structure at the X-Mansion.

(CAR HORN BLARING)

Is this where we're hiding out?

One of the first stops on the journey is a casino.

BIERNIAK: In Louisiana, most of the casinos are water-based paddle boats.

So we actually went to the only land-based casino in town

and it was great for us because it did give us a big Vegas feel

without having to go to Las Vegas.

MANGOLD: That scene was really difficult for a bizarre reason,

which is that even a movie shoot,

anyone under 18 could not set foot in the casino.

Specifically, in the Louisiana area,

you're just not allowed to have a minor anywhere near the interior of the casino.

PARKER: We had to do little bit of trickery, we had to use doubles.

We did some visual effects work to kind of communicate it

and we created sets where we could double the environment.

So between all three of those or four of those little cheats,

we were able to pull it off.

MANGOLD: It's a pretty elaborate special effects scene

that hopefully does not look like a special effects scene at all.

Just so we could walk her from the entrance to the elevator.

-(PEOPLE SCREAMING) -(GROANS)

-(CAR HORN BLARING) -(T|RES SCREECHING)

MANGOLD: Charles' ability to stop everyone in place

and freeze everyone in place is really interesting.

STEWART: In this movie, that's the power that has gone out of control,

because when he is not medicated,

he is Iiable to have seizures, which can impact other people.

Even if they are not even in the same room or the same building with him,

-and that makes him vely dangerous. -(RUMBLING)

(GLASS BREAKING)

MANGOLD: The idea is that he's actually stopped everyone from breathing.

So they're not only frozen but they're actually drowning.

And that Ied me to imagining, what kind of action sequence could I have?

And something that seemed really chilly

would be the idea of Logan entering a sequence where everyone's frozen

and him picking out every bad guy and essentially gutting them

while they can't even move anything but their eyeballs.

The look was really interesting. There's a lot of technology now

where if someone is too bumpy with their camera,

you can run it through a program that steadies it.

So we did tests before we shot where we were crazy with the camera.

Like crazy shaking it and then we ran it through these programs

and of course, once the camera is shaking that much,

it can't ever really bring it down but you get all this beautiful smearing

as the computer is trying to kind of pull together an image

from something that's so Chaotic.

So the whole sequence is actually shot

with the Cameraman on a kind of vibrating rope,

vibrating the camera like crazy.

And then we run it through a process which takes all the shake out,

but you're left with this kind of smearing effect.

(ALL GASPING)

(ALL PANTING)

CHARLES: We should help them.

No, we have to keep going. Someone will come along.

Someone has come along.

MANGOLD: One thing that happens when you're writing a road picture

is you have characters who just arrive.

You just land and you meet them.

They're not here for the whole movie, they're here just to kind of play a role.

And the Munson family is a family that at a mid-point in the movie,

in a moment of repose, a moment of rest,

our heroes have a chance to gather themselves

after their last brush with the Reavers.

AU DO UY: The farm scenes represented the heart of the movie.

It was really important that that feel very, very real.

We were lucky enough to find an amazing farmhouse

in northern Louisiana, which is the only spot in the entire state

where they produce corn at a great quantity.

So the farmhouse was surrounded by acres and acres of corn in all directions.

And it happened to be this incredible house that was built in the 18303

that hadn 't really been modified and then we recreated the interior on stage.

The family environment, the place that Logan has not been to,

whether it's been years, decades, whatever.

It's a place he's not comfortable in.

It's a place Charles has been yearning for,

and it's the first time that our young actress has ever seen a family dinner.

Ever seen family photos, mementos, a place of that environment.

It's a scene of such warmth and mutual affection,

and understanding and good humor,

and good food in a domestic environment,

which is not something that you have seen much in this franchise.

You know, Logan...

this is what life looks like.

A home, people who love each other.

Safe place.

You should take a moment and feel it.

When the Munsons die,

for no better reason than our heroes have sadly stopped there to rest,

it launches a very dark movement of the film

in which Logan and Laura are trapped together.

You're trying as a screenwriter to lift an audience up,

and then, however cruel it sounds, drop them as hard as you can.

So what we're trying to do is to, kind of,

allow Logan this glimpse of life and then to rip it.

In a sense, proving Logan right. It's like, "No, the world...

"That is not for me and wi|| never be for me."

(MAN TALKING INDISTINCTLY)

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

AU DOUY: The idea of Eden is actually three parts.

First, it's this image that appears in a comic book

as a fantastical sort of creation from a comic book artist,

and it turns out that it does not exist.

It's just a bunch of dusty rocks

with an old, abandoned ranger station sitting on top of the mesa.

That was the second part that had to be designed.

What's in the comic book looks grander and more splendiferous and designed,

but there is a sanctuary for these children.

We want it as minimal as possible,

meaning you have this duality of the kind of fantasy one and reality one.

PARKER: Where the mutant kids are waiting is outside of Abiquiu

where Georgia O'Keeffe painted and famously lived,

and it's this very unique and distinctive landscape.

François built these two structures there.

He built the watchtower,

which is mimicking a fire ranger's station, and the bunkhouse.

I love the ranger tower.

It's got all this promise, it's got all this hope,

that sense of scope and scale, all the windows.

You feel like they're perched,

ready to take that final step across the border.

So I know François had a great time with that

and the art department in general had a great time dressing those environments.

We had to create a little environment that is believable,

that for the first time in their lives, these kids are free.

For the first time they're at a campfire, out in the stars, working together.

They've had to take these skills that they learned as mercenaries

and bring them together.

RICTOR: You see the woods?

Si.

-|t's an 8-mile hike through there. -(BOYS WHOOPING)

And you see that pass?

That's where we wi|| be safe.

The third part of Eden is these woods where our heroes end up

on the very border with freedom on the other side of the cliffs.

For that, we had to find vely impressive

and awesome visual of gigantic cliffs that had to be traversed.

We're really lucky to find them here at Brazos Cliffs in northern New Mexico,

where we're flanked with 1,200-foot Precambrian cliffs

that are really impressive on one side of the set

and then some really beautiful forests on the other.

BIERNIAK: We wanted to expand the feel of the film and give it some larger scope.

Brazos Cliffs gives us an architectural element

and something to focus on in the background.

AU DOUY: They gave us a really wonderful, flexible space to create the final showdown

where we get to see Logan and his last stand.

MAN: Three, two, one, action!

-(GRUNTS) -(GUNSHOTS)

- Ahh!

-(GRUNTS) -(GROANS)

I'm hoping that when people see this movie,

they're gonna be really surprised at how refreshing and new it is.

MANGOLD: Using real locations whenever we could,

real Vehicles, real driving.

There's a certain reality when someone's riding in a car,

the way the wind's blowing on them, the way the Iight's changing around them

and even the performance, when the world is really going by.

They're not sitting in a green void watching nothing,

or watching a guy eating a tuna sandwich from the crafties.

That's a lot of what we're after.

The production designer, the DP and I are trying to get a very naturalistic film.

Hello.

I think that if there was a breathing... Almost like him breathing, kind of...

This very slow, kind of tide coming in, going away.

HUTCH PARKER: Marco Beltrami is doing the score

and Jim's worked with him a number of times, as have I.

JAMES MANGOLD: In the score, the big effort is

to not let go of the feeling that this movie is different.

Okay, here we go.

MANGOLD: I don't want that big heroic score.

I don't want trumpets for the good guys and dark bass for the bad guys.

I want us to find a new formula.

MARCO BELTRAMI: When I first heard that it's a Wolverine movie,

it brought to mind certain expectations.

Then knowing that Jim was on it,

I had different expectations 'cause Jim definitely twists things.

PARKER: The foundational language of the film is emotion

and the score will have the challenge of serving that to some degree first,

but also in concert with the scale and scope of this character,

the scale of this journey, the sense of jeopardy and the sense of risk

and intensity of the action sequences.

MANGOLD: For Marco and I, the job becomes looking toward the Western,

looking toward older action films, '70s cop movies.

How do you solve the problems of building stakes, transitioning scenes,

and doing that without trying to kind of bloat the movie,

and stay true to the intimacy of the journey these characters have been on?

Jim referenced Taxi Driver and a couple Jerry Fielding scores from the '70s.

He wanted that gritty, unmanipulated, unrounded sound of a tighter ensemble

that didn't necessarily ha ve to be Hollywood or orchestral in nature.

And we actually tried putting some period scores to the thing.

It looked off, it had to be modern as well,

so the idea is to go for that intensity of '70s score,

but with more modern scoring techniques.

It's not a very melodic score. It's more of a textural thing.

Recording stuff with carbon microphones.

It ñlters out a lot of the warmth and tonal characteristics

and gives more of a gritty sound.

This is who I've been telling you about.

This is Laura.

We've been waiting for you.

BELTRAMI: There are some themes in it

that might not be melodic themes in the way that you're used to.

We have Laura's theme,

which is also sort of the mystery because we don't really know who she is.

There's a theme for Logan, which is based on a lot of sonic stuff

but also this harmonica thing.

MANGOLD: We have two kinds. Real, standard German-made harmonicas

and also glass harmonicas.

BELTRAMI: Sometimes it's blended with other instruments

and it becomes more of a texture.

Sometimes it's even just the breath effect through the harmonica

and sometimes it's used as a melodic instrument.

(FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING)

Go get her.

BELTRAMI: You know, there's also a theme for the bad guys,

which is like a textural bending thing, it's a lower range.

That's better, I think we could do even a little bit more bending as we exit.

(ENGINE REVVING)

(GUNSHOTS)

BELTRAMI: Character, we 've seen, is different.

The smelting plant action scene is a completely different feel

from the Logan fighting X-24.

(ROARS)

Which is much more of a conceptual thing than like a chase scene,

which has similarities too but it's different from the farmhouse murder scene,

which has almost like some horrific elements to it.

Put her down.

They're all based on similar ideas but go in different directions.

One,

two.

(PLAYING INTENSE MUSIC)

The composer has to find a way to bring together all those different ideas

but in this case, I do think you'll find it feels different.

It's trying to find the alchemy of the sound

that somehow just doesn't feel "been there, done that."

And also doesn't signal for the audience

that you're watching just another one of these movies.

(INDISTINCT TALKING)

(G ROANS)

GARRETT WARREN: Hugh's been doing this character for about 20 years now

and this character was designed by someone in a comic book world.

However, he adapted it.

He came in and made this thing real, flesh and blood, and at the same time,

he's also helped driven who it is on the screen.

Nobody knows this character better than he does.

Block here, grab him here. Around his arms, here more.

-If you can, grab up high on here... -Yup.

HUGH JACKMAN: We worked quite a while beforehand preparing the stunts,

because it wasn't just about "slice, slice, punch, punch."

This is all great, right?

Just bring the gun a little higher so it's not low.

-So you can see it. -Yeah, and then

stretch your arm outjust a little bit wider to the right when you kill him.

-Go back to just when he... -Yeah, I cut it short.

-I was too close to him. -Okay, good. There you go.

JAMES MANGOLD: Hugh Jackman's Incredible at these fight sequences.

You will show him three moves, and then suddenly he's doing them

and coming incredibly close to getting hit and he's just physically sharp.

STEVE BROWN: Hugh has done almost all of his action and stunts.

He's phenomenal.

He doesn'tjust learn quickly, but he sells the character, he's safe

and he makes it look very, very good.

RICHARD E. GRANT: His arms are bigger than my thighs.

He gets up at 3:00 in the morning and goes to the gym for two hours.

And eats constantly throughout the day and is so disciplined in order to do that.

BOYD HOLBROOK: He's just so about the work.

You have to have a certain integrity and work ethic for all this to happen.

And so when Hugh invites you to go on a 5:00 a.m. run,

you go on a 5:00 a.m. run and it's fun.

HUTCH PARKER: The stunt training is pretty rigorous

and in this case, we were going for a harder-edged tone.

So the fight sequences are more intense. They are inherently bloody, more violent,

and in some ways, could have been more disturbing.

(SCREAMS)

BROWN: In the past couple of films, the stunt coordinators

and the fight choreographers of those films were amazing.

They did a fantastic job. Their only Iimitation was the rating.

And when you have six knives on your hands,

it's hard to showcase a lot of the action.

And now that we finally have that rating, we're able to really show it and go for it.

WARREN: We get to decapitate people.

Cut arms off.

Stab people in the throat so the claws come out the other side of their face.

We get to do things that you couldn 't do on a regular movie,

but would happen in real life if you had these weapons.

-MAN: Boom! Claws come out. -(GROANS)

Claws come out, he blocks it. Good, nice.

Head hit, nice. Body hit right there, Tim.

(LAUGHS)

Good, and that's a cut. A|| right?

WARREN: The fighting style was already there.

It's kind of hard to neglect the fact that he's got claws.

It was not like you're going out there trying to do big, huge jump kicks.

Why would he jump in the air and kick someone

when he's got these knives on his knuckles?

JP JONES: The number one thing anybody on the crew wants to see

or anybody wants to talk about are the claws.

Hands down, the claws are the biggest deal in the movie.

We obvious/y took a design from the last Wolverine.

That was the last incarnation of the claws that have changed a few times.

So what we did was we took those claws and we tarnished them.

We sandblasted them, sent them out to have them acid-etched,

and at the end, we came up with one that just enough of the edge is off it.

MAN: Gonna get some green for this shit right here, homes.

Ah, fuck.

In the first 30 seconds of the film, you're finding Logan

drunk in the back of his own Iimousine,

waking as his car is being jacked up and stripped by a EI Paso street gang.

Guys?

Those are chrome-plated Iugs. You're gonna strip them.

MAN: Look at this guy, eh?

The plating flakes off.

Yeah?

This is a lease. No one's gonna pay to ride...

-(GUNSHOT) -(MEN LAUGHING)

MANGOLD: And what I wanted to see is,

this is a character who, when he Ioses his temper, it's ugly.

And it's ugly in a way, and merciless in a way we haven't seen before.

BROWN: It's the first time we get to see the whole rated-R feeling and just seeing how

right out of the gates, Logan is different.

Logan is not the same. He's older, he doesn't move the same.

And then seeing how that switch just flips.

MAN: Action!

BROWN: It's that berserker rage

that oven/vhelmed and took over for that moment

and then he kind of falls back to himself as Logan.

And I think it's a very powerful, strong opening to the movie.

There's a certain kind of vicarious thrill to watching this kind of blood battle.

And it also communicates, "Yes, we're going there.

"So fasten your seatbelts."

-(GRUNTS) -(BOTTLE SHATTERS)

Most of my training was based around learning the fights, yes,

but also learning the different physicalities of X-24 and Logan.

MANGOLD: When I was working on the last Wolverine,

the Western Shane rang in my ears all the time

because it was this curse of being this kind of violent hero.

Means that you are forever guilty.

If Logan is a character like Shane who has a past that haunts him,

then what could be worse for him to have to face

than almost looking at himself 50 years ago, when he was Weapon X.

JAC KMAN: Weapon X, Wolverine, was perfect except for his heart.

He had that goodness to him, and if he just didn't have that

he would have been the perfect killing machine.

But he had a heart, he had a conscience, he had a mind,

and he didn 't just blind/y follow whatever order he was given.

So what has created X-24 is just

the berserk rage of Wolverine, 24/7.

That's all he is. He's just animal, destruction, rage.

-(MAN SCREAMS) -(GRUNTS)

-(WOMAN SCREAMS) -(LOGAN GRUNTS)

(GUNSHOT)

DR. RICE: Get back here!

Stop! Stop now!

The most powerful thing he could have to face,

the one thing, I think, he probably wouldn't be able to beat

would be a vision of himself.

Yet to see Logan see himself for the first time in X-24,

and subsequently, for the two of them to fight,

fight fue/ed by Logan having witnessed Charles murdered,

and the rage of that and confronting a new, healthy Wolverine in X-24.

It was a pretty amazing sequence.

| get to play him and fight myself,

which I have to tell you, was very strange.

(SCREAMS)

(SCREAMS)

In a way, you're at a tremendous advantage

because now I have an incredible actor in his physical ability playing two roles.

But of course, to stage those scenes, we had two doubles.

One to play Logan,

and one to play bad Logan, if you will.

And Hugh would jump between.

BROWN: Logan, in this film, already has a lot of trials and tribulations

that he's going through, whether it's emotional or physical.

And to see him battling that and then to see a fresher,

younger version of himself, and all the emotion that went into it,

it was kind of beautiful to see how it all played out.

JACKMAN: We wanted to have different physicality for both of them.

We worked really hard on trying to distinguish the body language.

One is aging, one is ill, one is older,

and one is more animalistic and younger and invincible.

We gave him, at one point, a whole different forehead

and nose and eyes. I wore contact lenses.

But it just ended up becoming a little silly so we pulled it back,

and if you look closer, I have a slightly different nose.

You immediately know it's me,

but just something in your brain, hopefully, when watching it, just goes,

"Something... Something a little off there. | don't know what it is."

JOEL HARLOW: The hair is really whatjumps out, almost instant/y,

because Logan has got a full head of hair, a full beard.

X-24 is buzz cut.

He's shaved into the traditional sort of Wolverine chops.

So that instant/y sets them apart.

What the hell are you?

(BOTH YELLING)

X-24 is newer, better, stronger, faster.

So he has the last version of the Wolverine claws.

They're shiny, new and evezything about them is perfect.

JACKMAN: I've worked with a Stuntman for ages, Dan Stevens.

If I 'm not doing something, he's doing it, right?

So if it's too dangerous for me, he does it.

All of a sudden, we were opposite each other

because when I was playing X-24,

he would play Logan, and on the very first take,

| accidentally hit him in the jaw. (CHUCKLES)

And he looked at me and he goes, "Is this the way it's gonna go?"

-MAN: Action! -(GRUNTING) Ah!

WARREN: For Logan fighting Logan, or Logan fighting X-24,

we had to have two stunt doubles, basically,

because we always have to have someone doubling Hugh Jackman

as well as someone playing X-24, let me say.

And then once we shoot the scene, we have to shoot it almost over again,

flip-flopped the other way.

JACKMAN: Garrett Warren, I've worked with on two other films.

He's phenomenal and crazy.

Absolute crazy son of a bitch and I love him.

Good. Exactly. That's it. That's all.

-You know what | mean? -That's great, I love it.

JAC KMAN: And he's perfect for this. He totally got that Wolverine berserk right.

MANGOLD: For me, the brute/ity of seeing a Logan-on-Logan fight

ultimately felt like something more threatening to each character

and more interesting to each character.

The sense of Logan looking in a mirror and seeing the darkest,

most shameful part of his own life and being faced with it.

-(ENGINE REWING) -(GRUNTS)

-(CRASHING) -(GLASS SHATTERS)

(GRUNTING)

Good, exactly. Turn around and then go.

Boom, boom!

Good, yes. That's good.

For X-23, Laura, we wanted the feel that she's Wolverine,

but in her own way.

And using her height and size to her advantage,

so being more nimble and fluid with her movement.

-(GROANS) -(SCREAMS)

JACKMAN: Dafne did a Iot of training, particularly with that kind of character,

a young character,

the more you can have the kid in there

and for the audience really to believe it's her, the better.

MANGOLD: It's very hard to double an 11-year-old.

So I wanted a young woman who could own the kind of intensity of the action,

because a lot of the way an actor can justify the physicality of a role

is if they can really own it.

If it feels like they would have done that and it's not pretend.

And that was a lot of what we worked on in rehearsals as well, and in the gym.

We had to have her train in Spain before she got here

so that she had some kind of skills before she came.

So it was martial arts classes that she went into.

When she got here, we had about a month to train with her.

I was really worried at the beginning, like, I have to know my stunt choreographies,

but then when you get here they kind of change them all the time.

So you don't have to worry too much.

(LAURA SCREAMS)

-(SCREAMS) -(MAN ROARING)

BROWN: It's a hard thing to gauge, you know,

at first when you first meet such a young actress like that.

You're trying to gauge her personality.

You wanna know how hard and how much you can push them,

and with Dafne, right from day one, she was excited.

For her it was like a playground.

*Gol

(SCREAMS)

-Ahh! -(SCREAMS)

BROWN: When she was doing her action,

she understood that, you know, as the character,

things that needed to be visceral.

When she's killing someone, it had to have emotion in it

and I thought she did a phenomenal job bringing that to life.

JACKMAN: She worked hard... I'm not gonna say, "Work " She loved it.

She didn't wanna leave stunt training. She absolutely loved it.

I don 't think I ever saw her sitting down.

Ahh!

(GRUNTS)

(G ROANS)

KEEN: She has two claws in her hands

and then she has one that comes out of here, in her foot.

And she heals vely quickly.

Dafne did a lot of it herself and it's impressive.

She seemed fearless about some of the physical things.

PARKER: With the claws, it requires a level of active physicality, movement.

It's not the same as Storm wie/ding Iightning bolts

where they're effectively conjuring.

In this case, they really do have to interact, but she never flinched at any of it.

In fact, seemed to be a natural in all those regards.

WARREN: We had claws that she would hold in her hands

so she would see what that's like.

I would use paper and have her break the paper

and claw the paper and slice it into pieces.

That way, she knew what it was like to use those claws for real

instead ofjust wielding them in the air.

JAC KMAN: When she put those claws on...

Actually, l looked over one day, she had my claws on and she was beaming.

She's an 11-year-old kid

who couldn't believe she's putting claws on and getting to stab people.

(LAUGHS) You know, she loved it.

JONES: X-23, Laura, we got to start from scratch.

So | come to it with logic.

She has small arms, smaller hands, there's only two claws.

How much can it come out,

where does it go when it comes back in, if you wanna think about it.

DAFNE: They were really sharp.

The hand claws are rubber so I don't stab anyone.

But then the foot claw, I was like,

"Oh, my God, I'm going to wear this shoe with a foot claw on it."

The foot claw turns out to be one of my favorite props in the movie.

It brought a smile to her face.

It's the greatest smile I've ever seen when I delivered a prop.

When we used it, we wanted her to drag her feet, we wanted to see the dirt.

But that's difficult, the interaction between the metal and the dirt is hard to recreate.

So it was important that we made something

that she could put her foot into,

and that was sturdy enough to withstand the shot we needed.

So we built a metal plate and a steel toe

and then | had the blade welded onto that and it goes in through her shoe.

So literally, her weight is actually holding the blade in place.

So as long as she's standing there and has her foot in the shoe,

it's firm enough for her to do what we need.

You did a greatjob last time of seeing mad and then seeing Logan, right? Good.

And then gunfire. (IMITATES GUNSHOTS)

Right. Good, look back to him.

We have a moment where we finally see Logan and Laura fighting together.

And we see that emotion come out of him, that he cares and he's looking for her

and then he finds her finally,

and then we get to see father-daughter fighting together and it's awesome.

-(GRUNTS) -(SCREAMS)

(G ROWLS)

(LAURA SCREAMING)

(G ROANS)

-(SCREAMS) -(CLAW STABBING)

-(PANTING) -(GROWLS)

That look, after the end of that is, in a way,

both of them are proud of each other. She's proud of me.

-Yes, and we're the same. -And we're the same.

Yes.

Ultimately, however he talks about himself,

the reality of the character is that he has as big a heart as any of these characters.

He's weary, he's tired.

He's lost too many times and lost too many people.

But in the end, he will rise to defend the innocent.

Showtime, boy!

(SCREAMS)

(SCREAMS)

The idea for me was, "What in the end is gonna destroy Logan?"

And I had to stan* to answer the question psychologically, like,

"Well, he should be killed by himself."

PARKER: It's interesting 'cause even as it's sad, of course,

you can't help but feel it's right.

(SCREAMS)

-(METAL CLATTERING) -(GROANS)

(PANTING)

(SCREAMING)

Laura!

MANGOLD: It was the kind of last chapter in the love story between him and Laura.

A father-daughter story in which a father and a daughter

who have never had the ability to connect very well

finally find a way to understand each other.

SCOTT FRANK: If you know you're gonna kill him at the end,

you can write that story because there's real weight at the end of it.

You're writing towards something that's real.

You're not trying to figure out how to save him at the end.

You're writing toward a real emotional place.

And that's actually easier than trying to car/y on to the next chapter.

(SCREAMING IN PAIN)

(G ROANS)

(GUNSHOT)

Jim remained resolute in wanting to stay emotionally true.

And as a result, the scene is pretty simple. It's not a wordy scene.

It's played in bits of silence, in fragments of dialogue

that tell us what we need to know, which is, you sense their resolution.

They finally come to the resolution together

that we've been hoping for the whole movie they would.

(SCREAMS IN AGONY)

(LAURA SOBS)

MANGOLD: Scott Frank wrote that line and when I read it,

I knew that was gonna be the last words he spoke.

And those words mean so many different things.

He has his daughter, kneeling beside him, holding his hand.

"Oh, this is what it feels like."

Okay, he now knows what love feels like.

He's also got life ebbing from his body.

A guy who's been living for 200 years, stressed out,

is finally getting released into nothingness or whatever is on the other side.

"Oh, this is what it feels like."

Opening himself up to love, doing the right thing, despite it hurting.

"Oh, so, this is what it feels like."

FRANK: I will say, for me, it was not about having a family.

Because I'd been thinking about this character through two movies,

and it was always about someone who is immortal becoming mortal.

And it was always about understanding that this is what it's like to be at the end.

MANGOLD: I think that in many ways,

the idea was to find the most minimal, gruff way

for Logan to acknowledge that there had, for all the years he's lived,

there is something he didn't taste or know until right now.

And I think Hugh also found a way to really take those words and deliver.

So...

Oh, so, this is what it feels like.

(CRYING) No;

No!

(ALL LAUGHING)

MAN: All right, last looks. Picture's up, good to go.

SIMON KINBERG: Hugh always had said that Logan

was gonna be his last Wolverine movie.

That this has to be the best one and it has to hit a bar

that perhaps some of the movies hadn 't hit before.

And cut. We got it.

-MAN: Cut! -(CHEERING)

There's always something strange about the last day

because it's suddenly over.

It was kind of painful, kind of bittersweet,

but Hugh, he's such a pro and he's so generous,

at least for me, it's wanting to make sure it's good for him.

-Hugh Jackman? -JACKMAN: Yes.

That is the cessation of main unit photography for you on...

-JACKMAN: What a way to go. -And what a way to go, and in style.

(CHEERING)

MANGOLD: The reality is that when an actor is really great in a role

and finds a way to connect to audiences and everyone else,

what it has to be, it seems to me, is that

they've found a way to connect a deep part of themselves to this character:

There's no way that they can just be kind of fak/ng it.

-(ALL APPLAUDING) -Let me say one thing.

I've had the pleasure now of making

three major motion pictures with this person.

And, um, beyond him being enormously, inconceivably talented,

um, he is also just one of the greatest persons in the world.

Greatest collaborators and greatest friends.

I know I wouldn't find anyone among this sea of people who would disagree.

And I think that, at least, is something I aspire to be

as | go fonNard in my life, is someone as Collaborative and kind

and ready for action every day

and greatness as you are every day, so thank you.

And what a great role you've given everyone,

um, for so many years, and | hope this lives up to it.

-| hope to God, 'cause we worked really... -(LAUGHS)

-Yeah. -We worked our asses off.

PARKER: You kind of take your cue from him

and how he's choosing to navigate it and follow that lead,

out of respect and appreciation for all that he's done.

STEWART: The film is full of unexpected events

and attitudes and manners and relationships.

You think you know exactly where you are and what you're witnessing,

and then someone does something and you realize that you were wrong.

It was something else and I think that's what makes it exciting.

MANGOLD: I think what we owe a character

who has reached as many people as Hugh 's Wolverine has

is to end on a note of heart.

| felt like we owed him not making a bigger one or a Iouder one

or a more spectacular one but making the most feeling one.

The one that stirred you up inside the most, that moved you.

Before I go to the cake,

it's a really surreal day.

I've got my 16-year-old in the trailer,

who was not even born when | started playing this part.

(MANGOLD LAUGHS)

And Jim and about five people,

we've been probably working on this for three or four years.

No movie has meant more to me than this movie.

I'm really, really proud of what we've done.

We could not have done it without every single one of you.

So from the bottom of my heart,

thank you so much for helping us realize this dream.

(ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)

Let there be cake!

JACKMAN: This film felt different to all of them.

E very day, every scene, for me, was a kind of battle

to get the best out of that character, to get the best out of me and the situation.

PARKE R: We've seen a lot from him.

From his love story with Jean to his conflicts with some of the otherX-Men,

to the degree to which he sen/ed as a sort of guide

and a facilitator in Days of Future Past.

We 've seen a lot of different facets of that character's life.

It could kind of only end in one place.

I love this character. This character has been amazing to me.

-Thank you so much. -You were awesome.

-Thanks, buddy. -Thanks for everything.

JACKMAN: I'd be Iying if I said that

I would've been okay if I didn't feel everything was left on the table.

And I mean eve/ything.

| don't even know what to say. Hasn't sunk in yet. (LAUGHS)