Hugh Jackman

Unless you’re a die-hard fan of animated film, Hugh Jackman, or Tim Minchin (or someone whose job requires them to obsessively keep up with movie news, ahem), then the title Larrikins might not mean anything to you. The Australian animated musical has been in development since 2011, but it appears that recent changes at DreamWorks Animation have led to the project’s cancellation, and we may never know the joy of a singing animated bilby (it’s a marsupial) voiced by Hugh Jackman.

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.

The internet’s movie rumormongers did get a few things right about Logan, Hugh Jackman’s third and supposedly final solo Wolverine movie. They did correctly predict that Logan’ female clone, X-23, would co-star in the film. They also anticipated that the movie would be loosely based on a Marvel Comics storyline called “Old Man Logan.” Of course, after that rumor was initially posted, it was also publicly debunked by one site. You win some, you lose some.

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

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

Unlike a lot of superhero movies, Logan seems to have kept its cards pretty close to its chest. Even though we’ve known the rough outline of the film for a while now, it wasn’t until this past week that we were finally treated to a full synopsis of the film. And while the footage we’ve seen has been enticing, it’s also been pretty carefully curated to reveal as little of the big picture as possible. In other words, James Mangold and Hugh Jackman have set the hook and now are just cruelly letting us run ourselves out.

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.

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.”

Celebrities really are just like us — well, Ryan Reynolds is, anyway. Like you, he also wants to see Deadpool and Wolverine reunite on the big screen, this time for a much better film. It took several years, but the tenacious actor’s commitment to getting a proper Deadpool movie off the ground finally paid off (in a huge way), which has Reynolds thinking that maybe it’s time for the Merc With the Mouth and Old Man Logan to get the band back together.