IS IT A FAREWELL, WOLVERINE?

Do you love the X-Men Saga? Well, you are reading the right post! Today the third Wolverine movie has been released. Logan: The Wolverine is an apocalyptic movie. Whereas the films inspired by comics extol hope and lead us to believe that everything is possible and can be solved thanks to superpowers and superhuman abilities, Logan is exactly the opposite. It’s a bitter, hopeless story
where the superpowers, usually considered as an inestimable fortune, become a problem to hide from the whole world. “I am the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice” so just a tip: never challenge Logan! Hugh Jackman is as extraordinary as ever, even though Logan has been set up as his final X-Men movie. The actor said goodbye to the cinema, at least for the time being, with this film…What a wonderful goodbye! For us Hugh Jackman will always be Wolverine, immortal like his character! 

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ACTOR: HUGH JACKMAN

Witty, kind, attractive… what else? Hugh Jackman bewitched us at first sight making his acting a stroke of genius! 

Thanks to the role of Wolverine, he has reached what every actor wants, knowing that one of his roles will be remembered for a long time. Although he is well-known as Wolverine, Hugh Jackman played many interesting characters. His first movie was Oklahoma! in 1999, when he was 31. He was famous mainly for his theatrical interpretations before his cinematographic success, in fact he won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award as Best Actor in the musical The Boy From Oz. We assume Hugh Jackman can sing and dance very well! Is there anything this man can’t do? And as if that wasn’t enough, he was one of the main characters in Les Miserable, a musical inspired to Victor Hugo’s novel. On this occasion, he acted with Eddie Redmayne too, another failure as a singer! ;-) Moreover, Hugh Jackman won the Golden Globe as Best Actor in a musical comedy. He acted in many thriller movies too like The Prestige directed by Christopher Nolan in 2006 and Prisoners in 2013.

Regarding X-Men, here it is an interesting fact: if Russell Crowe hadn’t refused the role of Wolverine, Hugh Jackman wouldn’t have played the Mutant we love! Thank you, Russell Crowe, you contributed to the birth of a legend! 

DID YOU KNOW THAT ... 

- Hugh Jackman loves magic and when he was a child he put on magic shows for his four brothers.

- Before he became a Hollywood star, he worked as birthday party clown! (OMG!)

- He was an angry kid, he says that rugby saved him.

- He had also a love for Olivia Newton John, the “Grease” actress who was his idol when he was a kid. He kept a poster of her under his desk! (angry kid? He is so cute!)

- He passed on Casino Royale! We all know him as Wolverine but he almost took on another historical character: Bond, James Bond. He was beaten by Daniel Craig.

- He had a stalker. (Strange but … it wasn’t us …We swear!) In 2003 a woman followed him into his gym. SHE wanted to marry the Les Miserable star!

- “If I were a woman which celebrity would I date? I reckon George Clooney” said the actor during an interview.

- He wanted to become a journalist. He majored in Communications at the University of Technology in Sydney.

- He sang at Nicole Kidman’s wedding

- He holds a world record for most superhero film appearances for his role as Logan.

THE WOLVERINE MOVIES

Hugh Jackman acted in all the X-Men movies and also in the Wolverine spin-offs . Now we'd like to talk about these spin-offs: plots + favourite scenes.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

The first spin-off about Wolverine was made in 2009 and it is called "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". This movie shows the real story of Wolverine and why he has those iron claws. His name is James Logan Howlett and he is living in Canada in 1845 with his parents and his brother when a night, his real father, kills the man who Logan thinks is his true father. The trauma activates the boy's mutation: the bone claws which protrude from his knuckles. Logan and his brother Victor spend the next century as soldiers, fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. In Vietnam they kill a senior officer so they are sentenced to execution but they survive thanks to their mutant powers.

Then they receive the visit of Major William Stryker, who is recruiting skilled mutants to fight for a special team with special privileges and they accept. They join the team for a few years but then Logan leaves them. 

Six years later, Logan is working as a lumberjack in Canada, where he lives with his girlfriend but she is killed by Victor, so Logan joins Stryker who promises to help him. Logan undergoes a painful operation to reinforce his skeleton with adamantium, a virtually indestructible metal. After discovering Stryker was betraying him Logan, with the help of other mutants, finds out where's Stryker's base. During the fight between the two, Stryker shoots Wolverine adamantium bullets which make him lose his memory. 

Naturally the best scene is when Wolverine undergoes the operation to reinforce his skeleton with adamantium!

THE WOLVERINE

This is the second spin-off released in 2013 and it tells what happens to Logan after he killed Jean Grey, a mutant woman he loved (this happens in the movie X-Men:The Last Stand). This movie starts with Logan who is held in a Japanese POW camp near Nagasaki. During the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Logan rescues an officer named Ichiro Yashida and shields him from the blast. 

In the present day, Logan is tormented by hallucinations of Jean Grey. He is located by Yukio, a mutant with the ability to foresee people's deaths, on-behalf of Yashida, now the CEO of a technology zaibatsu. Yashida is dying of cancer and he wants Logan to transfer his abilities into his own body, thus saving Yashida's life and alleviating Logan of his near-immortality, which Logan views as a curse but he refuses. During the night, Viper, Yashida's doctor introduces something into Logan's body. The next morning Yashida dies and, Yakuza attempt to kidnap Mariko, Yashida's granddaughter. 

For most of the movie Logan has helped Mariko to escape from Yakuza since they managed to kidnap her. Logan, because of the poison administered him by Viper, can't heal but then, with Yukio's help, he can remove it from his body. After that they find out where is Mariko and they go to help her. In that place Logan has to fight against the Silver Samurai, which is made by adamantium. The samurai manages to extract Logan's healing abilities, revealing himself to be Yashida, who had faked his death. Yashida starts to regain his youth, but Mariko intervenes and kills Yashida.

LOGAN - THE WOLVERINE

In the just released third spin-off we find a truly weary Logan. It is set in 2029, in a world where the mutant population has drastically fallen and the X-Men split. Logan, whose restorative powers are weakening, now works as a driver. Logan is taking care of Xavier who, though 90, still has hope in a future of mutants because he felt the presence of a new young mutant. This young mutant, Laura, has the same kind of mutation as Logan.

We can't tell you much more because we haven't, of course, seen the movie yet but we hope you enjoyed our post. If you go and see the movie or if you would like to, please share with us!

FEDERICA & KARINA