In the months leading up to the movie premiere of “X-Men: Apocalypse”, many were wondering if Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine would make a cameo.
20th Century Fox waited until April to confirm his involvement with a teaser trailer that hinted at the clawed mutant’s key role in one of the movie’s action sequence. In an interview with CinemaBlend, screenwriter Simon Kinberg has now revealed that Wolverine was initially supposed to lead the next generation of X-Men to battle Apocalypse.
Both Kinberg and Bryan Singer always intended to include Wolverine in “X-Men: Apocalypse“, but his role in the earlier drafts was decreased once they realised that it intervened with Mystique’s (played by Jennifer Lawrence) larger purpose in the story’s narrative.
“There was always a notion that we wanted Wolverine to be in the movie. We wanted to find a way to feature him in the film, partly because Bryan and I love Hugh so much. We love the character, obviously, and he’s such a huge part of the franchise. There were a lot of iterations of how Wolverine would enter and exit the movie.
“There was a version when he was going to come in at the midpoint of the film and be like the drill sergeant for the kids and take over as their leader. And we felt like that stepped on Jen’s role in the movie and becoming their leader,” Kinberg told CinemaBlend.
With Wolverine no longer acting as team’s drill sergeant, his role was dialled back to a pivotal episode where he emerged as Weapon X and went ballistic on a bunch of guards.
“As we were, again, conceptually brainstorming the script, we knew that the kids were going to be abducted, or that a lot of our main characters were going to be abducted and taken somewhere. So we thought it would be interesting to take them to Alkali Lake, and that they would naturally, potentially… that the Weapon X program would be there, and maybe that was a place to find Wolverine,” said Kinberg.
As Sandy Schaefer points outs, it’s probably for the best that Wolverine’s role was minimised. Having Logan leading the young X-Men would be out of character, especially in the film’s 1983 setting; when “Wolverine who was a troubled (and aggressive) loner after having gone through his Weapon X transformation and still years away from meeting Professor X himself”.
It also wouldn’t make sense for Mystique and Wolverine to share the leadership role. Mystique stepping up as a leader after Charles’ abduction brings the arc of Lawrence’s character (from “First Class” and “Days of Future Past”) to a satisfying closure in “Apocalypse”.
Jackman will get his own shot at going out in a blaze of glory with his final Wolverine performance in “Wolverine 3”, and concluding his time with the “X-Men” franchise altogether after he hangs up his claws for good.
“Wolverine 3” is expected to hit theatres on 3rd March 2017.
Sources: CinemaBlend, Screen Rant, Movie Web.
