This past weekend, Logan, the official last film featuring Hugh Jackman in the role of Wolverine, had a huge premiere, making $238 million globally. With a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film seems to be a good place for Jackman to end his reign as the character he’s been playing for the last 17 years of his life. Not that it was easy for him to finally say goodbye to the character he brought to life.
The film franchise started back in 2000 with X-Men, and nine more films were released after that, including the two previous Wolverine stand alone spin offs, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine. Out of the 10 films, Hugh Jackman appeared in nine of them either as a main character or in a cameo (the only film he didn’t grace with his presence was Deadpool).
Even though not all the films got rave reviews (X-Men Origins: Wolverine was universally panned, with a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), Jackman stuck with the character because he cared about doing him justice. When asked why he didn’t leave the character behind before now, Jackman told Collider, “There was just more to do. It’s like a golfer who never hit a hole in one, I’ve always felt like that. I’m like this is a great character, there’s more to do and I know I haven’t got there yet.”
Since Wolverine’s healing power makes it so he doesn’t age, he’s the one character who was able to appear in the trilogy set in present day and the prequel trilogy that included younger versions of characters like Professor X, Magneto and Mystique. It’s rare for an actor to get a to play the same character across multiple time periods through vastly different times in their lives. But the fact that there has never been another actor to portray Wolverine through the franchise just makes it even harder to imagine the next X-men film without him.
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine and even if he never makes another cameo as the character again (and that’s the plan), no other actor will be able to replace him. So, where will the franchise go from here? The timeline gets pretty muddled with all the major characters that were killed off in X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past attempting to undo that damage. But luckily, there are plenty of story arcs to focus on and Wolverine doesn’t even have to be a part of many of them.
Let’s just hope Hollywood doesn’t decide to reboot the franchise and re-tell the stories that have already been told. Thanks to reboots, there have been three different Spider-Man’s in the last 15 years—we don’t want the same fate for Wolverine. Maybe it’s time to give some new mutants some time in the spotlight.
As sad as it is to say goodbye to this version of Wolverine, like Jackman said: “You have to leave the party eventually.” At least he knows how to make an exit.
