Why Wolverine Won’t Feature In ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’

Hugh Jackman has been the backbone of the X-Men movie franchise since he first chewed a stogie and growled “bub” on screen. He has been the stand-out performer and the actor bequeathed the greatest responsibility in bringing such an insanely popular character to celluloid life.

He succeeded immensely and for a whole generation of Wolvereenies (I just made that up) Hugh Jackman is Wolverine.

Yet, if you were to see the trailers for X-Men: Apocalypse, you would think this was another improbable and highly confusing parallel X-Universe, one in which hairy and eternally bad tempered Canadians were not allowed. Not a single ‘snikt’ claw is to be had and though, in the past, Wolverine has always been the main draw for the franchise, he has neither been seen nor mentioned.

Bryan Singer, acclaimed director of the upcoming Apocalypse as well as the first two X-features and the last, Days Of Future Past, has recently acknowledged that Wolverine will not feature heavily in the new movie.

Singer has confirmed, whilst speaking to Empire magazine, that Wolverine did not fit into the particular story they were looking to tell. Whether this leads to a small cameo, as with X-Men: First Class or something a little more substantial remains to be seen.

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Yet what this feels like is a conscious effort to downplay Jackman’s importance to the franchise. With the Aussie actor recently announcing that his next solo outing as Wolverine would be his last, 20th Century Fox would be looking to establish the X-franchise as its own creature, outside of the more obvious box office draw of Jackman and his Wolverine.

Of course, producers would be mad not to cash in that last Jackman check and make a load of cash from one more Wolverine slash-fest (especially if they go the R-rated route, now established by Deadpool’s monster success), but this could stand separately from the X-universe and allow the main series to continue to grow, even in his absence.

The X-movies have developed their own flavor and have gained considerable popularity amongst the comic book faithful in their own right, so this is probably a good move by 20th Century Fox. Iron Man threatened to overshadow the entire Marvel cinematic universe and their Avengers blockbusters until the quality of the Captain America movies and the unerring love of all things Hulk (not to forget the cultural permeation of the Black Widow) balanced the scales. It seems that Singer and his backers are gambling on the same.

Of course, with Jackman leaving the character, a re-casting is inevitable, as is the ensuing re-booting of the character into a version that the studio thinks works. Whether they will spin this new Wolverine from their cinematic, X-Men universe proper, or whether they choose to feature him in his own movies before absorbing him into their main franchise remains to be seen.

Needless to say, with Jackman’s inevitable exiting of the Wolverine character, an era is about to come to an end. Let us hope his final outing is as bat shit crazy as we all know Wolverine and Jackman deserve.

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