You Will Be Depressed By The First ‘Logan’ Trailer

So let’s get one thing straight: in 2014, at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine went back in time to prevent a depressing future from ever taking place. This action rewrote the history of 20th Century Fox’s whole X-Men movie franchise, carving out a whole new path for these films, free of foregone conclusions.

Now, just two years later, we have this preview for Logan, a film about Wolverine living in a depressing future where there are no more mutants, Professor Xavier appears to be dying, and the only song anyone plays on the radio is that super-moody cover of “Hurt” that Johnny Cash recorded in 2002 about how sad he was. So thank goodness X-Men: Days of Future Past happened, huh?

Logan stars Hugh Jackman, in what is expected to be his last film in the franchise, and it makes sense to give him a proper send-off. Inspired by the Old Man Logan storyline written by 20th Century Fox favorite Mark Millar, the film involves Wolverine living out his impossibly long life and getting drawn back into action many years after (almost) all the heroes died. In the comics it culminated with a fight between Wolverine and The Hulk, which we all know we’ll probably never get to see on screen at this rate, because X-Men and The Avengers belong to different studios.

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So the storyline appears to be a little different this time. All we know for sure is that a sad ol’ Wolverine will take care of a little girl, which is admittedly his usual modus operandi, and that he’ll be fighting The Reavers, a team of cyborg mutant hunters, led by the villain Mr. Sinister. Why is he fighting these people? Because the little girl is X-23, the clone of Wolverine from the comics, and that’s kind of a big deal.

While it’s easy to appreciate that 20th Century Fox is trying to diversify the X-Men movie brand, with happy-go-lucky Deadpool films, super-expodey X-Men films and now a Wolverine sequel that’s being marketed as serious and sad, one has to wonder when the heck the studio is going to start treating these films like they exist in the same universe and instill them with at least some sense of consistency. Every X-Men movie has contradicted the other movies that came before them, in minor and sometimes enormous ways, and contradicting the whole premise of the studio’s “soft reboot” of this franchise from Days of Future Past is yet another slap in the face to anyone who is actually trying to damn about what happens next.

That being said, Logan is directed by James Mangold, who previously helmed the very entertaining The Wolverine and also great dramas like Heavy, Cop Land and Girl, Interrupted. It’s important to reserve any final judgment until we actually see the finished film, but it’s also important to know that this is how 20th Century Fox wants us to think of Logan right now, and it’s okay to question their logic in doing so.

Watch the international version of the preview below – it’s got one cool R-rated scene that isn’t in the domestic version – and keep your eyes peeled for Logan when it hits theaters on March 3, 2017.

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Top Photo: 20th Century Fox

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.