It seems the dark tone of Logan, the forthcoming X-Men movie from James Mangold, had many of Fox’s executives worried that the film would be “boring” or too dour.
Executive Stacy Snider spoke about fighting for the director’s vision for the film—in which Hugh Jackman makes his final turn as the adamantium-clawed Wolverine—at a recent Recode Media Q&A:
Inside, there was real consternation about the intensity of the tone of the film. It’s more of an elegy about life and death. The paradigm for it was a Western, and my colleagues were up in arms. It’s not a wise-cracking cigar-chomping mutton-sporting Wolverine, and the debate internally became, “Isn’t that freakin’ boring? Isn’t it exciting to imagine Wolverine as a real guy and he’s world-weary and he doesn’t want to fight anymore until a little girl needs him?”
Audiences will be able to judge the film’s tone for themselves soon enough, as it hits theaters on March 3. For our latest look at the movie, check out the video below. The clip was uploaded today by 20th Century Fox, and gives us a creepy peek into the origins of Logan’s young companion Laura, also known as X-23.