His The Wolverine set to go before cameras next year, director James Mangold spoke with The Playlist about his plans for the sequel to the 2009 box office hit X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
“It’s a kind of adventure following such a unique character also in a really unique environment,” he says of his reasons for taking the job. “I mean, the fact that half of the characters in this movie speak Japanese, this is like a foreign-language superhero movie that’s as much a drama and a detective story and a film noir, with high-octane action as it is anything like a conventional tentpole film.”
Mangold also explains that he’s discussed the project with the formerly-attached Darren Aronofsky and that, while the film still features Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay, he and Mark Bomback have gone through and rewritten the entire thing, comparing the version he plans to make to classics like The Outlaw Josey Wales and Chinatown.
“[It’s] much more about Logan getting lost in this very unique and insulated world of Japanese culture, gangster culture, and ninja culture,” he explains. “The fighting is going to be unique because it’s all influenced by Japanese martial arts… I think more than anything, it’s a character piece, asking really interesting questions that are what pulled me in about what it means to be immortal. What is it to live forever, when you lose everyone you’ve ever loved? Either you watch them get killed, or you just lose them by attrition. What is it to feel the burden of saving mankind through all of its mistakes, over and over and over again. What’s the toll it takes on you as a living being that is somehow living this Frankensteinian, eternal life?”
Click here to read the full interview at The Playlist.
