Hugh Jackman & James Mangold on Logan’s broken-down heroes

Everyone gets old, even superheroes, and James Mangold's LOGAN will examine just what happens when those powerful individual's near the twilight of their lives. The upcoming film, which will be Hugh Jackman's final appearance as Wolverine, takes place in the near future where "a weary Logan cares for an ailing Professor X in a hide out on the Mexican border, but Logan's attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant arrives, being pursued by dark forces." Both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart look significantly worse for wear in the film, and Jackman told Empire that he used a tip from Jim Broadbent in order to give himself a constant reminder of Wolverine's weakened state.

When he was playing older, [Broadbent] would tape a little stone to his heel. I would have that, just to remind myself of a limp. [Logan's] body hurts. His joints hurt. His heart hurts. Psychologically, he’s damaged. What’s the collateral damage of being Wolverine for all those years? It sticks, it's a brand. If you're a weapon and you're killing, for good or bad, and everyone you've ever loved has died, what does that look like when he's older?

Charles Xavier, at least when portrayed by Patrick Stewart, has traditionally been totally bald, but the character is seen with a little bit of hair in LOGAN, which director James Mangold has acknowledged "could be kind of sacrilege," but he has a theory which explains Xavier's new 'do.

The theory was that he originally lost all his hair because it’s just too damn busy [in his head] to grow hair – the idea for me was, well, maybe there’s a little fringe on there, because things are slowing down mentally.

Mutants are nearly extinct in the time-frame of LOGAN, and Jackman says that the film begins with Logan "not wanting to have anything to do with any of this" and that his life and past as an X-Man "has actually only brought pain and destruction, shame and guilt, all those things, and he genuinely thinks that the world would be better off without him there." Our own Paul Shirey painted a wonderful picture of LOGAN's brutal future when he was able to view forty minutes of the film, and judging by its R-rating for "strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity," we'll be in for quite the conclusion to Wolverine's saga when LOGAN is finally released on March 3, 2017.