Patrick Stewart on Logan & what it would take for him to return to Star Trek

Warning, there will be SPOILERS for LOGAN if you haven't seen it yet. It's not often that an actor has the opportunity, or the talent, to occupy more than one huge pop-culture role in their lifetime, but Patrick Stewart is certainly one of them, bringing both Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier to life for decades. With the release of LOGAN, we've likely seen the last of Professor X, at least when played by Patrick Stewart. While chatting with Variety, Stewart spoke of just how different the James Mangold film was from the other X-MEN projects he's worked on.

We shot the movie in dramatic sequence, so when I walked on the set of “Logan,” I did was my first, quite long scene where I’m talking to Logan. My last shot was me dying in the back of a truck at 2 in the morning somewhere in Mississippi. Hugh and myself and, of course, James Mangold, our director, we developed the tone of this story together. It very much depended on the complexity and richness and truthfulness of the relationships in order to work. The roles here were very much reversed. In the early days when Logan was so messed up and carrying so much baggage around, Charles was very much his protector and advisor and caregiver. In this one, Logan is the one looking after Charles.

It’s sort of a combination of a western and a road movie. It was not a superhero, comic book movie with a lot of high-intensity special effects. It was about narrative and character. When James [Mangold] came to my dressing room on Broadway and told me about the kind of movie that he wanted to make, it was instantly recognizable as a different approach. I knew he would be looking probingly into Logan’s relationship with his one-time boss and the rich dependency between the two of them. It’s what makes this an “X-Men” movie that stands apart from the others.

As for whether this will be his last appearance as Professor X, Patrick Stewart said that he didn't give it a thought until he saw LOGAN for the first time at the Berlin Film Festival and could feel himself getting choked up by the emotional ending. "When I was still wiping my eyes and smiling through the credits, which were very long by the way, it became very clear to me that there would never be a better way of saying goodbye to the franchise than the one I just witnessed," Stewart said. "Charles dies in Logan’s arms with Logan profoundly saddened. No better opportunity to say au revoir could ever extend itself." As for Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart doesn't seem to think he'll ever step into the space-suit again, but he did bring up one scenario where he might consider returning.

Oh, lord. I cannot think of another instance in which that might happen. My feeling is I hung up the space suit and left all that behind a long time ago. Maybe if someone came up with a brilliant idea, I’d do it. One thing that might interest me would be to bring all the existing casts of “Star Trek” from the last 50 years together for one big story.

An AVENGERS-style STAR TREK team-up? It would certainly be something to see, especially as much of the series after The Next Generation never got their time on the big-screen. You never know, maybe Quentin Tarantino can find a way to use Patrick Stewart in his potential STAR TREK movie.