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| source// Marvel Comics |
It’s easy to see why Wolverine has become one of the most beloved characters in the Marvel universe: he’s a gruff, no-nonsense brawler with a heart of gold (and a skeleton of adamantium). There’s also the fact that many of his storylines feature some extremely dark content as, even with the best intentions, Logan can often prove to be little more than a semi-tamed beast.
Fox’s previous attempts to bring Wolverine from page to screen have been a mixed bag of mostly poor decisions. The X-Men trilogy brought Hugh Jackman on board which has proved to the only thing that is consistently good about Logan’s portrayal on the big screen. Of the three, X-2 was the closest to the mark in terms of showing off Wolverine’s badass potential.
While Logan’s most recent outing, The Wolverine, greatly improved on Fox’s previous attempts there was still something missing; something which they are now wisely targeting for the third solo Wolverine movie: an R rating. Following the huge success of Deadpool, studios will be less reticent to put out superhero stories exclusively for an adult audience and this is great news for what seems set to be Jackman’s last appearance as the ol’ Canucklehead.
It seems to be a sure thing that the film will draw inspiration from the Old Man Logan arc but odds are they will also be looking to draw from other, darker tales of Wolverine. Whether it’s shocking moments from wider arcs or entire narratives which delve into his troubled psyche, it shouldn’t be too difficult for Fox to give Logan his claws back.
12. A Retired Wolverine In A Dystopian Future (Old Man Logan)
Anyone following the production of the third Wolverine movie will know that the Old Man Logan narrative is serving as the main inspiration behind it. This is a great choice for an R-Rated experience and should provide the perfect send-off for Hugh Jackman’s take on the character. For those that aren’t familiar with the story, here’s some background on why it’s the best direction they could possibly take.
Old Man Logan takes place in a dystopian future of the Marvel universe where supervillains have won and control the entirety of the United States. Renouncing the name ‘Wolverine’, Logan is living peacefully with his family on land owned by the incestuous offspring of The Hulk and She-Hulk. Pretty messed up stuff.
The events which caused him to vow never to use his claws again involved some trickery from Mysterio, leading to the death of all the X-Men by his own hand. From here the story spans loss, corruption and a quest for redemption which to me sounds like the perfect ending to a trilogy which seems to be improving with each instalment.
It’s unclear how many villains or heroes from the original source material Fox will be able to use in their version of Old Man Logan but the opportunity to see such a dark, hard-edged take on Wolverine is just too damn exciting to get hung up on the details.
11. Developing A Taste For Flesh (Marvel Zombies)
Probably the least likely entry to have any impact on the movie, it would nevertheless be an awesome experience to see a zombified Wolverine wreaking havoc across the Fox’s cinematic universe.
The Marvel Zombies series explores what would happen if everyone’s favourite heroes were transformed into flesh hungry ghouls and is every bit as entertaining as it sounds. Devouring the people they once swore to protect, a team of super zombies consisting of Colonel America (kudos on the promotion Cap), Iron Man, Giant-Man, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, the Hulk and Wolverine become an unstoppable force whose munchies are so powerful that they can’t be satisfied on Earth.
After bettering the likes of Magneto and his efforts to defeat the crazed super-monsters, team zombie’s tastes eventually graduate from human to cosmic being and lead to Galactus finding out what it’s like being chewed up like one of his delicious planets. After becoming imbued with his power and forming the Galacti, Wolverine and co. travel the stars eating the populations of far-flung worlds like it ain’t no thing.
Even if Fox aren’t able to get the rights to the necessary characters, there is still potential in having Logan turn into an evil eating machine. With the popularity of zombies showing no sign of slowing, setting a gore-soaked story around one with metal claws would probably break all box office records.
10. Being Ripped In Half By The Hulk (Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk)
The Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk story pits two of the most feral superheroes against each other in a gore-soaked battle for supremacy. The first issue opens with Wolverine regaining consciousness after being torn in two by an out of control Incredible Hulk. The rest of the issues deal with the decisions which led to this moment combining common story threads from both characters to great effect; Bruce Banner exiling himself because he can’t control The Hulk and Wolverine using his animal instincts to track someone down.
Wolverine definitely comes out worse in this conflict receiving injuries including the aforementioned bisection, being reduced to just a head on a tray in the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier (which is then shot by Nick Fury) and having one of his eyes gouged out by She-Hulk. It’s a good job he can grow most of those things back. Despite all of this, it ends up being Logan who saves the day by showing Banner mercy and once again giving us an insight into the complicated moral layers of his character.
There are certainly parallels to be drawn with Old Man Logan in that the conflict is between the same two central characters so it isn’t a stretch that some of this action, most notably Wolverine’s legs being separated from his torso, making it into the upcoming movie. If nothing else it’ll make an awesome, R-Rated set-piece.
9. Having His Healing Power Tested By The Punisher (Aim Low)
There are few Marvel heroes more suited to a more mature story than The Punisher. He’s a man who views justice in black and white, reacting to those who cross his rigid line with deadly force. Pitting such a force of nature against Logan would make for one of the most epic conflicts ever to grace cinema screens.
Frank Castle doesn’t work with others (even when there’s a gang of evil midgets to be thwarted) and certainly doesn’t mess around, something which Wolverine finds out at a hefty cost when the two collide. Knowing of Logan’s healing factor, The Punisher knows better than to go easy on the hairy mutant and deals with the issue the only way he knows how, with needless violence.
After blasting Logan’s face off, kneecapping him and shooting him in the groin from point blank range with a shotgun, Castle has a little think about the best way to keep Wolverine off his trail and settles on an option many would consider psychopathic. To ensure Logan stays put, The Punisher crushes his entire body up to his forearms with a steamroller. Ouch.
While there’s little chance of this exact exchange making it into Wolverine III, an R-Rating allows the movie to examine just how much punishment the central character can take. Since they’ve been given free reign with violence, it’s probably best they make the most of it.
8. Hero Becomes Horror Villain (Weapon X)
We’ve seen a few attempts to show Wolverine’s transition from a bone-clawed regenerator to a killing machine with a metal skeleton but none have successfully illustrated just how horrific the procedure was. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the closest to the mark but as it was restricted by its rating, never really had a chance to do it justice.
The Weapon X comics follow the process through which Logan is briefly dehumanized and turned into an unfeeling, soulless assassin. He is subjected to a range of terrible experiments, all the while being referred to as a subject as opposed to a person. Understandably, this doesn’t end up going too well for the men responsible and when Wolverine escapes captivity, the story really becomes interesting.
Aside from the prologue and epilogue, the story is told from the perspective of the three scientists that survived. This interesting angle gives the story a horror-vibe as Wolverine hunts down and kills his captors one by one, through the events of Weapon X he ceases to be a heroic figure and becomes total nightmare fuel.
If Fox want to really hit the mark with their third Wolverine film, they must tap into this portrayal of the character, really letting his dark side out to show that Logan isn’t your typical hero. While they don’t necessarily have to revisit this exact moment in his history, there’s plenty of scope for showing him out of control in the dystopian future of the Old Man Logan arc.
7. Logan Vs. Human Traffickers (Coyote Crossing)
Some of the best stories about Wolverine focus on the conflict between his animalism and humanity. The truth is, he’s caught somewhere in between and having him come to terms with this makes for compelling reading. This is especially true in the issue Coyote Crossing, which sees Logan passing through a run-down border town on the Mexico border and coming face to face with some real depravity.
While being tracked down by a DEA agent who has developed an obsession with unravelling the mystery surrounding ‘The Wolverine’, a long-haired Logan chances across a truck full of dead would-be migrants. This leads him to a gang of ‘coyotes’ who are involved in human trafficking and sex slavery, offering up the perfect situation for him to enact his own form of justice against those responsible.
He locks one of the coyotes in the back of the truck with all of the people that suffocated to death in the heat before showing a rare modicum of mercy calling the police on him. The other scumbags who were responsible don’t receive the same kindness and it is implied that they have both met with brutal ends at Logan’s weaponized hands.
This story has the double whammy of being a highly entertaining vengeance thriller and also happening to be very topical in the current political climate. Whether Fox want to use Wolverine III as a platform to speak about this is questionable, but if they’re looking for suitable villains to feel Logan’s wrath, there are few more deserving of his claws than people smugglers.
6. Doing His Backstory Properly (Origin)
Life hasn’t been kind to Wolverine, he’s an alcoholic loner who is always suffering through some sort of psychiatric crisis ranging from full-blown amnesia to crippling self-loathing. None of this is surprising when you take into account how his powers first manifested themselves.
Born as James Howlett, the son of a plantation owner in 19th Century Canada, young Wolverine is a million miles from the hard-case he will eventually become; riddled with allergies and referred to as a sickly child. This all changes when their violent drunkard of a groundskeeper Thomas Logan (who turns out to be his biological daddy-o, hence the name) shoots his father prompting his mutant powers to emerge, which he subsequently uses to avenge his fallen parent.
Where the comic differ from the adaptation in X-Men Origins is that instead of merely looking at young Wolvie like he’s a weirdo, his mother takes Logan’s shotgun and blows her head off right in front of her child. There was none of the film’s ‘brotherly fight through the ages’ stuff either, in the years following the traumatic incident he deals with unrequited love and unquenchable rage which leads him to accidentally kill the object of his affection.
While it was cool to see Wolverine and Sabertooth single-handedly win all the wars, there’s not much character development there apart from: he’s really old but still awesome at fighting. While it’s unlikely Fox will revisit the events in their entirety, there is certainly material to be used to give a more rounded picture of who the character really is besides being a forgetful badass.
5. Magneto Rips Out His Skeletal Grafts (Fatal Attractions)
While the most iconic thing about Wolverine is probably the lethal claws (and the dodgy haircut), it’s his power to heal himself from practically any injury that sets him apart. This regenerative capability allowed shifty government scientists to attach adamantium to all of his bones and even ensure that he can survive gunshots to the head. Unfortunately, both his shiny skeleton and his ability to rebuild tissue become painful liabilities when coming into contact with a mutant who can literally command metal with his mind.
Magneto is somebody that Logan really doesn’t want to be messing with, as proved in the X-Men’s Fatal Attractions arc when the ardent campaigner for mutant supremacy proceeds to tear metal from bone in an insanely grim sequence which leaves poor Wolverine in so much pain that he is, according to the narration, unable to scream. Imagine not only having to suffer, fully awake, while a full-body skeletal graft was torn through your skin but also to survive and wait until everything knitted back together. That’s just downright nasty.
While this has been displayed onscreen to some extent, with Ian McKellan’s take on the master of magnetism making Hugh Jackman gurn on the subway and Michael Fassbender flicking him away like a fly, these films’ ratings prevented them from showing anything more than mild discomfort. To see Wolverine torn to shreds only to return and kick some ass would be a fantastic sequence to include in an R-Rated take on the character.
4. Drowning His Own Son In A Puddle (Uncanny X-Force #34)
Parenting is a tough job and it’s probably made even harder if you’re busy trying to save the world every five minutes. Couple that with the fact that Logan isn’t exactly dad material and it’s pretty easy to see why his son, Daken, didn’t grow up to be that well-adjusted. To sum up his relationship with his parents, his mother was murdered by The Winter Soldier while he was still in the womb and the first meeting with his dad involved disembowelling instead of hugs.
It’s clear to see that it’s not your usual father / son squabbling going on and as both of them have the same regenerative powers, this leads to some pretty vicious conflict between the two of them as Daken forsakes heroism in favour of joining groups such as Norman Osborne’s Dark X-Men. While there are some interesting features to Logan Jr, his main motivation tends to be daddy issues.
With all this in mind there was only one way this dance could end, however the way it actually occurs is rather surprising. During an impassioned fight the reader is shown visions of how both men would have preferred things to pan out (some sort of lovely, boring family life according to their thought bubbles) but there can only be one winner and, spoiler alert, it isn’t Daken. There is no blaze of glory for Wolverine’s spawn, only the infamy of being drowned in three inches of water.
Just as in the comics, it wouldn’t be unfeasible for the third film to introduce a child Logan wasn’t aware of and set them against each other. There’s no conflict more compelling than a good old family feud.
3. Logan’s Fantasy Sex Dungeon (Wolverine Vs. The X-Men: Part III)
Digging into the psyche of heroes has become the ‘done thing’ recently and with films about super-beings becoming grittier by the minute, it’s only natural that they’ll be looking to do the same for Wolverine to show of Jackman’s range in his supposed final appearance as the character. That’s not to say that they have to make it dull and overly emotional though, as there are some very interesting areas of Logan’s mind to explore.
The aspect of his subconscious that would be the most entertaining to have a look at would probably be his mental sex dungeon. Let’s rewind a moment. During the events of Wolverine Vs. The X-Men, Logan has been possessed by a demon and his mutants must travel into his mind to save the day. If that sounds like a ludicrous premise you don’t know the half of it; while in there they encounter various doors that relate to everything from feelings of inadequacy to how he cheats at cards. However, the door we’re interested in is marked: ‘Sexual Fantasies’.
When Emma Frost stumbles across this door while exploring Logan’s mind she, as we all would, decides without any hesitation to have a quick look inside. To her surprise and horror, the room contains a hypersexualised version of herself along with Mystique, Squirrel Girl, Spiral and Jewel (aka Jessica Jones) who beckon her into what looks like some sort of S&M dungeon.
Exploring Wolverine’s sexuality would be an interesting route to take; it’s no surprise he’s a bit of a masochist given that he can recover from practically any injury. Here’s hoping that the new movie gives a shout out to his creepy mental sex basement.
2. Killing An Innocent Teen For The Greater Good (Ultimate X-Men #41)
One thing the X-Men writers have always done right is its depiction of various mutants’ transformation at puberty. It’s a difficult time for the majority of us and, while most people just turn grouchy and grow their hair as opposed to developing laser eyes, the comparison is an effective analogue.
Obviously this becomes more of an issue when you’re suddenly a legitimate threat to everyone you come in to contact with due to secreting acid clouds from your skin. This is the problem faced by an unlucky teenager and it’s left up to Wolverine to track him down and stop him from hurting anyone else.
This powerful exchange in issue 41 of Ultimate X-Men proves that sometimes it’s the small, understated moments which have the largest impact. Wolverine listens as the youngster tries to rationalise the damage he has done and finally realises that he isn’t going to see daylight again.
It’s an emotional exchange which is tragically punctuated by the defiant last words from Logan’s victim, “Just do it”. Aside from invoking the Nike slogan (which was also allegedly inspired by murderer Gary Gilmore’s last words before his execution), it is also shown to have deeply affected Wolverine in the final panel. No matter that what he did was for the greater good, to do so he had to kill a defenceless, crying teen. This would work well on screen, showing that Logan is ready to make difficult decisions and places him firmly in the grey area between hero and hitman.
1. Drowning In Adamantium (The Death Of Wolverine)
If they really are looking to wind up Jackman’s involvement with the X-Men franchise, there are few better ways to do it than killing off his version of the character. While Logan has come back time and time again from pain and injury that would have sent many other heroes to their (often temporary) deaths, this isn’t to say that there aren’t ways of offing Wolverine.
The Death of Wolverine follows the titular character losing his healing factor due to a virus and a bounty being placed on his head now that he can be killed. Logan is offered the chance to try and restore his regenerative powers but instead he chooses to accept mortality and goes after whoever is trying to have him bumped off.
Unsurprisingly, the hunt takes Wolverine back to where he underwent the Weapon X treatment and brings him face to face with one of the doctors who experimented on him Abraham Cornelius. Of course he manages to sabotage the evil scientist’s plans but in the process he is covered head to toe in liquid adamantium. Due to his lack of healing ability, this hardens in the sunlight and suffocates the once indestructible mutant.
Drawing inspiration from this arc would be a powerful way to end the Wolverine trilogy, Logan finding redemption and finally making peace with himself at the very end. This depends on whether Jackman really wants to close the door on his involvement but here’s hoping Fox have the guts to go with an ending as challenging as this one.
What are your favourite Wolverine stories? Has the R-Rating got you excited for Jackman’s final appearance as Logan? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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