James Mangold, Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart at the 2017 Logan premiere Photo: Pascal Le Segretain (Getty Images)
James Mangold is an unlikely franchise film director whose resume (especially recently, when his stints in the blockbuster mines have included stints in the X-Men and Indiana Jones franchises, and Star Wars is on the way) screams , as if he had been “a wage labourer”. — but a filmography that reveals a deep commitment to telling stories that make real people out of the boxes of action figures that are regularly thrust into his hands. This is particularly evident in 2017’s “Logan,” which starts from a very silly premise – what if Wolverine got old and sad and had to fight a younger, less sad version of himself? – and make something really poignant out of it.
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What does the director of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny think that Hugh Jackman decides to resurrect the character seven years after his “death” to joke with Ryan Reynolds’ “Deadpool”? The mood we feel is resigned, and certainly not enthusiastic.
This is according to a profile of Mangold published in Variety today, which is primarily about “Dial Of Destiny,” in which the director of “Cop Land” takes on the role of Steven Spielberg’s pinchhitter. But he asks a question about Logan and, yeah, isn’t thrilled. Here’s the full, semi-gloomy answer:
I can’t say there’s a part of me that doesn’t wish we would let it. But there would always be another Wolverine. There could be a baby Wolverine and a cartoon Wolverine. They will try to squeeze as much liquid out of this rag as possible. I don’t measure my success on a movie like Logan by whether we’ve finished the conversation.
I ended my conversation.
We’re no psychologists, but we’re pretty sure overjoyed directors don’t describe the franchises they’ve worked on as dripping rags to be relentlessly squeezed by the studio’s relentless hands. Still, it hasn’t stopped Mangold from pursuing his idiosyncratic path of mindful franchise filmmaking: He has a Swamp Thing film in the pipeline at DC Films and a Star Wars film described as “The Ten Commandments of the Dawn”. Force” is a work in progress at Disney, so apparently those rags just keep getting squeezed.