Although Hugh Jackman has played Marvel’s Wolverine for a record nine times, including the new movie Logan from James Mangold, the savage mutant hasn’t worn his signature yellow spandex from comics once. Fans begged Jackman to wear it in his final movie, but Mangold says that yellow costume never made sense for a character like Wolverine.
In a conversation with Screen Rant, Mangold says he knows fans have been “yearning” for Jackman — who has been a pitch-perfect Wolverine for 17 years — to wear the yellow tights onscreen. “But the biggest block I’ve had,” says Mangold, “is that … Logan is the least narcissistic of all the superheroes, any kind I can think of. Marvel, DC, or anywhere else.”
Mangold’s argument is that Wolverine would never wear a costume, at least a flashy one, to designate his identity. “The only reason you do that is so you can have some sort of trademarked claim and get credit for what you did,” says Mangold. For the director of The Wolverine and Logan, indisputably the two best films in the Wolverine spin-off trilogy, nothing seems “less Wolverine-like” than “to put on a trademarked outfit, particularly canary yellow.”
“At least the Wolverine, as I see him, that’s a real struggle for me and always has been. I somehow feel that if … we ever put Hugh [Jackman] into one of those outfits, people would not be happy.” Mangold adds that the unique costume of Wolverine “lives on the page” and isn’t sure it “could live anywhere else.”
Though Jackman is synonymous with one of Marvel’s most popular comic book characters, his screen presence lends itself to Wolverine’s loner persona, which wouldn’t mesh with the classic outfit. Mangold did entertain the idea, however, in a deleted scene from 2013’s The Wolverine where Logan is given the yellow and brown outfit designed by John Byrne in the ‘80s. But the scene was scrapped and was included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray.
Logan will be released March 3.
