Logan Director Had Good Reason To Limit Film’s Mutants

Logan will be a very focused experience, without many of the cameos that have become routine in FOX’s X-Men movie franchise. It turns out there’s a very well thought out reason for that.

Director James Mangold has discussed this aspect of Logan before (which currently enjoys a 4.34 out of 5 on ComicBook.com’s anticipation rankings), but in an interview with CinemaBlend, the director went into even greater detail.

“A movie is only so many minutes, right? Like, 120 minutes, minus credits, let’s say — or without credits. And let’s just say [that] of those minutes, if you spend 30 of them describing what someone’s doing and why they’re doing it and where the technology came from and why the… that stuff is all interesting. But at a certain point, it’s not what we remember about films. What we remember about films is how they move us.”

“And that 120 minutes, when you’re making a movie with six, seven mutants or six, seven superheroes, these kind of gangbang movies that are kind of the rage right now, the reality of them is that — very much like the comic books each character gets — if you make a seven-person movie, you take those 120 minutes” said Mangold. “You divide it by seven. Now, each character has, like, an eight-minute arc. They effectively each have the character development of a Warner Brothers’ cartoon.”

“So the reality is that it’s not really about whether the filmmakers are better or worse, or the writing is better or worse. It’s once you make these decisions, the real estate has gotten subdivided so heavily that there really is only so much left to go deeper. I really wanted scenes where there wasn’t a visual effect in sight, where it was just the power of the acting and the power of these characters that carried them.”

Mangold makes a good point, and the truth is the setting of Logan also makes most cameos rather impossible. Still, some will undoubtedly be disappointed that more mutants didn’t make the cut.

You can view the official synopsis below.

Logan takes place in the year 2029, where mutant births have become extremely rare. The defenders of mutant kind, the X-Men, are long gone, and the only remains of them are an old and struggling Charles Xavier and a weary Logan. Logan’s vaunted healing factor has slowed, and at times doesn’t seem to work at all. When a young mutant needs his help, Logan has to unsheathe his claws once more. His job isn’t over yet.

Logan stars Hugh Jackman (Logan), Boyd Holbrook (Donald Pierce), Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier), Dafne Keen (Laura Kinney/X-23), Doris Morgado (Maria), Stephen Merchant (Caliban), Elizabeth Rodriguez (Gabriela), and Richard E. Grant (Dr. Zander Rice). James Mangold is directing and helped on the screenplay along with Scott Frank and Michael Green.

Logan hits theaters on March 3, 2017.

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