Hugh Jackman Retrospective ( as Wolverine)

[mamaleh]

That Times piece was really good. Great photo, too.

Ellen

[jo]

I liked it a lot, especially knowing Hugh is quite a candid person...and is not a celebrity type who puts on a front rather than who he really is!

But I wonder if he is really 100% candid about "never being this completely free after he completes SHOWMAN"? I am hoping that there are project options maybe later in the year but that commitments are not yet solid or fixed. It's been a very, very busy year for him!  And f course I would like him to take a long break to take care of himself and to refresh himself for new creative ventures!

Jo

[hughmanity]

I also hope to look forward to a project after the Logan hype and Showman filming is done! "Some(thing) will come along ".

[jo]

This is another unusual retrospective -- "the greatest XMen movie of all time meets the greatest XMen trailer of all time", as a fitting tribute to Hugh Jackman!

www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/x-men-2-trailer-redone-style-logan-940946

[jo]

[jo]

The years have flown --

[jo]

Entertainment Weekly has its own Wolverine retrospective via its covers --

[jo]

Hugh Jackman is recognized for the cinematic work he has done as Wolverine through 17 years... and is also taken note of as an actor of many talents!

www.dailyherald.com/article/20170303/entlife/170309937/

Movies
posted: 3/3/2017 6:00 AM

Hit me, Wolvie, one more time: Hugh Jackman's last stand as Marvel's Wolverine

Hugh Jackman embraced his role as Logan in a number of films including "The Wolverine."



Sean Stangland

 
Seventeen years ago, movie fans had never heard of Hugh Jackman. Today (March 3), they will bid farewell to the world-famous character he's played in nine films.

There were rumors that Russell Crowe or an up-and-coming actor named Dougray Scott (who quickly came and went) would play the role that eventually went to Jackman, a veteran of Australian stage and television. As Logan, the self-healing mutant hero of Marvel's "X-Men" comics and Bryan Singer's 2000 film adaptation who also goes by the name Wolverine, Jackman attained a perfect combination of strength, sarcasm and warmth with a character who could have easily been a broad caricature. He was an instant movie star.


Jackman's final go-round as Wolverine, simply titled "Logan," hits theaters this weekend atop a giant wave of critical buzz. In between, he's established himself as one of Hollywood's do-anything wonders. He can sing, as we heard in 2012's "Les Miserables" and as host of the 2009 Academy Awards. He can go quiet and intimate, as in 2006's "The Fountain," or big and broad, as in 2001's "Kate & Leopold." He can even become a monster, as we saw in "Prisoners," the brutal 2013 kidnapping tale from "Arrival" director Denis Villeneuve.

The common element to all of these performances is Jackman's emotional availability; He has an open quality that draws us into each character he plays, no matter how silly or strange. Whether he's a magician with a dark secret ("The Prestige") or a dude who plays life-size Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots for a living ("Real Steel"), we like him, root for him, and feel close to him.


At age 48, Hugh Jackman has an interesting, varied and accomplished movie career, and only one Academy Award nomination ("Les Miserables") to show for it. That might change a year from now, after his star turn as P.T. Barnum in "The Greatest Showman" lands in theaters on Christmas Day. Until then, I'll enjoy watching him and his Adamantium claws slice up the Marvel world one more time.


• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. You can follow him on Twitter at @seanstanglanddh.

[jo]

For the professional years they have shared together --

http://instagram.com/p/BRTKP7-D4CX

[jo]

DC and MARVEL profiles Hugh Jackman's legacy as WOLVERINE!


wegotthiscovered.com/movies/logan-incredible-tribute-jackman-wolverine/

[jo]

This is a tribute piece but mainly focused on LOGAN!



Please do NOT proceed unless you have seen the movie --


SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER
SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER
SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER
SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER******SUPERSPOILER

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

www.slashfilm.com/logan-ending-discussed/

The ‘Logan’ Ending, a Bittersweet Legacy, and the Future of the Wolverine
Posted on Monday, March 6th, 2017 by Jacob Hall


Logan is the last time Hugh Jackman will play Wolverine. That’s been the narrative since the beginning, the chief selling point for a risky, violent, and thoughtful superhero movie that goes out of its way to tear its hero down before giving him one final ride. Come say goodbye to a character we’ve watched for 17 years, Logan asks. That’s enough to get butts in the seats. We’ve come this far, right?

And to the film’s credit, Jackman and director James Mangold have crafted a beautiful, bleak, and merciless farewell to one of the young century’s first cinematic icons. Logan, the Wolverine, James Howlett, whatever he is and whoever he is, doesn’t get the ending he deserves, but rather the ending he needs. (Spoilers from this point on, of course.)


No cities are leveled in Logan. There are no portals in the sky, no cackling super-villains, and no plots to dominate the planet. In fact, the war has been lost: mutant are near extinction and the United States of 2029 is an unwelcome, unpleasant place, a landscape where advancements in technology drag the poor and helpless along the road rather than give them a lift. All anyone, even a once-immortal superhero with an adamantium skeleton, can do is cling on for dear life.

The stakes in Logan are small. Will Laura (Dafne Keen), a young mutant, escape across the Canadian border with her band of fellow test subjects? Will her father, the fallen hero once known as the Wolverine, rise to occasion and fight for them? Logan‘s final fight is a desperate, chaotic affair – an old man who can barely stand launches himself into one more battle, all in the name of children whose future across the border is big question mark and nothing more. Logan fights not to save the world or to defeat a villainous scheme – he fights to give group of kids a fighting chance, an opportunity to maybe find peace in a new land.

Like the other battles in the film, Mangold stages the climax of Logan with brutal ferocity. The fights are nasty and violent, with those claws impaling skulls and limbs littering the forest floor. However, it is not a scene that invites cheers. It doesn’t thrill or excite. Other superhero movies, even the great ones, treat their action like a celebration. In Logan, action is violence and violence darkens the soul. It taints its characters like the adamantium has tainted Wolverine himself, weakening him, stripping him to the bone. The final stretch of this movie is downright funereal.

But the good guys win. The bad guys die. The clone of Logan, the film’s surprise villain, is put down with a special bullet our hero wanted to put in his own brain. And Wolverine himself is impaled on a branch, his healing powers finally worn to nothing. He doesn’t walk away from this one: Logan dies in the middle of nowhere, not as a member of the X-Men but as a father, a man who pushed himself to the breaking point for a tiny deed that no one will remember.

But Laura has his DNA. Logan lives on in his daughter. Sometimes, you save the world. Sometimes, you save a life. You take the victories you can get.


A Legacy Laid to Rest

Hugh Jackman’s contributions to the modern comic book movie cannot be overstated. Here is an actor – good-looking, versatile, Clint Eastwood with the capacity to smile like Tom Cruise – who stepped into a role that could have been ridiculous and made it work. In many ways, Jackman’s Wolverine is the ideal superhero movie performance. He takes the material seriously, but is not without humor. He transforms his body for the part, looking like he stepped out of a comic book illustration. He radiates an unteachable charisma. He’s cool, even when he’s hurting.

But Logan pushes that hurting to the breaking limit. The film opens with him getting battered in a fight he could have won easily a decade earlier, lets him lose his fair of brawls as he road trips across the country, and concludes with his death. Mangold and Logan, fearlessly and boldly, lets us see what becomes of heroes after the war is over. We all age. We all die. Everything ends. Because we’ve seen Logan at his best, at his coolest, this film is a punishing experience. Forget Magneto – time is the  greatest super villain. It makes victims of us all.

In the end, Logan is killed by the worst elements of himself, a genetically engineered Wolverine that lacks his life experience and capacity for goodness. He’s killed by pure rage and pain and anger. Those elements still exist in our Logan, but they’ve been tempered by his time with the X-Men, by a father figure who loves him like a son, and by a new daughter he’ll never truly get to know. It’s no accident that it’s Laura who kills Logan’s evil half, blowing his brains out with an adamantium bullet. Family saved the Wolverine, transformed him from a wandering cage fighter into a bonafide hero. In the end, family puts down the literal embodiment of his worst elements once and for all.

When Logan is buried, Laura pauses by his grave, takes that makeshift wooden cross, and turns it on its side, transforming it into an “X.” The symbology is simple, but seismic: mutants are not beholden to human institutions, to the society that rejected them. Stripped of its religious connotations, the cross is a default human symbol, the go-to iconography of a final resting place. No one is going to visit Logan’s grave, but it might as well bear the proper marker. It might as well represent what he actually fought for. What he actually died for.


We know the man in that grave. We know his mission. We watched it for 17 years. We know what that “X” means.



The Future of Wolverine

Let’s face facts: Wolverine is coming back. Hugh Jackman won’t play him and hopefully, no amount of money will tempt him back – Deadpool 2 is not worth undoing a perfect, painful farewell. But yeah: Wolverine is coming back. Maybe Fox will give him a few years off. Maybe they’ll have a new actor ready to go for X-Men: Supernova. But we’ll see another actor playing Logan within the next few years.

How do you find someone willing to follow in Jackman’s footsteps? How do you find someone capable of doing what he did? Whoever takes this part next will exist in a shadow that will be nearly impossible to escape. Jackman defined this character for a generation of moviegoers and anyone who thinks they can march in and do the same thing on the same level is crazy.


In fact, the best thing future X-Men movies can do is to not replicate Hugh Jackman. You can’t. Don’t even try. Don’t find another movie-star-handsome charmer. Don’t search for a new version of we already know. The key to escaping that shadow is, purely and simply, to go in the opposite direction. Look to the Wolverine of the comics: the squat, hairy, anti-social weirdo, the guy who could have been played by a young Ron Perlman. This doesn’t have to be a movie star role or even a leading character – a character actor playing a gruffer, meaner Wolverine in an ensemble feels like the proper next step. Jackman’s Wolverine isn’t quite the comic book version and that’s okay. He made it work. He made something special. However, the source material offers an escape route. Fox should take it.

Long live the Wolverine. Long live Hugh Jackman.

[jo]

FOX is supposed to have released this tribute/behind-the-scene RE Hugh's tenure as Wolverine.

Be sure to check the last part -- it shows the film wrap...and even had a GOODBYE LOGAN/Thank You, Hugh message on the cake!





Jo

[jo]

Variety shares images from the first XMen movie to LOGAN --

www.facebook.com/Variety/videos/10154340089187197/

[hughmanity]

On my music shuffle earlier. Thought it could be Hugh singing to his Wolverine character! Very poignant. Posting lyrics for the newbies ( including myself) who may not know them by heart like the original Ozalots!

Once before I go, I want you to know that I would do it all again
I'm sure I'd make the same mistakes
That I could make it through the pains and joys and aches
I knew back then I would do it all, I'd do it all again

Before I go, I want you to know that I look back with no regrets
And when our luck was wearing thin and we were down and out
And still came back to win against all bets
Now when I look back I still have no regrets

And it's so hard to say good-byes
When there's so much that's left unspoken in your eyes
But unless I spread my wings again, I'm afraid I'll never soar
So hang on to the memories and hold me close once more

Once more, just once before I go, I want you to know
That I have loved you all along and even when we're far apart
I only need to feel you're living in my heart and I'll be strong
I'll love you just the way I've loved you all along

And it's so hard to say good-byes
When there's so much that's left unspoken in your eyes
But unless I spread my wings again I'm afraid I'll never soar
So kiss me for the last time and hold me close once more

Once more, just once before I go
I want you to know that I have loved you all along
And even when we're far apart
I only need to feel you're living in my heart and I'll be strong

You are the light that shines on me
You always were and you'll always be
So I had to let you know, just this once
Just this once before I go

[jo]

Perfect!!

[jo]

A wrap...not just for LOGAN...but for his career as Wolverine!


Thank you, Hugh Jackman



Jo

[jo]

A lot of post-facto reminiscences of Hugh's identification with the Wolverine role -- starting from his last audition which finally ( he said he had several auditions for it) gave him the role... to where he is now saying farewell to his career-defining role!

www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2017/03/09/hugh-jackmans-x-men-audition-from-1999-shows-the-raw-magic-was-there-all-along/?utm_term=.85fa969f3c60

[jo]

One more tribute to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine!

collider.com/logan-hugh-jackman-best-wolverine/?utm_campaign=collidersocial&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social#images

How Hugh Jackman Has Defined Wolverine for a Generation
by Matt Goldberg     March 3, 2017


Hugh Jackman has said for years that Logan will be his last time playing Wolverine. It should be. With Logan, he gets to go out on a high note and provide a closing chapter to a character he defined cinematically. It’s an amazing accomplishment in Hollywood cinema history, one that will likely go unremarked by awards bodies because Jackman was playing a guy who has blades coming out of his fists instead of a troubled historical figure. And yet Jackman’s performance as Wolverine will endure long after we’ve all forgotten the Oscar-friendly turns from his colleagues.

It’s worth remembering what a monumental challenge Jackman stepped into back when he signed on to play the role in 1999. To begin, he wasn’t the first choice. Dougray Scott famously had to drop out of the role when shooting on Mission: Impossible 2 ran over. Secondly, Jackman was a completely unknown to American audiences, something that worked in his favor in terms of carrying no baggage into the role, but also against him in that legions of fanboys were waiting to be convinced. Third, Wolverine was an immensely popular character and had been for decades. While he hadn’t penetrated the mainstream like Superman or Batman, he was beloved by X-Men fans, and had been since the 1970s. Oh, and the new X-Men movie, the start of a potential franchise, was pretty much on his shoulders.


His debut as the character instantly erased all doubts. He didn’t ease into the role or grow into it. He owned it from the start. Fans that whined about Jackman being too tall were silenced, and people who complained that “Person X Should Have Played the Part” were ignored. Jackman perfectly encapsulated the character’s rage, sadness, humor, and physicality. He was true to the comics, but still made the role his own, taking a character who had only been seen before on the page and the animated series and bringing him to life.
Jackman’s far from the first actor to take a beloved character and nail the screen adaptation, but what’s astonishing is the longevity of the part. No other actor has played a character taken from the page for as long at such a high profile. Jackman has been Wolverine for 17 years. While other actors have come to be associated with their screen characters like Sean Connery with James Bond or Christopher Reeve with Superman, no one has done it as long as Jackman, nor made themselves indispensible.

It would have been easy for Jackman to try and bury Wolverine after finding success in the U.S. He could have treated it as that silly comic book thing he did in order to get a foothold in Hollywood and a stepping-stone to bigger and better roles. Instead, Jackman has always worked to try and make Wolverine bigger and better. He’s never forgotten his breakthrough character, which could have been viewed as a risk. But by giving a real performance and understanding Wolverine’s humanity, Jackman wisely put the character on par with any other role. He wasn’t “slumming it” by playing a superhero (and keep in mind, in 2000, superhero roles weren’t automatically associated with prestige actors); instead, he used his success as a springboard to work with auteurs like Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan. Other actors may have run from Wolverine; Jackman embraced him.


If Jackman only played Wolverine a few times in the early 2000s, his accomplishment would be impressive, but Fox would have quickly recast and moved on to other X-Men movies. But Jackman has left such a mark on the character that it would be foolhardy to try and find a new Wolverine for at least a few years. He’s cast an enormous shadow, taking the character through highs and lows, but never diminishing the performance. Even in his worst movies, Wolverine doesn’t come off badly. You still care about him and you can see that Jackman still cares about the character. That commitment has cast an awful long shadow, and 20th Century Fox would be wise to try and build a franchise around young Dafne Keen and X-23 rather than rush to find a new Logan.


Logan is a swan song, but it’s one Jackman absolutely deserves. He’s invested as much into Wolverine as any fan if not more so. It may seem odd to pay tribute to an actor who has already received so much from playing Wolverine. But it would be a mistake to say that the character made Jackman rich and famous. Jackman is the one who did the work. He understood that Wolverine could be more than just a comic book superhero. Every film featuring Wolverine wasn’t a success, but he was successful in them. He shaped the character like few actors have ever had the chance to do, and defined Wolverine for a generation.

Perhaps one day twenty years from now, fans will debate who’s the better Wolverine. Maybe the choice will still be obvious. But after 17 years, it’s obvious that when it comes to playing Wolverine, Hugh Jackman is the best at what he does.

[jo]

From Variety --

video-cdn.variety.com/previews/eoueiOop-plsZnDJi

[jo]

From Genzo@genzothings

[jo]

Tribute articles on Hugh Jackman's legacy as Wolverine are still coming in --

www.cbr.com/appreciation-hugh-jackman-wolverine-logan/

X-Men to Logan: Jackman’s Wolverine Led Superheroes’ Big-Screen Boom

by Brendan McGuirk
in CBR Exclusives


You never forget the first.

A stage actor’s most enduring theatrical achievement can be to originate a role, setting the tone for the part in all productions to come. Without scripting a line, they imprint onto their character an ineffable, lasting quality, a part of their creative selves. Those that follow may not mimic the first thespian’s choices, but even in contrast, they react to the work that first charted the course.

Hugh Jackman wasn’t the first actor to portray a superhero in a high-profile Hollywood production, but like the character he played for seventeen years, he was the best there is at what he did.
In films good and bad, soaring and eye-soring, his ever-reliable performances as Marvel’s signature mutant were richly imbued with charisma, pathos and above all commitment. And by playing the part during an era when the relationship between movie stars and superheroes was drastically reshaped, he redefined the way we think of both — or rather, the way we think of those roles as synonymous.


Jackman’s big-screen career as Logan — which began by fortuitous accident when Fox hired him three weeks into filming “X-Men” to replace original cast member Dougray Scott, who was forced to pull out due to a shooting conflict — hasn’t just spanned the length of Hollywood’s prolific golden age of comic book superhero films; it’s left the star’s signature claw-mark on it.


When Jackman was introduced to the movie-going world as the clawed, regenerating degenerate Logan aka Wolverine in Bryan Singer’s 2000 “X-Men” film, the only superheroes that qualified as Hollywood movie stars were stalwart DC Comics properties Superman and Batman, whose dual likenesses had dominated screens to varying degrees for decades. Even they were mired in ignominy at the time, both franchises having spun into infantilizing hokiness and fell out of favor with audiences.

Even when occasional flash-in-the-pan adaptations of properties like “Blade” or “Spawn” found modest success, they were seen as the exception to the rule that superhero films were lesser. A notion persisted that blockbusters should feature established stars in traditional action roles, far from the fantastical premises found in superhero comics.



Starting with 2000’s “X-Men,” Hugh Jackman cut out a new mold for Hollywood superheroes.


Today, the rule that more often holds is that it is superheroes that turn actors into movie stars. One would be hard-pressed to find a modern “name” actor who hasn’t donned a set of super-tights at least once in his or her filmography, as the sequel-friendly movies have blossomed into perhaps the film industry’s predominant genre and steadiest revenue stream.


Since the release of “X-Men,” in May of 2000, comic book-inspired superhero movies have grown into a genre that dominates the box office: 27 major motion pictures based on either Marvel or DC properties have been among the 10 highest grossing films of their year, and 39 finished among the top 20 earners (per Box Office Mojo). It marks quite a sea change since the days of Superman and Batman’s onscreen supremacy as, of those, 31 have been based on Marvel properties against only 8 featuring DC characters.


The only year since Jackman’s debut as Logan without at least one major superhero film finishing in the top 15 at the domestic box office was the year that directly followed: 2001 arrived before studios had a chance to adjust to the new super-cinema economy, and probably the last year in recorded history we’ll see without a movie starring Marvel or DC characters. (Perhaps fittingly, the other “worst” year at the box office for superheroes was 2009, when Jackman’s maligned first solo feature, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” finished as the highest earning comic book film of the year but was just the [lucky] 13th largest overall domestic haul. That’s what they get for doing Deadpool like that.)



Jackman attacked the iconic role of Logan with abandon.


It would take a Fastball Special-powered leap to lay the entire responsibility for this massive success at the feet of the man that plays the erstwhile James Howlett, but when the history of the era is told, his will be an inextricable part of it. While Christian Bale may have played the lead in the most critically revered franchise of the period, and Robert Downey Jr. amassed the largest amount of personal fortune and fame in his sprawling role of Iron Man, there’s a chance neither would have been willing to take those roles if not for Jackman, who proved on a pioneering stage that playing a superhero could be less a cage and more a runway.


Before anyone else, and more than anyone else, Hugh Jackman made being a superhero seem like a blast. Even when his curmudgeonly character wasn’t having fun, Jackman sure seemed to be enjoying himself — and the world noticed. Jackman had been a Hollywood nobody before landing this leading role, an Aussie with only an “Oklahoma!” credit to his name, but from then, on nearly every one of the increasingly prevalent superhero productions would come with at least one star actor rumored to be attached.


Seemingly overnight, Marvel’s trove of treasured characters became among the most sought-after parts in the business. There was a new kind of movie star blueprint: play this part, agents could tell actors, and audiences will see you through the costume. Plus, you’ll make bank and can do whatever you like in the franchise’s off-years.


For nearly two decades, as other comic book superheroes ascended and descended cinema marquees, as franchises rose and fell and rose again, and characters were cast and recast and recast once more, Jackman’s Wolverine remained. Much in keeping for the long-living character, he outlasted generations of contemporaries.



Few actors have ever become more synonymous with the characters they played than Jackman as Wolverine.


To audiences, Jackman just became more and more, well, Logan throughout the years — better in the role, more familiar yet always fresh. He gave his character a world-weary composure and cutting sarcasm that effectively convinced audiences that this old fighter had had just about enough over his many decades. From the first film to the last, you believed that he wanted to hang it up, be left alone, and be allowed to keep his claws sheathed. We all knew he’d never be able, but that was the joy of it.


Whether it was throwing a clanging fist-on-fist punch in his introductory “X-Men” bar fight, unleashing his full-on berserker rage for the first time at the X-Mansion in “X2,” going through the heartbreak of having to put down/murder his psychotic ladyfriend in “X-Men: The Last Stand,” surviving the overwrought bomb of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” linking the old with the new with his brief but unforgettable “X-Men: First Class” cameo, completing three-quarters of a perfect Japanese adventure in “The Wolverine,” reconciling (or redoubling?) the crisis of multiple X-rosters with the time-bending “Days of Future Past,” honoring both Barry Windsor-Smith and the greatest action figure of the 1990s with his helmeted Weapon X sequence in the otherwise unwatchable “X-Men: Apocalypse,” or culminating it all with a profoundly satisfying and artful resolution in “Logan,” Jackman made his hero fun to watch.

Through cinematic highs and lows, the actor seemed to always find inventive ways to elevate the character. Performing in countless scenes with acting royalty Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, Jackman was never out of his depth. He made being a fan rewarding, too, by being a cheerful ambassador for and to the X-Men-loving audiences that first conferred him his star status, back when the idea of a movie star serving as a champion of the comics medium to the mainstream was a thing people chose to care about.



After playing the part for 17 years, Hugh Jackman has contributed as much to the Wolverine mythos as anyone.


Which brings me to something of a confession. I was 15 years old when that first “X-Men” movie hit theaters, and so eager was I to see my favorite brand of heroes take the big screen for the first time that during the run-up to its release, in the perfect storm of childlike glee and adolescent identity development, and as a private act of totemic ritual, I actually grew out my very first facial hair — (regrettable?) sideburns — to fashion myself after the world’s coolest mutant.


Here’s the thing: I grew up in a day when Wolverine was the undisputed biggest star in comics. Wolverine was who Marvel Comics editors slapped on the cover when sales needed a boost. Origin, powers, attitude — Logan had it all. And for his mystique, he had my undying loyalty. Tear out his Adamantium and turn him into a kitty with a bandanna? I’m there for it. Send him all around the world to fall in love with women whose dooms are thereby guaranteed? One hundred emoji percent in. Burn him all the way to bones just to watch him respawn? I’ll squirm, and keep reading.

A tortured, temperamental badass of depth, Wolverine wasn’t just cool — he was impossibly cool. Way too cool to be brought to life. And yet, for nearly two decades, that’s exactly what Hugh Jackman achieved.


Thank you, Hugh Jackman.


Posted by The Marvel Universe on Saturday, March 4, 2017


Now, after the release of the critical and commercial smash, “Logan,” Jackman is hanging up his claws, and he can do so proudly. If his second collaboration in the series with director David Mangold isn’t truly a perfect movie, it’s a perfect movie for that character and that performance. Logan’s last ride strikes a winning balance of creative ambition and restraint, and joins genre standard-bearers like “Iron Man” and “Dark Knight” by telling a tale that holds up as well as any of the character’s mythos, of any medium.

Jackman spent a career trying to do the part of Wolverine justice, and finally, a movie around him returned the favor. Outside of the remote chance that Fox and Marvel Studios decide to partner on a project allowing Jackman to play with the similarly experienced “Avengers” ensemble, there’s not much terrain left for the actor to explore. As such, his last “Snikt!” will always be his greatest.

Hugh Jackman is walking away from the part of Wolverine in rarified air, like a Hall of Fame athlete exiting the stage after a final championship performance. Despite the Western-inspired eulogy his progeny delivers in the closing moments of “Logan,” a look at the Hollywood superhero landscape proves there are many more guns left in the valley than when Jackman’s Wolverine first arrived on the scene. But that’s no surprise — they’re all following his lead.

[jo]

Ranking each of his Wolverine portrayal ( 9 all in all!)--

www.zimbio.com/Ranking+Every+Wolverine+Movie/articles/Kp16_0C84M2/Intro

10.
Hugh Jackman has been playing Wolverine in movies for 17 years now across nine films. Two appearances were brief cameos and most of the rest are lead roles, Wolvy being the coolest X-Man and all. Which were his best performances? We'll try to answer that question in the slides ahead.

Check out each frame from the link


Jo

[jo]

!7 years ago !!

[jo]

Reposting this excellent tribute from GQ --


www.gq.com/story/hugh-jackman-wolverine-best-superhero-performance-ever

Why Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine Is the Best Superhero Performance Ever
via 20th Century Fox

By Scott Meslow
March 6, 2017



After nine movies over 17 years, Hugh Jackman is hanging up his claws with the best X-Men movie ever made.
It didn’t make any sense to cast Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Since his 1974 debut in an issue of Incredible Hulk, Wolverine was essentially the human equivalent of his namesake animal: hairy, clawed, muscular, Canadian. Perhaps most strikingly, he was short: 5’3", according to the biography on Marvel’s official website.
So how did a 6’2" Aussie hunk like Hugh Jackman end up donning Wolverine’s claws? Like most unexpected but brilliant pieces of casting, it almost didn’t happen. In a 1995 feature suggesting the ideal actors who could star as the X-Men on the big screen, Wizard magazine proposed Misfits frontman Glenn Danzig, whose squat, 5’3" frame was a near-perfect match for the Wolverine fans had come to love over decades of X-Men comics. (Producers apparently were intrigued by this clever bit of fan-casting; in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, X-Men screenwriter David Hayter revealed that Danzig actually came in to read for the role.)


Even after the producers decided to target a more conventional Hollywood leading man to play Wolverine, Jackman was far from the first choice. Concept art for Wolverine was designed with Mel Gibson in mind. Director Bryan Singer wanted Russell Crowe for the role. Eventually, Dougray Scott—a similarly tall, similarly handsome actor who didn’t fit Wolverine’s comic-book mold—was officially cast but forced to drop out due to conflicts with his schedule playing the villain in Mission: Impossible 2. Only then was Jackman—a virtual unknown with recurring roles in a couple of Australian TV shows under his belt—offered the role. X-Men had already been in production for a month when Jackman began rehearsing for the complicated action choreography playing Wolverine would require.


From these troubled beginnings sprang the single longest tenure—and, I’d argue, single greatest tenure—for any actor playing a superhero on the big screen. You could make a case for Christopher Reeve’s Superman, which hasn’t been equalled—let alone exceeded—in three decades, or for Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, whose performance served as the launchpad for the whole MCU. But the former ended his run on a pair of disappointingly weak movies, and the latter has more movies to make before the actual scope of his performance can be judged. For now, Jackman’s sustained performance is the fullest and most satisfying arc of any superhero franchise in Hollywood history.


Back in 2000, X-Men fans who were skeptical about Jackman’s lack of physical resemblance to the comic-book Wolverine were quickly swayed by how perfectly he captured the essence of the comic-book Wolverine: a gruff killing machine with a mysterious past, a hair-trigger temper, and a cocktail of superpowers that rendered him virtually unstoppable. This guy was clearly the best at what he did—and what he did best wasn’t very nice. But Jackman was just as credible in Wolverine’s rarer moments of tenderness: his tragic relationship with Jean Grey, his loyalty to an old friend in The Wolverine, and his shepherding of Laura, the 11-year-old mutant to whom he serves as reluctant caretaker in Logan.


After the success of X-Men, Jackman reprised the role in two sequels, three prequels, and three spinoffs, culminating in this week’s Logan. He has proven versatile enough to headline his own movies, stand out among the stacked cast in the main franchise, and deliver the biggest laugh line in an entire movie in a brief cameo. This kind of staying power is unusual. In the 17 years that Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine on the big screen, we’ve seen two Batmans and three Spider-Mans—not to mention a whole new X-Men cast, with Jackman’s slow-aging Wolverine serving as the key piece of connective tissue.


Logan ultimately succeeds because it has the weight of that history behind it. The most potent scenes center on Logan’s relationship with Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who also dates back to the very first X-Men movie. Jackman’s abnormally long tenure in the role makes jumping from 2000’s X-Men to 2017’s Logan feel like the superheroic equivalent of jumping from Before Sunrise to Before Sunset—the rare blockbuster franchise that shows us a protagonist growing and changing over the course of many years.


But it’s not just longevity that makes Jackman’s performance so remarkable—it’s also consistency. Jackman has painstakingly maintained the eye-popping physique the character requires. He has made bad X-Men movies more watchable, good X-Men movies even better, and Logan—a great X-Men movie—something genuinely special. And his work ethic and utter lack of ego has ensured that Wolverine has held the X-Men franchise together even in its weakest moments. Jackman turned in a 20-second cameo in X-Men: First Class. He did voice work for several X-Men video games. That’s the kind of work that normally gets farmed out to a soundalike—unless the star is committed enough to the role to do it personally, as Jackman clearly was.


He has made bad X-Men movies more watchable, good X-Men movies better, and Logan—a great X-Men movie—something genuinely special.


All of this was a choice Jackman made, and continued making, as the X-Men franchise continued to grow and expand. And while Jackman’s unfailing commitment to Wolverine has certainly earned him a loyal following, it has also defined his career. It’s a tribute to Jackman’s range as an actor that playing Wolverine hasn’t left him hopelessly typecast. Between X-Men movies, Jackman hosted the Oscars, hosted the Tonys, won a Tony, and turned in terrific performances in movies like The Prestige, Prisoners, and Les Misérables. (The latter netted him his only Oscar nomination to date.) But professionally, X-Men has always been Jackman’s primary ongoing concern—and for a working actor, making nine X-Men movies means not making at least nine non–X-Men movies.


Which is why it’s such a relief that Logan serves as both a final and a fitting grace note for an actor, a character, and a performance that genuinely deserves one. Part of the reason Logan feels so much like the 1992 Best Picture winner, Unforgiven, is that it serves the same basic function for Jackman as Unforgiven served for Clint Eastwood. It’s the exclamation point at the end of a long string of performances—simultaneously the culmination of everything that came before it and a commentary on everything that came before it.


Today, most superheroes are too lucrative to be retired for long. Christopher Nolan got to give his Batman a definitive ending, but it was just a few years later that Warner Bros. pulled the character out of retirement for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Wolverine will undoubtedly arrive on the big screen again someday—but right now, it's impossible to imagine another actor who could erase Jackman's Wolverine from your memory. On the strength of Jackman’s performance, Wolverine became the breakout X-Men character. But in his final appearance, Jackman does the X-Men one last favor: leaving the franchise in the best shape it’s ever been in, even without him.

Hope Hugh Jackman had a chance to read this impressive tribute!


Jo

[jo]

Lovely sentiment -- hope Hugh has a chance to see all these messages of thanks!