Bryan Singer, who is returning to the X-fold after bailing on X-Men: Last Stand during production, has hinted that should this year’s franchise reboot prove successful, we could be seeing the return of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine for Second Class.
“I think there would definitely be room. I think it would be a very exciting thing. This universe has to establish itself first, but that would be a very interesting and fun thing.”
As for the character’s absence from X-Men: First Class – the only X-film to not feature the character thus far – Singer seems to have consoled himself for now.
“It’s a completely different film. Xavier and Magneto are important characters as well. It’s just a different X-Men film. I obviously love the character, but you can’t not do it just because he’s not in it.”
It baffles me that the two time X-director even has to say such a thing out loud. I’m sorry, but as a Wolverine hater (yeah, they do exist) it irks me that we can’t even go one movie without name dropping Jackman.
As Singer says, Xavier and Magneto are important characters too, as are the bajillion other X-Men who have been imported for the various instalments.
Boasting an X-Men Origins spin off and already in the throws of production on a sequel (despite the first instalment’s deservedly poor reception), there really is no need to shoe-horn Wolverine into a franchise that for all intents and purposes pre-dates his adamantium claws. How many narrative knots are the studio willing to tie themselves in over bringing back popular and maltreated characters?
Should the series, as has been suggested, jump a decade or so between films, it might be nice to see the impact of the intervening years on the stalwart ensemble Matthew Vaughn has aligned for his take on the superhero team, without yet more focus being heaped on a character that wasn’t all that interesting the first four times around.
