It's been clear for a while now that Logan would be a very different sort of movie to past instalments in the X-Men franchise, but in a new interview with Digital Spy, Hugh Jackman has outright stated that it takes places in a different universe. It's worth noting that the Old Man Logan comic book also took place in an alternate future, so perhaps that's also the case with this highly anticipated release.
"When you see the full movie you'll understand," the actor explained. "Not only is it different in terms of timeline and tone, it's a slightly different universe. It's actually a different paradigm and that will become clear." That probably explains why we have a totally new version of Caliban decades after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, but why did he and James Mangold head down this route?
"I said this was my last one and they said make the movie you want to make," Jackman said, referring to Fox. "And so Jim and I had this blank canvas and we wanted to make something really different. Definitely tonally different, I kept thinking The Wrestler, Unforgiven. It's a stand alone movie in many ways. It's not really beholden to time lines and story lines in the other movies. Obviously Patrick Stewart was in there so we have some crossover but it feels very different and very fresh."
"[Following the timelines] becomes a chess game that you try to serve, which actually doesn't help to tell a story and it's sort of been a bit all over the place. I'm not critical of it – X-Men was the first movie really in comic book, no one thought there'd be another and there were different directors different off shoots." So, in other words, the movies have become such a mess that Logan is going to just stand on its own rather than attempting to find a place in the convoluted X-Men Universe.
That's understandable, especially as it now means future X-Men movies won't have to build up to the point where the heroes seemingly all died, but does that mean there's another Wolverine out there still alive and kicking? Will we never see a grown up X-23, and if we do, will she have a totally different origin story to Logan? Who knows at this stage, but I'm already getting a headache thinking about it.