Here’s a sign that Darren Aronofsky’s The Wolverine – AKA, Fox’s second solo Wolverine movie, spinning out of the first three X-Men movies – will probably have a difficult but fascinating birthing process, even if the finished product doesn’t quite work: The director has claimed that it will have “nothing to do” with either X-Men Origins: Wolverine or any other X-Men movie.
Talking to David Poland, Aronofsky says that he feels that he’s definitely in the right place at the right time for the gig: “I definitely feel like I’m being hired because of who I am, I’m not being hired to turn into someone… I’m being hired to do what I do… I don’t know if [Fox Studios chairman Tom Rothman] definitely knows what he’s bought, but we’re definitely going to make something great, you know, but it will be very different. You know, that’s what I do.” More worryingly for studio execs, he then goes on to say
Take off the number 2 [from the title]. It has nothing to do with that. It’s a standalone piece that has nothing to do with anything in the whole franchise or that entire universe.
Now, let’s be serious for a second: How likely is it that Fox will really let this movie be entirely divorced from the entire X-Men franchise, considering how desperately the first Wolverine movie tried to work in as many easter eggs and character cameos as possible? It’s one thing to want to make a good superhero franchise movie that doesn’t rely on the franchise, but to declare that your movie has nothing to do with the franchise at all? That’s just asking for trouble…
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