The new issue of Empire arrives on Thursday, and as usual comes packed with a heaving bounty of film-related treasures. It's hard to pick a highlight, but leading up this month’s Preview section is this rather striking image of Hugh Jackman as iconic X-Man Wolverine, carrying the girl known as Laura/X-23 (Dafne Keane) during Wolverine's swansong movie Logan. Click here to enlarge.
This is a very different Wolverine to the one we’re used to: greying, bearded, covered in scars...after nine films and 17 years in the role, Jackman is clearly not interested in going out with a whimper. Director James Mangold told us that he hoped to focus on the fast-healing mutant’s vulnerable side. “The goal was to make something human,” says Mangold. “We made an effort to scale back on the gloss and greenscreen.”
This chimes with what we saw from page 2 of Logan’s script, in which Mangold wrote: “if you’re on the make for a hyper choreographed, gravity defying, city-block destroying CG fuckathon, this ain’t your movie.”
Jackman agrees with the sentiment. "It's essential you see this as the story of a man who is struggling with mortality and legacy," the actor tells us, "and whether the world has been better off with him or without him."
For more on Logan, including another exclusive on-set image of Jackman and Patrick Stewart, be sure to pick up a copy of Empire, on sale from Thursday 24 November.
Subscribers will already have started receiving their copies, of course. Fancy getting the world’s biggest movie magazine before everybody else, with exclusive covers to boot? You’ll want to subscribe to Empire.
• [Watch the emotional first trailer for Logan. ](http://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/logan-watch-emotional-first-trailer/
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• Director James Mangold breaks down the first Logan trailer.
• Where is Wolverine on our list of the 50 greatest comic book characters?