Original subtitles

This is Jim Mangold, director of The Wolverine.

And I'm gonna just be talking to you about details and observations,

and memories of making the film as it plays.

I think since we're gonna begin with a major action sequence,

I'm gonna start talking about that sequence in Nagasaki,

and then kind of back up as the action slows down a bit,

and talk about some of the bigger thematic goals I had for the picture.

But right off, one of the things we're doing in the movie,

in the frames to come, is setting up Japan.

And one of the things I wanted to set up about Japan was

more than just the stereotype of Japan being

bright lights and Jumbotrons and neon and urbane,

but also the beauty, the tranquility, the Zen, the kind of, um...

Another kind of beauty that exists both in Japan and in Japanese film.

We are, of course, starting the film at the end of World War Il,

at a POW camp in Nagasaki that you're seeing right here.

We built this, actually, in Australia.

The actual camp that we're shooting on here.

The point was to give some kind of frame of reference

for both Logan's relationship to Japan,

which, of course, we show him here as a prisoner in his own special tank,

and also I think I wanted very much when we constructed this scene,

Scott Frank and Mark Bomback and I,

to set in motion the audience thinking a little as well about

the kinds of disasters that Japan itself has recovered from.

I don't think any country in the world

has had such a lion's share of nuclear holocaust,

both recently and in the past.

And the resilience of the people,

and their ability to keep going despite the circumstances

is something I wanted the film to touch upon very much.

Already as we've introduced Logan here,

we've also, in a shot a few seconds ago, introduced his bone claws,

which was another way for those who know anything about Wolverine

of setting in place where we are in his own existence,

in his own timeline.

That is before he was tampered with.

This is still when he's just a pure mutant

without the influence of science

and interference of Adamantium.

You're better off down here.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

I'd hurry if I were you.

MANGOLD: The point here also,

and I hope to God you're listening to this after watching the film,

because there will be spoilers,

is also I wanted to set up Yashida's character,

old man Yashida, here as a young man.

And there's several different things we're setting up about him in this sequence.

One, he's kind to Logan. Compassionate.

Two, he very much doesn't want to die.

Even as the other soldiers with him here are committing hara-kiri

and are taking themselves out in the moments before the bomb drops,

he hesitates.

And this, of course, remains true to him to the end of the film.

He's a man that despite duty, despite tradition,

does not want to die.

(GASPS)

(HIGH-PITCHED WHINING)

MANGOLD: It was our choice to play this explosion

and the bombing of Nagasaki

as seen in a way from a sterile distance.

I thought that in many ways,

given action films can obliterate you with action sometimes,

that the sense of loss of a city

would be even more demonstrable from across the bay.

(YASHIDA SHOUTS)

Stay down!

MANGOLD: Once we're in the tunnel,

we're shooting on a soundstage in Australia as well.

We built a giant tube and lit it with incredible amounts of light from the top.

So this whole first sequence is actually a fusion of

plates and ocean footage we shot in Japan,

of a POW camp we built on the ocean side in Sydney,

and then in this case, a set we built on the stages at Fox Australia.

(GRUNTING)

(GROANS LOUDLY)

MANGOLD: Another point we're making here

that's very important for the story to come,

as well as just being intense in the moment,

is young Yashida witnessing Logan's healing power.

For those somehow,

who might be watching this film and have never seen an X-Men film,

it's just setting the table for what his powers are.

But it was also a chance to show young Yashida witnessing them himself,

because that is gonna play such an important role

in his agenda in the future.

That far back?

One of the reasons we came out of that memory

into this second memory with Jean Grey was that

we felt we had a lot of work to do very fast in the beginning of the film

to set up where we are in the X-Men and Wolverine timeline,

and also to try and account for why Logan,

as he is in the original Claremont/Miller comic,

is living out in the Yukon in isolation.

And one of the things that to me that added up with

was constructing some way that we can perceive Logan as a kind of haunted man.

Both haunted here by the loves he's lost,

in this case, a woman he killed with his own claws,

and also haunted by the loss of the X-Men and the Professor.

Everyone who he's ever loved and been close to.

Any mentor he's ever had.

And this is the third stopping point for the film.

And this is where we actually get on what I'd call the "A" track of the story,

which is the present of Logan living in the Yukon

in a kind of alienated, isolated state.

The first two scenes were, in some ways,

both touching upon different corners of his own tortured existence.

One, his past,

where he's witnessing mankind's incredible cruelty to itself

and existing, trying to help, trying to mitigate, save one person's life,

but also unable to do much about the general cruelty of our existence.

And then the second is his own sense of loss,

with his intimacies

and his connections that he so hesitantly makes

and then get obliterated.

One of the things, when I first sat down to work on this,

after reading the Claremont/Miller saga again,

which I had been a fan of for years,

and also the existing script work and development work on the script,

was I wrote on the back of all the materials,

"Anyone I love will die."

And I felt that those five words somehow captured

the condition I wanted to find Logan in.

That he was living under the belief

that anyone he connected to, anyone he liked, anyone he loved,

would be cursed.

The X-Men are gone. Jean is gone.

His wife is gone. The Professor is gone.

And I think that the Logan we wanted to find here was a man who,

almost as if he is a vampire or a cursed werewolf of some kind,

has withdrawn from humanity

and only interfaces with people when he absolutely has to.

But it isn't only out of hatred, but it's also out of love.

In a way that he feels that anyone he touches will somehow be destroyed.

Whack all of that on store credit. Thanks, honey.

MANGOLD: So what we're setting up with this existence,

but also you can't somehow take away from Logan

his own sense of right and wrong, his own sense of values.

So in many ways, these sequences also show,

despite the fact that he's separated himself from the world, he still cares.

And when he sees idiots or he sees cruelty,

he reacts to it with the same kind of power that he always has.

He just is hesitant to take action right now.

Not anymore.

MANGOLD: The sequence I was talking through,

about when I first came on the script was

one establishing this bear in the woods.

The bear exists in a very combative way in the original saga by Claremont/Miller.

But one of the things we felt along the lines of

making this about a character who believes anyone he touches is cursed

was giving him a very masculine,

and hesitant, but nonetheless a relationship with a creature in the woods.

Something almost similar to him.

Of course, grizzlies have claws.

And grizzlies exist away from everyone.

And so having established that

him and this particular grizzly exist in this Yukon woods

with an uneasy détente between them

was a way to set up that once again this equation is true.

He had affection for the bear. He coexisted with the bear.

He had a kind of game he played with the bear on the trees.

Each of them carving their claw marks into the trees.

And of course the bear ends up somehow fallen.

And once again, it falls upon Logan, as it has so many times in the past,

to put someone he loves down.

And that certainly is a repeat of what we already saw him do

in the memory with Jean Grey

and what we saw him do in the third X-Men film to Jean Grey.

(ROARING)

MANGOLD: We were trying very hard,

both in script and the way we're shooting it,

to set up for Logan a kind of pain.

And that we thought that everything that was gonna come ahead for him in Japan

would be all the better, the darker, a place we could put him in.

So one of the things that Hugh Jackman and I talked about a lot

was a very minimalistic performance.

I spoke with him a lot about films I admired.

Among them Outlaw Josey Wales.

And finding this kind of energy,

which was far less verbal than Logan had been in other films.

A little less quippy. And a little more very simple dialogue.

And intense, dark energy coming out of him.

And I think Hugh really reached very deep.

And this is a great example, this scene,

of him kind of establishing this new vibe of Logan.

A more dangerous, less cute Logan. No cigar chomping here.

(GROANS)

It's Logan.

And that's a poison broadhead, which, last I heard, was illegal.

(GLASS SHATTERING)

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

MANGOLD: We shot this bar scene in the first three days of production.

And so it's really fun to watch,

because we went on a long journey after this.

Shot in a small bar in downtown Sydney.

One of the things that this scene does is

I think we've now set up Logan, his predicament, his pain,

his world, but we've also set up Japan.

So there's a kind of question.

What does that opening sequence have to do with this loner,

this violent loner living in the woods?

And the arrival of Yukio, as played by Rila Fukushima,

in a few moments closes the circle of what this opening was and how it ties into this.

And in many ways I felt that this was a scene where

she was giving him a ticket out.

That whatever the skipping record of his existence was in the Yukon,

she's giving him a chance to change things up.

Again we're playing with the presence of violence within him.

And his hesitation to use it. But this guy has pushed him too far.

But it's ultimately Yukio who stops him.

This has several roles.

One is to offer Rila a really wonderful introduction.

And the other is for us to keep saving Logan's violence

and unleashing it later in the film and teasing with it, frankly.

Three of them, a week from now in the same truck.

(GRUNTS)

(COUGHING)

This sword is hundreds of years old

and was named Danzan by the first samurai who used it.

Danzan means "separator" in Japanese.

The ideal weapon for separating head and limb from body.

MANGOLD: Rila Fukushima is an actress who I met in my travels around the globe,

casting the Japanese roles in this picture.

She really hadn't been in a film before

and had both modeled and acted in short films,

but had never really done anything like this.

An amazing young woman. An amazing-looking young woman.

And a great spirit, which you see immediately.

I mean, that was my goal and my task from the moment I met her,

was to find a way to get her unique spirit, which is both tough as nails

and charming and feminine at the same time, onto the screen.

Her cool is not a put-on. She's a very cool young lady.

Who are you?

Me? I'm Yukio.

And?

MANGOLD: After I first got images and a copy of

a reading of her doing that exact scene,

I had said,

even though she hadn't been cast yet.

I hadn't even met her yet.

I was just going by the images, and I just felt really strongly

this was the person who was gonna take the role.

You can't underestimate the kind of job it is for an actor

who no one's ever seen going up against an iconic actor

in the role that defines his entire career.

It's a big deal.

And it takes a lot of power for the visiting actor

to come into the scene and hold their own

and have a presence which doesn't get overwhelmed by Logan in this case.

What I love in this movie are these incongruities.

The mysteriousness of taking Logan into a world in which

there aren't other movie stars.

So that Logan, played by a movie star,

gets dropped into a universe in which he's the only recognizable face.

I think that so often movies get populated with familiar faces

that they actually never become real to us.

They just become a kind of collection of famous people doing lines.

I don't think that's the case here.

I think that it's for...

For audiences I think one of the treats of this film, and certainly for me,

was that it felt like a very original world to us, with very new faces.

We're, of course, establishing a couple things about Yukio here.

One is that she can see through Logan's baloney.

She can see through him.

She's not scared of him.

She kind of tolerates his temper, but also can face him head-on.

An honorable death.

An end to your pain.

Who says I'm in pain?

A man who has nightmares every night of his life is in pain.

MANGOLD: The smile that Rila offers him after he agrees to stay

is the kind of thing that's indescribable in a script

and indescribable in any way.

It's the kind of thing that a person like me, a film director, is always after,

which is that magical thing.

The way she beckons him. The way he agrees.

And then the beauty and the release of the kindness you see in her face right here.

Okay.

And his suspicion, which is beautiful.

He doesn't even trust it when he sees it.

Fifteen hours. Depending on the wind.

Fifteen hours?

MANGOLD: Yukio, of course, was also a character

in the original Claremont/Miller comic.

We gave her some additional attributes.

One of them was the idea that she sees death.

She can't see much when she looks at a person,

but she knows how you're going to die.

And we felt that that offered a kind of really unique ability

to play with both the mysteries of the plot ahead

and also tease us with one very important theme

that I felt ran through the story and I wanted to take further and further.

Which is that if you have a story about a god, an immortal, Logan,

who essentially wants to withdraw from the world,

which is basically dying,

but he can't die because he heals from almost anything,

and then you have a villain in what young Yashida here will become,

who is so fascinated and taken with Logan's immortality

that he wants to live forever.

So now you have two very different agendas

around the same idea, which is life.

Then you have another character, Yukio, who sees death.

Who sees death around corners.

So, again, the idea of death, the finality of death,

escape from death, pursuit of death.

And when Logan arrives in Japan he'll also meet Mariko,

who is a young woman, not an immortal,

but who is very much wishing her life would be over.

So a lot of people dealing with their existence

and whether they want to stay on this earth

and what it means and when they'll leave.

You said you knew the future of those assholes in the bar.

I know they are going to die.

We are all going to die.

You said they would die in the same truck, in a week.

If you're right, that's quite a talent.

We don't all have claws.

(SIGHS)

So, do I die on this plane?

No.

Not on this plane.

MANGOLD: The incongruities of Wolverine, of Logan's character,

are some of the most delicious parts about constructing a story

and making a film, directing a film, about him.

The aspect that he's kind of a drinker, yet kind of incredibly brawny and healthy,

that he's frightened of flying, that he has anxieties

and he doesn't really want to meet new people or engage in social situations,

yet is incredibly able to handle almost anything.

This is a scene... I mean, we've had a couple.

We had one earlier inside the tunnel, but this is another scene

that was not in the original theatrical version of the film,

where Yukio is setting up a little more about old man Yashida,

his business, his past,

and how much he's tied into the Japanese consciousness.

Also a great moment here.

Wow. Did they give you a little card to memorize?

I owe Master Yashida my life.

Don't be a dick.

MANGOLD: Very often when you're lifting scenes from a film,

and this is the hardest thing sometimes to explain,

but it's not really about whether the scene itself works,

but it's about the whole entity and the flow of the film.

About whether you feel like any serving or the appetizer or the meal, the dessert,

something's taking too long.

It's a different thing than saying the scene didn't work.

It's more saying that you're kind of...

You're creating a kind of flow for an audience.

And sometimes that flow can be challenging,

even though the scenes themselves are excellent.

And I think, in many cases,

that's gonna be true of the additional scenes you see here.

It's about 12 minutes in this extended cut that we took out of the film.

I like all the scenes.

The reality was just, in a theatrical context,

we felt that some of them might be too

trying a length to make a two-and-a-half-hour film.

Because in many ways, the film was intimate.

And we didn't know whether the length would bear that kind of...

Whether the audience could bear that kind of length.

Having said that, I'm really glad that those of you watching,

who I would assume if you're listening to my voice

are pretty die-hard X-Men or Wolverine fans

or filmmaking or cinema fans, at least,

will be interested to see this material, as all the actors are wonderful

and there's, I think, some terrific performance,

writing, staging inside them.

He's all right.

MANGOLD: Here, of course, we're setting up Hiro Sanada,

who's old man Yashida's son playing with the kendo.

Rehearsing with kendo. With a sparring partner.

For those of you who don't know,

Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays the role of Shingen,

is one of the best-known action heroes and heroes in Japanese cinema.

And we were really honored to have him join us on the film.

Now we're introducing two other characters.

One, Mariko, is played by Tao Okamoto.

And old man Yashida, who we've met only as a young man in Nagasaki.

This was Tao's first day.

Amazing and beautiful introduction.

Again, it's amazing what an actress can do without a word.

Tao Okamoto is also a model.

Has worked around the world for years

as a very successful Japanese model.

Been involved in many gigantic campaigns.

But had not really acted much since high school.

And, again, in the travels around the world and in reading many people,

there was something really unique about her,

beyond the obvious beauty.

But was also a kind of hauntedness in her.

It seemed to me that for Logan to connect

and start to have feelings for a woman again,

there would have to be a component of darkness in her

that somehow met the darkness in him and embraced it.

She couldn't just be cheerful or plucky.

She'd also have to be, in a way, another character with a death wish.

Really?

(WOMEN SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)

All right.

MANGOLD: This was the first sequence where Hugh really unveils

the full intensity of the body work he was doing,

working out on this film.

I mean, he's in incredible shape.

And that doesn't come easy.

And everyone's conscious of it as you're making the film.

He is doing sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, weights, all the time, every minute.

When he's not eating protein, he is lifting and exercising.

Stretching and doing it again.

We introduced a new haircut for Wolverine here,

and used the opportunity of the ladies in the bathhouse

trimming him up to introduce a new look.

I'd always felt, honestly, that Logan looked kind of wigged.

Wigged up. In a wig, that is, in the earlier films.

And felt that the hair had gotten a little dated.

Looked, as I'd say to crew members, like Flock of Seagulls,

the old '80s rock group.

And I wanted it to be his own hair.

I wanted it to be coming out of his own head.

And I wanted whatever little wave we put in

as a tip to the Wolverine wave in his hair to be subtle and a little more bad-ass.

In keeping with the strategy of making Logan a little less humorous

and a little more intense and darker.

A little more world-weary.

Oh, forget the etiquette. I'm past such precautions.

(EXHALES)

For many years I have wanted to thank...

MANGOLD: This, what now proceeds between Logan and old man Yashida,

is one of the most pivotal scenes in the film.

Hal, who's playing old man Yashida, is a very powerful actor who I met in Italy.

Actually, he flew from Italy to London to meet me. He lives in Rome.

An amazing actor.

And has a kind of power that we needed, even as a dying old man.

The power we needed to both establish him as a kind of patriarch

and a man who had built an empire,

but also the power to go up against Logan later in the picture.

This scene, rather late in the movie

because we've done a lot of drama up to this point,

kind of sets the table for the journey to come.

We set up the idea, how in the north, in the mountains,

where Yashida was born, there exists a legend of the Black Clan.

And it's where he built a factory where he does a lot of his research.

We also set up, just through the use of this pin bed,

which is an idea that François Audouy and myself came up with.

We were trying to think of some unusual way to speak to

the high-tech of the Yashida world.

And honestly, my mind kept traveling to

children's museums I've been to with my kids

where they have those things you push your hands on

and make a shape in a bed of nails.

You can push and get a relief of your face or your hands.

And we kept having this idea of,

what would happen if there was some kind of intelligent bed

made up of these beautiful rounded rods

that would somehow support you in your weakness and in your illness?

And this was a lot of effects work,

both physical effects and digital effects to pull this off.

But I think it makes a very subtle statement about Yashida and his world.

And also about the modernism and uniqueness of the world we've entered.

Here, of course, Yashida is also getting straight to the heart of the matter.

You have struggled long enough, Logan.

I'm confused.

I came here to say goodbye to a man I once knew.

I am the same man.

I was not ready to die then.

I am not ready to die now.

But you are...

aren't you?

MANGOLD: "But you do." The point is that

Yashida knows that this is a man who's been looking for a way out of living.

And he's offering him a simple trade, which is to say that,

"Give me your life force, give me your healing,

"and you can have what you want.

"You want to die, then die. Let me live."

And in many ways he's pinning Logan.

Not only is he making a fairly nefarious bargain,

but he's also pinning Logan on his own bullshit,

which is just that if Logan's living like a man who wants to die,

what happens when you actually offer him a way out?

Well, he's running away.

So to me, what that says is despite his isolation, despite his anger,

he doesn't want to go.

He's still got life force in him.

She must be protected.

You don't want what I've got.

(MONITOR CONTINUES BEEPING RAPIDLY)

Kuzuri.

Kuzuri!

MANGOLD: There is a glimpse of Svetlana Khodchenkova in that scene,

playing Viper, or Dr. Green, as we call her at that point.

Very beautiful Russian actress who was in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,

who we brought in, and added a really unique flavor, I think, to the role.

This is a scene that was cut from the film.

This private dressing room scene between Shingen and Mariko,

where she's trying to warn him.

She needs to speak to her father,

because of what her grandfather has already told her in his hospital room.

We won't find out what the grandfather has told her till much later in the film.

But clearly she's trying to stop her father from walking in

and humiliating himself in front of him.

Because what he's about to do is to tell his son, Shingen,

that he's not giving him his company.

And in fact is giving it to his granddaughter, Mariko.

(SHINGEN AND MARIKO ARGUING IN JAPANESE)

MANGOLD: So here's another moment where the darkness

and the sorrow of Mariko's life

meets the darkness and sorrow of Logan's life.

Again, staged on this remarkable set

our production designer, François Audouy, built in Sydney.

Entire house on a soundstage.

(MEN SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)

(GASPING)

Careful, careful. It's slippery out here.

Let go.

(PANTING)

MANGOLD: Mariko tries to throw herself off a cliff, and Logan stops her.

And so it is that two characters looking for a way out of their own lives

have met each other for the first time.

And Logan seems somehow curious about her.

Affected by her.

He just wanted to say goodbye, huh?

You two grew up together.

Yes.

MANGOLD: In many ways...

But you're not her sister.

MANGOLD: Because I wanted to make a film

that did not become just a carbon copy of the films before,

and also because the original Claremont/Miller comic

lived in the world of Logan's romance with Mariko.

And also his connections with other significant female characters,

Yukio and Viper,

were both very present in Claremont/Miller.

I wanted to make a film about Logan and women.

I thought it would be more interesting.

I thought it would also be more adult.

Because Logan has a weakness for women. He also relates well to women.

They call him on his crap.

But they also interest him,

in ways that men, I think, generally annoy him.

Coming up is a scene that was not in the film,

of Hiroyuki Sanada being summoned in to see his father.

This was what Mariko was trying to stop him from doing.

And as the scene reveals,

the scene is nothing but disappointing for Shingen.

As he has been eagerly anticipating taking over the company at this point

and getting handed the reins when his father passes.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

There is no easy way to say this.

But then, it's never been easy for us, has it?

I have tried, father.

You've done the best you can.

MANGOLD: We decided to change the scene into English at this point

when the lawyer puts down the tape recorder.

It was kind of an excuse to allow the scene to stop existing in subtitles at this point.

But it also was predicated on this idea that

when people are speaking in legal terms, which he was,

he's publicly, in front of lawyers and on a recording,

taking away his son's inheritance,

that English might be spoken

and that it might, both, communicate to western audiences,

but also reveal the calculated nature of Yashida's plan here.

I'm sorry if I have disappointed you...

Let's not insult one another.

You are not the man to lead Yashida.

You cannot bring in someone from the outside.

In that, you are correct.

MANGOLD: Of course, here, Yashida is teasing

the idea that he's giving it all to Mariko.

Because, of course, Shingen says,

"You can't let someone from the outside take over our company."

And Yashida says, "In that, you are correct."

Of course, he's giving it to Shingen's daughter

and skipping over his own son.

(SPEAKING IN JAPANESE)

That will never happen.

(HEART MONITOR BEEPING RAPIDLY)

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

MANGOLD: I'm not sure if many people noticed

the green steam coming off the cup.

But the idea here is that, Logan's been slipped a mickey by Viper.

How old are you?

JEAN GREY: Interesting offer.

MANGOLD: Here we kind of... Not kind of. Here we bring back Jean Grey,

and are establishing a kind of ongoing dialogue he's having with her.

It's very important to me because

one of the challenges in the film when you have an isolated character

or a character who is hesitant to make connections is

it's hard to find out what they're thinking.

It's hard to know what they're thinking.

Because either they're gonna narrate in voiceover,

or they're gonna talk to themselves.

Or in our case, we created an imaginary foil or a kind of haunting

whom he could communicate with.

(SHOUTS)

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

- (WOMAN SOBBING) - (FOOTSTEPS RETREATING)

MANGOLD: With this scene with him, dreaming or did it really happen?

Where Viper blows something down his throat,

he wakes up, and old man Yashida is gone.

This closes a pretty major league opening act of the film,

in which a lot of characters and plot has been set up.

And the old man's death takes us into the next phase of the film,

which is, of course, an adventure.

This is our first real glimpse of Tokyo and Japan in the daytime

since the very beginning of the film.

We shot this in the center of Tokyo at one of their most famous temples

that is directly below the Tokyo Tower, which you'll see.

It's a kind of red Eiffel Tower-looking structure

directly behind the temple.

These days were 110 degrees Fahrenheit

with outrageous humidity.

The idea that our actors don't look drenched with sweat

is as much a tribute to them as to our makeup, costume, and crew,

who were working so hard to keep everyone cool.

Those were brutal days in the summertime in Japan.

This is our first glimpse of Harada.

Harada is a kind of mysterious character who also should remind us of the ninjas

who we saw illustrated on the painting in old man Yashida's hospital room.

Again, we're building a large web.

A large web of setup between characters.

Who are these people? How are they connected?

How does Harada know Viper?

Why is Viper helping old man Yashida?

Who are these people, and what is their agenda?

In many ways the film is gonna spend a lot of time trying to unwind that.

Who's that? With Mariko.

MANGOLD: The structure for the film that we landed upon was,

in essence, a mystery.

Most action pictures and summer tent-pole movies

operate on a much more direct sense of who's bad and who's good.

Lex Luthor or whoever is bad.

And Superman, Iron Man, whoever, will stop the baddie.

In our case, I didn't want to make that film.

I feel like that film gets made a lot.

I really wanted to see an iconic superhero

in a more ambiguous and darker environment,

in which one cannot be sure who's good and who's bad.

Tell me, why do you think he sent our little Yukio to fetch you?

To say goodbye.

And now you have.

Time for you to go back to your cave.

MANGOLD: Some of my favorite sequences to direct

are about the connections between people's eyes.

And in many ways this,

the opening of this burial sequence is, to me,

a lovely opportunity where I put a lot of time and detail into shooting.

It's a lot of setups of glances between characters.

Shingen, Mariko, Yukio, Logan, of course.

All watching each other. All trying to figure each other out.

Let's not leave out Svetlana back there.

Each one of these is a setup. Each one of these is a cut.

Each one of these has a kind of power...

Harada watching from the rooftop.

Of creating what I think of as a kind of intricate web.

A web that exists in cinematic terms for me

as the kind of connections between people's eyes.

One thing to address here, right before the action explodes,

is another interesting thing I set out to do with this film,

which is to make a film that takes place in Japan,

a western film, you know, which is 20th Century Fox,

and I am a western movie director making a film in Japan

with mainly Japanese cast.

But in this case, unlike films,

many American films of the past, even recent past,

I didn't want to make a film in which we go to a foreign country,

and everyone speaks English.

It seemed really important to me, and I felt audiences were ready for a film

in which characters speak in their native language, as they would.

Many Japanese speak English, at least in a rudimentary way.

So some interactions with Logan can happen that way.

But I love the idea of him in a world in which language was of secondary value.

(SHOUTS IN JAPANESE)

(SHOUTING CONTINUES)

(YELLS)

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

(EXHALES)

(YELLS)

- Logan! - (GUNFIRE)

MANGOLD: And again, thematically, here we introduce a very interesting idea,

which is if you have a hero who's been looking for a way out,

a way to end his immortality,

and suddenly he finds himself feeling what it's like to be like the rest of us,

when you get shot, you get shot, it hurts, and the hole doesn't close up miraculously.

I'd say eight-tenths of what you see Yukio doing here,

including all these shots, there's not face replacements here.

That's her.

One of the surprises that I was not ready for when we cast Rila was

what an incredible physical fighter she was.

And how talented she would be.

Once she entered our training rooms with our stunt coordinator

and second unit director, Dave Leitch, and his great team,

once they all started working with her and the other actors,

it was clear that Rila was incredibly talented

and we could go very far with her.

(SCREAMS)

(GROANS)

MANGOLD: Again, the idea, the intrigue

between Viper observing and watching this loss of healing in Logan's case

was really important.

And it's really important to me that when action happens in a film,

that it not just be physicality and spectacle,

but that the story doesn't stop.

So that's why for me it's very important to

try and plant plot points and turnabouts within the action.

So that it feels not like a film where the drama starts

and suddenly there's a lot of loud noise,

and then the noise ends and it's back to drama,

but that the two are interspersed and interleaved in some way.

This sequence was shot

in a Chinese garden that exists in the heart of Sydney.

And again, was a very elaborate sequence, both A unit and B unit involved.

But, of course, how much second unit can you do in a movie

in which every other shot involves Hugh Jackman,

and he can't be in two places at the same time?

So a lot of these sequences were shot by myself,

with the help of Dave Leitch.

But we needed, of course, Hugh there.

So it was the A unit of production shooting them.

One of my favorite gags here, with the pole through the gun.

Yukio!

Mariko!

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

MANGOLD: This was a very hard sequence to have

a fighter as great as Hiroyuki Sanada in it.

A fight this great, this intense with Hiroyuki Sanada in it,

but not allowing him because his character wouldn't,

to engage in the battle.

(METAL CLANGING)

Once again, we're back in Tokyo, shooting in Tokyo here,

once we ran out of the temple and we were on the streets.

And will be for the next several minutes as they're running around on the streets.

It's not easy shooting in Japan.

The people are lovely. The country is lovely. They love cinema.

But it's more a factor that the government...

There is no kind of film commission to make it easier to close streets

or to find places to shoot.

So in many ways when we were shooting in Tokyo,

we, literally, just stole shots and did it, as they say, guerrilla-style,

which is what this sequence is built on.

Many shots you see of Hugh and Tao Okamoto running on the streets,

and others here were actually stolen in Japan.

Shotjust... I would literally have a van with Hugh and Tao inside,

and I'd find a street corner that looked good, and they'd run out,

and run as fast as they could through regular folks on the streets.

And these were our shots.

People would react to someone falling.

This just shot... Jumped out of a van and shot.

Those were all regular folks. This, too, in Japan.

This, too.

These are two stuntmen running down a regular street

and falling on the ground as other people look at them.

Again, not extras, these are just regular folks in Japan.

Stolen footage.

Literally, landing like you would if we had an HD camera

and were shooting it as student filmmakers.

(GROANS)

(YELLING)

MANGOLD: More stuff on the streets.

From the moment they enter the pachinko parlor in a second,

I'm actually shooting this at 2:30 a.m. in the middle of the night,

and we're just blasting light in the windows to make it look...

Not this shot. I did this at dawn.

(GROANS)

But from this point on, it is, night for day.

That is, you cannot close a pachinko parlor.

No pachinko parlor in Tokyo will close itself,

because there's so much money being made.

Every one of those machines is having dollars dropped in it every three seconds.

So it's very hard to find enough cash to buy any pachinko parlor

out of shooting there, unless it's while they're closed in the middle of the night,

which is when we shot there. Even though this is a day scene.

So then this was the last shot I did at dawn,

where they ran out into dawn's light.

It's probably 5:00, 6:00 in the morning at this moment.

We've all been up all night.

You're bleeding. You need help.

Just keep moving.

(PANTING)

(WOMAN CHATTERING ON PA)

Thank you for what you did back there.

MANGOLD: This sequence is also shot in Japan,

at one of the great train stations in Tokyo.

Much of these sequences are influenced for me,

and these, by the amazing architecture in Japan

that's really the postwar architecture of the reconstruction of Japan.

Ueno Station here, all of it influenced to me, by the work of Ozu,

who was an incredible window for me into postwar Japan,

in the many dramatic films he made.

This is actually Hugh Jackman and Tao Okamoto

walking through actual crowds at a train station,

again, unwitting that they are part of a film.

Now, of course, we're back on a stage,

shooting in a bullet train that we built on a soundstage.

As you would think making a film like this, there's a lot of planning,

when you're shooting some stuff in Japan, some stuff in Australia,

some stuff on a stage, looking like it's outdoors.

Everything down to the backgrounds you see moving out these windows

has to be acquired and planned and put in, in a way that it looks real.

- (CAMERAS CLICKING) - (REPORTERS CLAMORING)

MANGOLD: Here's our first real moment to see Noburo,

who is Mariko's fiancé

and a kind of district attorney of Tokyo.

Rising political star.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

They exited the North Gate.

She was with the stranger...

MANGOLD: Clearly something's been afoot that Shingen and Noburo

were planning that's been blown at this funeral.

Even this is split. That shot was done in Sydney.

And the reverse was shot... This shot right here,

was done in Tokyo.

We just, literally, ran out of sunlight. We didn't have time to reverse.

So we picked it up two months later in another country.

So, where are we headed, Mariko?

MANGOLD: This is the first sequence where

Logan and Mariko speak plainly to one another.

And we see a little more of her fire

and her own sense of wanting to be left alone.

In many ways the love story we were trying to construct

between Logan and Mariko was one of two lovers

who really want to be left alone.

Who have no interest in any relationship with one another,

and both wish that they could just be on their own and by themselves.

Which, of course, (LAUGHS) produces love.

You can't pretend shit isn't happening when it is, princess.

Unless you want to die. In that case, you're playing this perfectly.

(GROANS)

MANGOLD: We're now approaching what was kind of

one of our flagship action sequences,

and something we planned a long time, ever since I first started scouting in Japan

and it occurred to me that while the train-top fight

has been an absolute staple of movies since Buster Keaton's The General,

no one has ever seen a fight atop a train moving at nearly 300 miles an hour.

So after this sequence where we're establishing Logan

dealing with his ravaged body for the first time,

this is a man who never in his whole life has found what it is like to be hurt.

And now is having to fight hurt.

But what I was getting to is that the idea of putting and having characters fight

on top of a train that's moving so fast, almost as fast as a jet plane,

has unique possibilities when you have a character with claws like this.

Because obviously if you were just doing it with two regular folks,

how they stay affixed to the skin of that train moving that fast

would be almost impossible.

But given the fact that Logan has claws,

it raised the possibility of doing something not many other films could do,

which would be a sequence

in which people are, literally, clinging to the skin of something moving this fast.

Because they're equipped with the ability to do it.

In this case, Adamantium claws.

(YELLS)

(YELLING)

(SCREAMS)

(GASPS)

MANGOLD: There were some trims of this sequence that have been added back,

that were done to make a PG-13 rating.

And we've restored them for this cut.

So there's a little more violence in this sequence,

as there was in the previous temple fight sequence,

than audiences got to see in the theaters.

One of the ways you could create this sense of speed...

These plates, that are in the backgrounds moving around our actors,

were shot in Tokyo.

The action is shot on a giant mock-up of a bullet train that we built in Sydney.

But the key to it all is an incredible amount of wind.

The only way to communicate that you're actually moving this fast

is to blow, literally, a jet engine's level of wind at our actors.

So this sequence took us about, I'd say, two weeks to shoot,

and it's made up of just intricately planned pieces.

I think you'll see some of the pre-viz and storyboards for the sequence

on some of the other extras in the Blu-ray.

But I think that also, each one of these pieces

needs to be so intricately planned because of the lighting requirements

and because of the wire work.

These actors flipping, jumping, doing all this stuff in the wind

requires tremendous amounts of planning,

'cause these are actors all wired and flying with harnesses on.

When you throw an actor like that, out into the world,

which several times we've done in that sequence,

I had never done that before in a film.

And what's so interesting is they actually wrap the stuntman,

around and around, like a ball of yarn, with a cable.

And they, literally, hurl him in the air and pull the cable

and spin him at high speed like a top.

Not a way I'd like to make a living. My hat's off to these guys.

Shut up! Listen.

Do you know this place? Where's downtown?

Straight ahead.

MANGOLD: Here we are in Fukuyama, playing Osaka,

for this place when they get off the train.

And then this street is actually in Sydney, as Osaka.

So, where's the nice part of town?

Another eight blocks that way.

Good. We're staying here.

Let's go.

This is a love hotel.

A what?

A love hotel.

For couples, understand?

Uh... Right.

MANGOLD: One of the things that's pretty clear

when you spend any amount of time in Japan is,

while the culture, I don't think anyone would argue, isn't fairly buttoned-up

and polite and formalized.

It's not like they're a people without heavy interest in sexuality

and fantasy and all kinds of playing, role playing in between.

And so, the existence not only in one place, but all over the place,

of these kind of love shack hotels, in which different themes can be explored,

hit us all with a lot of humor

and also, impressed us with the playfulness of Japanese culture

and that young couples might explore these things.

Logan, of course, chose the mission to Mars.

One of my favorite beats of Tao Okamoto in the film

is the dryness with which she handles the humor in these sequences.

She doesn't exactly seem receptive to going to Mars with Logan here.

Kind of homey, actually.

Where do you plan on sleeping?

I don't.

MANGOLD: Coming up is another sequence that was lifted.

In the original film, Logan turns around from the balcony,

approaches Mariko in the window, gets visited by Jean Grey, and collapses.

And we end up at a veterinarian, or a student veterinarian's office,

where he's getting nursed back to health.

Here, as we originally scripted it, he's watching some Yakuza thugs

patrolling below, as he's guarding her up above.

He still has the visitation with Jean Grey.

But then proceeds to do battle in his damaged state with these Yakuza.

I like this sequence very much, and I'm glad it's back in the film.

It again was an issue with both ratings and length.

Just let it go.

It's not hard to die.

Come to me.

MANGOLD: We were always facing that battle.

The contradiction between the X-Men and Wolverine,

having a really vast audience, and the desire to make an edgier film.

And certainly, we ran into that wall at times,

which is that, how to make a kind of, darker and more violent film

and at the same time, have one that can be accessed by all audiences.

JEAN GREY: Logan...

You're slipping.

(GRUNTS)

(SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)

(GROANS)

MANGOLD: The idea of this sequence, and, in fact, a lot of this journey,

is one in which we're discovering Logan in a weakened state,

in which he has to be rescued by people who care for him.

Which is something Logan's not used to.

I mean, certainly he's used to having people

who care about him. But even in this isolated state,

even in a new land, where he hardly speaks the language,

that there are people who are willing to risk their lives for him

and defend him.

In this case, Mariko...

...is powerful.

And he's never felt weak like this before.

(GRUNTS)

- (ZAPPING) - (EXCLAIMING IN PAIN)

(GROANING)

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

MANGOLD: In many ways this journey south

to the starting place of the film toward Nagasaki from Tokyo,

is also a journey in which Mariko's character

keeps revealing parts of herself.

The character that seemed cold, beautiful, isolated,

superior, elitist, cruel, uncaring in the beginning

has become... It keeps getting more and more deconstructed,

till now, and I think it's really well... Tao does this really beautifully in the film.

She keeps revealing parts of herself, until here, in a shot

very much based on the shot in Rear Window,

when Grace Kelly leans forward and kisses Jimmy Stewart,

we just reveal the warmth and the beauty of her face

coming into this light, having rescued him.

Both from killers, and brought him to medical attention.

This is Mieko from the hotel and her grandson, Hitoshi.

Is he a doctor?

In a manner of speaking, yes.

He's a veterinarian...

student.

Large animal.

(BIRD CHIRPING)

- Uh... Thanks. - (GASPS)

(INSTRUMENTS CLATTERING)

MANGOLD: The opportunities to have humor in the film are important.

And nothing alleviates the kind of

stress and darkness of a film

or even makes the darkness feel more real and acute

than once in a while breaking it up with humor,

character, and tangents.

This is the second time I made a film

(LAUGHING) in which a character is somehow

brought to a veterinarian to be fixed.

In 3:10 to Yuma, Peter Fonda is actually operated on

by a veterinarian posing or improvising as a doctor.

In this case Tao's character, Mariko, brings him to a student veterinarian.

I don't know. Maybe I just love that idea.

Maybe I'll have to do a third film with this scene.

I'm not getting better, not like before.

She did this to me.

MAN: Blondie!

(MAN SPEAKING JAPANESE)

Blondie!

MANGOLD: This is actually an alley in downtown Sydney

that we dressed as a Tokyo alley.

Again, this isn't so much because we couldn't do it in Japan.

But also it's a function of cost.

It's much less expensive to be shooting in Australia.

And our crew was based in Australia.

So when it's, basically, a night scene in an alleyway with lights,

there comes a point where suddenly, the cost effectiveness...

You're not seeing the whole city.

The cost effectiveness of being in a more costly place to shoot becomes prohibitive.

But it's a tribute to the art department and to the camera department,

Ross Emery, our DP,

to the degree that these things fit seamlessly together.

This is one of our few scenes in the film far away from Logan.

One thing that doesn't often get discussed

but is very important as you're working on a screenplay

and thinking about directing a film, is point of view.

Point of view doesn't only exist in novels, but it exists in a film.

You can have a movie that exists as my film Walk the Line does, for instance,

almost entirely with one character.

Every scene is with Johnny Cash.

If Johnny Cash isn't in that scene, you're not there.

And if anything happens with Johnny Cash off-camera, then you don't get to see it.

Because you're experiencing the world from his point of view.

Sometimes in plottier films, and mysterious films,

it's necessary and even really enjoyable to move the camera around

and hear what other characters are saying behind some characters' backs,

to see the plotting going on behind the scenes.

This sequence we shot in the small town of Tomonoura

in southern Japan.

Beautiful little town that has seemingly been untouched by history past the '50s.

We, the crew, the actors, and myself, all really enjoyed staying here.

I think it was, in many ways,

the highlight of our entire trip was our time in southern Japan.

Partly because I think and I was really glad to bring this to light for western audiences,

I just think, Japan is such a beautiful country

and really, for western audiences, has come to only be symbolized

and represented by Tokyo,

night Tokyo, the dazzling lights of Tokyo.

When this beautiful volcanic island, collection of islands,

which is Japan,

is also filled with agriculture, fishing,

rural living, coastal living,

and people who have been living in many ways

the same way, fishing, growing food, cooking, eating,

for hundreds of years.

This is, of course, yet another advance in the opening up of Mariko

and now we're seeing yet another side of her.

Making a soup.

Which, I have to hand it to our prop department,

from the moment I saw those beautiful vegetables in that bowl,

and from every moment as I've been working on this film

for the last year since then,

I've never seen that picture and not wanted that soup.

Harada and I were planning to get married.

What stopped you?

Grandfather.

He said we had to wait until we were at least 15.

MANGOLD: It's a very fine line when you're making a movie

about a culture like this and an outsider in it

to both savor and enjoy for the audience the differences between the characters

and the ways they've grown up, but also not to fulfill stereotypes.

So in many ways, we walked a very fine line in this film

and I hope succeeded at both, revealing and showing the differences

between our cultures, but also not making them silly.

Not making it only on the surface.

I'm very proud of the fact

that you see several different kinds of Japanese women in the film,

several different kinds of Japanese men.

We're not saying, which I think is the worst thing a film can say,

when made by an outsider, that all these people are the same.

When, in fact, anywhere you go, and especially Japan,

what occurs to you immediately is

what a diverse bunch of personalities and types the country is made up of.

And that you really can't make singular observations,

that confine them all.

Because there are great Japanese artists, great Japanese musicians,

great outward personalities, great fighters, great businesspeople, great doctors.

There are all types and all types and all personalities.

But one thing that is very different, certainly, than American culture,

is a code of conduct.

A kind of cultural bible and a kind of adherence to it.

And a sense for all people, rebellious,

and those who are less rebellious, that there is a way.

And I think it's something that when you spend any time in Japan,

has an effect on you.

Because you realize what it's like,

when you grow up in a diverse culture like America,

you realize both the benefits and the downsides of it.

Which is that there is a gigantic national identity for Japan,

and there is tremendous pride in their ways.

Even though they will at times be confining,

for characters and their dreams.

But in many ways I think the contradiction and the interesting thing for me

in my time in Japan is that the women are not confined.

Even though their roles were very often in the past

defined by honoring the men and serving the men,

they're also very much running the country.

And very much capable of speaking for themselves.

So it's not exactly like Japan is in any way backward.

You're not Japanese.

MANGOLD: This is a beautiful scene, that scene

between Hugh and Tao, Mariko and Logan,

that I think survived from the original scripts

even before our writers had worked on it.

Chris McQuarrie had written major portions of that scene, that are very lovely.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

Then they're idiots.

You've wasted enough of my time.

I have my father's affairs to attend to.

Get out and find her!

MANGOLD: Again, here is the second of our scenes,

watching our more diabolical

and conniving characters plan their next move as things get unraveled for them.

The point for me in this whole journey was to give a place for Logan and Mariko to go,

where they could both fall in love, but also could just have a break.

That the break Logan was looking for, in many ways, in the Yukon,

which was a break built on isolation and almost self-denial,

is what he actually gets here, but in a much healthier way.

He's connecting to a person. He's living life as a regular man.

He's had his immortality taken from him, but not his life.

And, in fact, is having a moment to actually connect with another soul.

He's wounded, Mariko.

MANGOLD: There were many similarities in this plot line, to me,

between a favorite film of my childhood, Witness, the Harrison Ford film,

where, of course, if you know it, Harrison Ford is,

I think, a Philadelphia cop who ends up living for a summer

with the Amish in rural Pennsylvania and is changed by it,

is transformed by having a moment to be a regular person

and live an anonymous life,

where the simple joys of food and love, the land, and the air,

were all that was around him.

And in many ways, this scene right here,

where Logan is actually exploring and actually feeling what it's like

to be tired,

exemplifies his fascination with this moment in his life.

Tired.

Do you need something?

No.

(BOTH GREETING IN JAPANESE)

This will help.

MANGOLD: So, we're shooting actually here, in the town of Omishima,

another southern village not far from Tomonoura.

And as he stands and looks, we're seeing

the gate that was a set piece of our POW set in Sydney.

So here we are now in Sydney, Australia,

shooting a shot that was continuous to a scene shot in Omishima, Japan.

And in a moment as he kneels over this hole,

we will be on a soundstage in our tubular tunnel.

(AIRPLANE APPROACHING)

And this is the actual plot of land that he's standing on that we built,

the actual POW camp.

We went back to the same piece of land on the same spot,

after the art department had time to completely clean away the POW camp

that we had built there.

Please. Take it.

MANGOLD: This scene serves several very powerful roles.

One is to indicate Yashida's gratitude.

And Logan's inability to accept it.

He doesn't want the burden of people thanking him.

He doesn't want the burden of debts.

But the scene, of course, ends with another moment,

in which we reveal the devastation

that these men have been hiding from for weeks,

as they allow the radioactive storm above them to subside.

Which is the devastation that was visited upon Nagasaki and Hiroshima,

a few days earlier by the bombs that we dropped.

That's it.

It's a little hard to conceive of because it's so far away,

but it's mind-shattering when you think about

that the only two atomic bombs that have been dropped

in the history of the world thus far were both on this small island nation

by the United States.

In many ways, the story of young Yashida becoming old Yashida

is, I always figure, pivoted on this very moment for his character.

That the rebuilding of his country after the loss in World War Il

was going to change him.

It's time.

(GASPING)

(SOBBING)

MANGOLD: As you can tell by the commentary,

this is as much an action film

as it is to me a drama. And that was the opportunity.

I think in many ways it's not easy to prepare audiences for something like that

because the name and the brand Wolverine

prepares you for one specific kind of film.

But what drew me to make this film were the spaces in between the action

as much as the opportunities afforded by the action.

My favorite action films are westerns, cop movies,

great films from the past and present, but always with strong character lines.

And the reason I haven't played in the sandbox even sooner

in the world of tent-pole films is that I'm very shy

about wading into a world

in which the only way I'm holding the audience's attention

is through sound and fury.

To me, it's my own attraction to filmmaking,

is these quiet moments and quiet scenes,

in which the power between people's eyes and the connections between characters,

even comic book characters,

Who's Jean?

are holding the film together.

We should go back. There's rain coming.

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

MANGOLD: There's this beautiful house that we leased

to shoot in, in Tomonoura, on a cliff.

Incredibly beautiful rental home that I think of all the time

because it just was situated in the most magical of places

with the most amazing view out its windows.

For you.

This brief piece had been cut from the film,

where she hands Logan the kimono and goes in and changes.

It's another little cut that I wish, in the rush to release,

that I hadn't trimmed out.

Because I think it had a power

and a build toward their romantic coming-together here.

(SIGHS)

This isn't right.

MANGOLD: One thing that I loved about the connection between Logan's own story

and Japanese mythology, samurai films, et cetera,

was this idea of a lone warrior, a purposeless warrior.

It is a very big staple of Japanese storytelling and culture.

In fact, there's a specific name for a samurai

without a cause, without a purpose, and that is a ronin.

And in many ways, that idea, the warrior...

"What does the warrior do when the war is over?"

is a very modern idea and is an idea we still, as a culture, struggle with

when our soldiers come back from war.

Men whose entire character has been shaped by fighting.

What do they do when the fighting's over?

And even in the context of superheroes and comic book heroes

and fantastical worlds, these questions are still interesting.

Even, I think, more interesting,

what does a man who was built to fight from the skeleton out

do when he doesn't want to fight anymore?

With the arrival of the dream of Jean Grey and the Silver Samurai here,

it comes the end of this interlude.

What I always thought of as, in some ways,

the most daring portion of the film,

which was the part where we were taking an audience

that would be predominantly used to non-stop action and titillation

and more aggressive cutting,

and taking them onto a journey into both a love story

and to something much more bucolic and paced.

But with the arrival of the sudden start here,

- (BLADE UNSHEATHES) - (GRUNTS)

(GASPS)

we've signaled in some ways

that doom or darkness is coming back into the film.

And the threat or clouds of it will soon be here.

Kuzuri.

Do you know what that means?

An animal.

A fierce creature with long claws and sharp teeth.

MANGOLD: What's coming up is the longest shot in the film.

After this cut, I believe, of Tao Okamoto telling this story.

When I was a girl, I had nightmares.

I'd wake up and run to my parents.

My father would get angry.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

"Go back to sleep. Face your fears."

My grandfather was different.

MANGOLD: The point here, and I think this has existed in the scripts

as many people were working on it,

was the idea of Logan as a dark hero,

a hero for a child,

whose own violence and darkness serves as a sentinel or protector,

as opposed to a threat.

And I think that's the way many children grow up thinking about Wolverine.

"He's dangerous. He's unpredictable. He's angry. But he'll never hurt me."

Who's Jean?

MANGOLD: This shot of Tao where she gets up in this downward close-up,

not many people would look that great in a shot like that.

But it's those discoveries you make lining up shots

where just the light and the way it's falling on people's faces is magic.

I killed her.

Along with the Kuzuri.

MANGOLD: Of course, here is where we bring

the Jean Grey storyline full-circle

and he finally confesses what he had done to her in the last X-Men film.

Again, this was as much about...

As much as it was connecting to, the last of the three X-Men films,

that was far less important to me than having something for Logan

to be dealing with as a character inside.

It's much easier for me to make a film about a character

who's wrestling with regret and anger and sadness

than a character who just enters as a blank slate.

Logan.

MANGOLD: And of course, here Logan wakes up as he had before.

Only now there's not a tree that's fallen that needs chopping,

but the bliss is over, and darkness has found him.

And we enter, in a way, the third section of the film,

which will be Logan finding his old dark self again.

MARIKO: No!

Logan!

No!

(GRUNTS)

Mariko!

Logan!

MANGOLD: This is all shot in Japan.

Stitching together the villages of Omishima and Tomonoura.

And it's just plain and simple, physical action.

Again, no wires, no nothing. It's just intense action.

And that's one of the things I was after for this film,

was not for everything to be so super-duper amazing

that it requires CG,

that some of the film was just living off the intensity of the characters.

I mean, you've been listening to it, if you've watched the film.

I don't know if there's chances to listen to it here.

But the relationship with the composer

is a really great one and a really rewarding one for me, on a film.

Marco Beltrami is a wonderful composer,

and someone who really gets what I love in film scores

and has a great way of having a dialog with my films.

One of the things I was very after with the music for this film

was to find a way to evoke something other than Japanese.

I didn't want the whole score to be an endless Japanese restaurant.

I wanted it to be, in a way, a western.

Because I felt like I was making a western.

Samurai films are very much westerns in the American sense.

Westerns are very much like samurai films.

So when I sat down to make this film, the way I thought about it was a western.

And here his theme is soaring at this point.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC SOARS)

So, rather than making a Japanese-infused score,

that every instrument and every idea is somehow Japanese,

at peak moments like that you've got things as un-Japanese as a harmonica,

getting played at full blast.

Because I think we're as much making a film

with ties into westerns and spaghetti westerns

as we are into Japanese cinema.

And I didn't want the film to feel, as I said, like one of those movies

where whenever you cut to Japan

you're playing massage or sushi restaurant music.

I feel like that we've gotten past that.

The multiculturalism of the world has gotten past that.

And many cinematic traditions can speak to each other at the same time.

You're holding your own heart in your hand.

It's not beating.

MANGOLD: When I was shooting this sequence

of Rila telling this story in this car,

there was one of these sad moments where the camera crew signaled to me

that we had run out of space on our hard drive

for the take she was doing, in tears as she was.

And so I cut early.

And it was one of those very frustrating moments where technology...

She, of course, found it again and did it in another take.

But it was one of those very frustrating moments where, in the end,

when you're making films, the authenticity and the emotionality of a film

always hangs on the actor's ability to deliver.

And sometimes technology, including a little red warning light on a camera,

can get in the way.

What was especially frustrating is that we actually hadn't run out of space

to lay down the scene. It was a malfunction.

We were recording fine.

This is actually a Sydney street dressed as Japan.

And then we'll be entering a set that we built

at Fox Studios Australia for the Noburo apartment.

(SLOW MUSIC PLAYING)

(NOBURO CHUCKLING)

- WOMAN: Sexy. - (NOBURO LAUGHS)

NOBURO: Come on!

WOMAN: I'm coming.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

(ALL LAUGHING)

MANGOLD: In many ways when I'm blocking a scene,

a lot of times what I'm thinking about,

at least since I first started directing films,

is that one of the things you're always trying to do

is to not give everything away right away.

When you're designing how a character enters a room

or they approach one another, you want there to be layers.

So that they have to keep moving around corners or around dividers or objects

to reveal things about each other.

The first tendency you have when you first start directing films

is to put everything in a straight line.

So that everything your character needs is right where they need it.

Sometimes the most interesting thing to do is to make them have to work a little.

Make the actors have to work a little.

I am the Minister of Justice. Do you have any idea what I could do to you?

Really? You're gonna try and talk tough, standing there in your red underwear?

You have ten words...

ten words...

to explain to me why you, the Minister of Justice...

would want your fiancée killed by the Yakuza.

And if I don't like what you say, you are going through that fucking window.

You don't have the faintest idea what's going on...

(GROANS)

How many words was that?

Nine.

Nine. You have one word left.

MANGOLD: Here again we're back to the rage and anger

we saw from Logan in that bar scene in the very front of the film.

In a way he's regressed.

But I think we're all glad at this point in the film

to see pissed-off Logan again.

Here again we're beginning to uncover the...

We're reconnecting with the plot lines for the film,

which have to do, of course, with old man Yashida and his agenda.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

- (GROANS) - English!

MANGOLD: One of the other reasons we lost a scene where old man Yashida...

We cut the scene where old man Yashida says goodbye to his son

and also says, "I'm not giving you the company,"

is, there was some concern

whether it would reveal too much, the ultimate plot of the film.

I think you could debate it both ways.

But there weren't many people who saw it coming,

who believed the old man was still alive.

She never took to me.

Oh, really? A class act like you.

Shingen promised me a fortune for my help.

So, you put a hit on his daughter. Is that it?

Political careers don't last forever.

That's right.

Wait! Wait! No!

You wanted the truth. I told you the truth!

I didn't like it.

Wow.

How did you know there's a pool down there?

I didn't.

MANGOLD: Again, this is one of the most-used sets in the film,

this beautiful view of it.

Gigantic set built on the stages.

The largest stage at Fox Australia, with a giant garden in the center.

I miss it. That was one of the highlights of my filmmaking experience in my life so far,

was shooting on this set.

There were so many corners, so many layers.

So many hallways. So many ways it could be changed.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

There are genes that skip generations.

Recessive genes.

Eyes.

Eyes. Hair.

Talent.

Temperament.

MANGOLD: This is a scene that I wrote late, even, while we were shooting,

not long before we shot it.

And the idea was still trying to get some sense of what is the theme so often

in these films.

I mean, X-Men films, which is the idea of genes,

of who we are and what we're born as

and what our destines are because of how we're born.

And that even for non-mutant characters, I thought this idea plays.

This idea, for instance, if you have a father who has rejected you,

that you somehow were born into a body,

into a personality that your father could never embrace.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

I'm just waking up.

MANGOLD: And for some reason he always loved

your daughter more than your own self.

And that these also were very X-Men themes,

even when they belonged to a more bureaucratic character.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

I don't want to hurt you.

MANGOLD: This is also the arrival and the assertion, in a much greater way,

of the ninjas in the film, led by Harada, Will Yun Lee.

Who's played by Will Yun Lee, the remarkable Will Yun Lee,

who is one of the many actors in this film who could handle the physicality

that the film asked of them.

This also includes Hiro Sanada,

who I think demonstrates that most adequately,

who demonstrates that most amazingly in the duel he has with Logan

in about 10 minutes in the film.

You.

Me.

Sorry to interrupt, but I need your daughter alive.

What are you?

A chemist, a nihilist...

MANGOLD: Not many people know this,

but Hiroyuki Sanada also has one of the great singing voices I've ever heard.

He can really belt it out.

Having enjoyed a night of karaoke with many of the Japanese cast,

he blew me away. He lets it go.

Not only is he one of the great fighters and great actors, but he's a crooner.

(YELLS)

This sequence is the last week we had before we left for Japan.

And we shot for about a month and a half in Sydney, and then went to Japan.

This sequence would be the final piece of our Sydney photography, part one.

So we had not gotten to Japan yet when we shot this.

And the last piece of work was gonna be this big sequence on the operating table

with Logan having to discover this strange, mechanical bug inside him

that he had to remove with self-surgery.

And then, of course, a duel with Shingen.

Some people were disappointed that, unlike the comic,

we didn't make the Silver Samurai into just a guy in armor,

but we actually made what felt like a giant robot.

Of course, it's revealed not to be a robot in the end of the film.

But it was my feeling, A, that you have to do something

to keep audiences guessing about where the film's ending.

Otherwise, at least given the current atmosphere,

you have every website in the world announcing, as they did,

what they thought the ending of the film was

in every story they did on the film, thereby ruining the film for lots of people.

But on top of that,

I felt that we were gonna be armored out by the end of the film.

And that, in many ways, people were craving a Silver Samurai duel.

They get it right here.

Well, they get it with Shingen when he arrives later

and takes these swords and battles in full armor with Logan.

(GRUNTS)

(ELECTRONIC WHIRRING)

MANGOLD: Of course, Yukio has foreseen that

Logan's going to die with his own heart in his hands.

And here becomes the moment

in which he very much makes her vision come true.

Having to remove this nanotech beetle from his own heart.

I gotta get that thing out of me.

How?

No, stop, Logan.

I saw you die. I'm never wrong.

I'm never wrong.

You're not always right.

You didn't know the old man was gonna bite it.

I saw you die in a room like this with your heart in your hand.

I can't leave her with those freaks and killers.

I'm the only chance she's got, but not with that thing inside me.

- You're going to die, Logan. - Maybe that's okay. (GROANS)

No, listen to me, Logan!

MANGOLD: This also contains a little more footage of the cutting,

which we had to trim out the bottom of frame a little bit

when the original film was released.

No, stop. Listen to me.

Logan!

(SNIGGERS)

- Move! - (YELLS)

Stay away from him.

(LOGAN SCREAMING)

He killed your master.

Put hands on your sister.

MANGOLD: I love rain in films.

And it's one of the great things you can do on a stage a little easier

than sometimes outdoors.

Rain is one of these great ways

of making movement and light and atmosphere visible.

It adds motion and slickness and highlights

and a dancing quality to the backgrounds.

Also, rain comes with lightning,

which I got to play with a lot in an older film I made, called Identity,

with John Cusack and Ray Liotta and a bunch of others.

And really enjoyed the way the gothic nature of rain and lightning

and the role it can play in dancing with the music

and the role thunder can play, almost a musical role,

in the building of suspense and excitement in a sequence.

This is, again,

very much Rila Fukushima's own choreography at this moment.

Swinging and dancing and using the sword.

Including jumping up on Hiro like this.

(YUKIO YELLING)

Logan! Logan!

Logan!

MANGOLD: I love this sword-catch moment she does here.

Right here.

I mean, that's just skill.

Credit again to Dave Leitch, who supervised all these stunt sequences.

And one of the things that's very much true with a film like this

is there's no spaceships, there's no planes, there's no car races.

The action is extremely physical and hand-to-hand.

And that was our goal.

Our goal was to make a more personal film,

in which it was much more about eye contact, sweat, and muscle.

And that involves a great stunt team, and great lighting and great actors,

all working together to make...

Even though the action is smaller in scale,

but to maintain the intensity, you don't need scale always.

Intensity can also come from the fire in people's eyes.

(BOTH GRUNTING)

MANGOLD: This is another great sequence where Marco's score is remarkable.

Mike McCusker, who was the film editor,

who has worked with me on several films, all of my last,

including Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, did a remarkable job on this film.

And I must say,

this sequence is hardly changed from what he cut

from when he first showed me his first cut in Tokyo.

When I had just wrapped the first Sydney portion of the film,

he sent me a QuickTime of what this thing looked like cut together.

He has a remarkable team with him.

We've made many films together.

Ted Caplan, who cuts music,

and John Berri, who works with visual effects,

and many others.

We have a really great team who works in post-production.

What kind of monster are you?

The Wolverine.

Hey, come here, come here. That's it.

I was wrong.

I told you.

Let me have a look at you.

MANGOLD: Here begins another place

that the film branches out differently than the theatrical cut.

When Logan goes to the map here

and pulls down the location of this laboratory,

in this take, he grabs a cigar, which was my original idea.

But because in the sequence to follow,

he also does a version where there's no cigar smoking,

we didn't really see the need to give him a cigar if he was never gonna smoke it.

(MARIKO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

Why have you brought me here?

What are you hiding?

You will soon find out.

Welcome, Mariko.

It's all right, Mariko. She also serves the House of Yashida.

MARIKO: She serves herself.

She infected Logan.

Hmm...

And what about Grandfather?

What did you infect him with?

MANGOLD: This is another one of my favorite cue pieces

out of this confrontation between Harada, Mariko, and Viper.

There's a very delicious cue playing under here

that evolves into that big, screaming anthem that I love,

that Marco came up with.

It builds here into it.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

MANGOLD: In many ways, we're playing a very large game

of withholding with the audience,

in not revealing that old man Yashida was alive.

One that I think audiences who are used to conventionally-plotted superhero films

are not necessarily used to.

Which is, you're very used to knowing what your battle is going to be at the end.

It's very unusual, and was a real tightrope for us to walk,

to enter into a third act

in which you're not even sure who's good and who's bad.

And so you don't even know what the outcome is going to be.

I mean, it's clear that Viper is not good.

But that's about as far as it goes.

We built on the set,

on this Yashida lab, development center, we built this set,

which was an attempt to be a bridge from the Yashida house into the lab,

as if old man Yashida

had built this little corner of his giant laboratory

that was the same design scheme as his home.

So that he could entertain either himself or his granddaughter there,

and they could have a place they were comfortable.

VIPER: Did you have a nice rest?

I don't know what you said or did to deceive Harada or my grandfather...

Now, now, calm down.

Your grandfather sought me out.

I am the head of this family now.

MANGOLD: It's a very, very interesting and fine line

to walk when you're making a film

that exists both in the fanciful space of the comic book origins

with bigger-than-life objects and technology,

such as this giant creature behind Viper,

and also the human reality that you're trying to play in the film,

as we were in the love scenes.

And it's a real tightrope walk.

And yet, at the same time, I don't think these films ever work as well

when they give over totally

to a comic book and exaggerated level of action.

Nor do they work well when you have none of the fanciful nature.

But it is a very interesting walk.

And one in which we planned very much that we were moving closer and closer

and more and more into this kind of fever dream as the film progressed.

And at this point, had planned a very large action sequence

here in this ice village, as we called it,

which you're gonna get to see the full version of here in this extended cut.

We cut a significant amount of this fighting down,

because there was some concern that

audience were getting weary from the amount of fighting in the film.

But I'm gonna let you watch the sequence. I'll chime in with a couple details about it.

This is all in the existing theatrical film.

But from the point at which Harada, played by Will Yun Lee,

calls for the motorcycles to come down from the rooftops,

that's the point that we actually cut all the way up to Logan just running

and being shot with arrows in the theatrical version.

And as you're going to see, there's a huge amount of action

that also involves Yukio coming to Logan's rescue

when he gets trapped inside some kind of reinforced net.

Go fuck yourself, pretty boy.

(BOTH GRUNTING)

(SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)

MANGOLD: This entire village we built in the parking lot

of Sydney's Olympic Stadium.

It was the only parking lot big enough.

There was no obvious small village in Japan

that we were gonna be able to take over and destroy for three weeks.

So, this became our home base for three weeks of shooting.

And three long weeks of working all night.

(SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)

MANGOLD: All of this footage you're watching now

is not in the theatrical version of the film.

Some of it also was very hard to survive, ratings wise.

One of the ways that violence is judged in films is actual penetration.

So when you have a lead character with blades in his knuckles,

it becomes very hard.

Because he doesn't shoot guns. He stabs.

And stabbing involves penetration.

So, to avoid a really rough rating,

you have to somehow avoid seeing the blades go through or into anybody.

Which definitely can be constraining, making a film about Wolverine.

Also throwing ninjas into the whirring food processor blades of a snow blower

is definitely not PG-13 friendly.

When Marco was scoring the film,

we knew, at the point he was recording the score,

that we would not have this section of the film in the film,

in the theatrical version of the film.

But I insisted on him recording his score

that he had already written for this sequence anyway.

First of all, because it was awesome.

And second of all, because I very much saw ahead of us

that we'd be releasing a Blu-ray like this.

So not only are you seeing a film

with 12 more minutes in it than the theatrical version,

but you're also hearing score cues that did not exist in the original release,

or on the soundtrack album.

Yukio, run!

MANGOLD: And out comes the cigar.

(SPITS)

(YELLS)

(NINJAS SCREAMING)

MANGOLD: And then this is where we come back into the original action

on the theatrical version, right about here.

Many people have discussed the symmetry between this sequence

and a sequence in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood,

in which Toshirô Mifune is perforated by many, many arrows.

And certainly that was an influence on us,

but so was Claremont/Miller's,

Frank Miller's original drawings of this sequence,

which also showed a Wolverine being pummeled with arrows.

I have a feeling Frank Miller was also really inspired by Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.

For me, it became about also this idea of Logan's unstoppable determination.

And that even at this level of perforation,

he, like an animal, will not stop.

In many ways,

when I was speaking to the effects and physical effects and visual effects crews,

I kept reminding everyone of what it looks like,

as I grew up in New York, for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade,

and these balloons that are held by 20 or 30 people holding cables.

And that I wanted Logan to, essentially, look like a Macy's Parade balloon.

This is also a sequence not in the film,

where Yukio wakes up and runs heroically after him.

KAYLA: Logan.

LOGAN: Kayla.

MANGOLD: We built a sound montage here of voices

from all of the losses Logan has suffered,

not only in our own movie, but the many films before.

LOGAN: Mariko!

Jean.

JEAN GREY: Save me.

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

(GRUNTING)

MANGOLD: If you notice, the design and the ideas

behind even the chair that's holding Logan and restraining him,

those little pegs, etcetera,

are very much the same kind of design elements

and influenced by the same shapes and symmetries

as the pin bed that we set up in Yashida's home hospital room.

That's so sweet.

Impressive, no?

He is made of Adamantium, just like you.

(GRUNTS)

Oh, Logan, you know what, I get it. You're frustrated.

MANGOLD: In the theatrical film, you'd have seen Yukio ride up on a motorcycle

to the gate at that moment,

because she hadn't made an arrival at the ice village

and come to his rescue with the snowplow.

In this version,

obviously, she's already been on the scene in this ice village below,

so she just had to run up to the gate.

High-grade toxins are my specialty.

It helps to be genetically immune to every poison known to man, as I am.

And immune to the toxin that is man himself...

as I am.

I'll tell you what, you twisted mutant bitch...

why don't you open these bracelets and we'll see who's made of what?

(GRUNTING)

The claws. Now we can begin.

MANGOLD: One of the things I wanted Svetlana playing,

as she played Viper,

was to very much be both destroying this amazing creature that was Logan,

but also incredibly attracted and interested in him.

Perhaps as her only equal in the story. The only other mutant in the story.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

Let me go to him!

He saved my life!

Let him go, Mariko!

MANGOLD: Again, there's been many moments along the way on this film,

especially in the late parts of making the film and even in publicity,

when I was attending premieres in London and elsewhere, Japan,

where it dawned on me that we had made a film

that was at least a third or more in Japanese.

And it may seem like nothing, at this point.

But it was a big deal, and is a big deal.

I think that there are many foreign films

and foreign language films in the United States.

But not many are major tent-pole releases by major studios.

And I have to hand it to the courage of 20th Century Fox to allow me

to play in this sandbox

and be accurate and allow these actors to play in their home language.

What the...?

MANGOLD: Another person at Fox

who I'd want to thank on this film is named Aaron Downing,

who has worked with me both outside of Fox,

for instance, 3:10 to Yuma was not a 20th Century Fox movie,

but he supervised post-production on that film.

And has done so on the three Fox films that I have done as well.

And I can't tell you when you're making a film of this scale,

with the amount of visual effects, music, sound effects, dialogue,

dialogue replacement, all of it,

it's an incredible task to manage all these elements.

And you're only as good as the team around you.

And in that sense, I couldn't be better,

'cause I have, as I've made films over the years,

I've tried very hard to assemble the very best people around me.

Not only in their ability to get something done,

but to do it with imagination.

Let's go.

Go!

Run!

(SNARLING)

(CHOKES)

MANGOLD: Here the alliance, as it were, between Viper and Harada is broken,

as he can't stand, as he explained upstairs to her,

what's going on and the insanity that we're seeing.

He, of course, knows who's inside that silver suit.

We don't. Not quite yet.

- Mariko, come! - Go! Run!

(GRUNTING)

MANGOLD: One of the things when I was casting a man to play old man Yashida,

one of the most powerful arguments in the favor of Hal Yamanouchi

was his power.

That while he's not a spring chicken,

fact is the guy is an incredible actor of force

who, in his audition, was jumping on chairs and dancing around

and was incredibly physical.

And I wanted someone who you could believe would be inside this suit.

(SNARLS)

(GRUNTING)

MANGOLD: We're approaching the moment which was most interesting to me,

which felt like, in a way, a moment we had to do,

which is if you have a hero who hates his own powers,

who hates his own abilities,

then we had to keep playing with taking it from him.

And while we had taken his healing from him,

we hadn't taken his claws from him.

And that there was something about this samurai's need

to enter his system through the marrow of his claws

that seemed really powerful and thematically right to me.

Given that this creature is built of Adamantium

and his sword is made of Adamantium,

he's the only thing that could cut through Adamantium.

But, of course, given what we showed in the very first scene of the film

with Logan and his bone claws,

he ultimately will find a way to have his own real claws back again.

Ahhh!

(GROANS)

(PANTING)

(GROANING)

MANGOLD: When you're making films of this scale,

one of the things you're struggling with also is cost.

These sets, these visual effects, all these things cost a lot of money.

Invariably too much, if you don't somehow restrain it or figure out strategies.

One of the really interesting strategies we came up with

to try and save on our set construction

was we knew we needed a very elaborate laboratory

with many, many levels and corridors to do this battle with the samurai.

But the idea we came up with was to build it on a vertical axis,

which is to say build it like a donut.

So that people could keep falling to new floors and exist on other floors,

when in fact the set is exactly the same on all floors.

We're shooting on the same set, redressed with different equipment

and different column arrangements, over and over again.

So that we only had to build essentially one donut

with a second story up above of walkways and gangplanks.

But that, essentially, we keep using the same set over and over.

That is, Yukio and Viper are fighting on the same set

that Logan and the samurai are fighting on right now.

Just lit differently and dressed differently.

And then in some shots, like that one pointing upward,

or others looking downward, we used what's called set extensions,

digital set extensions to create the sense

that this building goes on and on, upward and downward.

Two hands.

MANGOLD: The two hands on a sword is a very Japanese idea.

Of course, in European tradition, swordplay is not fought with two hands.

It's one hand on a sword.

Hey! Bub!

(GRUNTS)

MANGOLD: That's, of course, the digital extension

as they fall and fall downward.

Our set was not that deep.

And this is a special hole that we built preinstalled into the wall

that we could burst open

with a falling gangplank outside that Logan was gonna hang on.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

I'm sorry.

(GASPING)

MANGOLD: Now the set was two stories high.

So when Tao stands and looks down at Logan

being held by the samurai in a few minutes, we're definitely...

That's real. Those are real axes.

But you're seeing the whole set in reality there.

(SCREAMING)

MANGOLD: And so begins the last gruesome part of the samurai's

hunting of Logan.

And also begins our reveal of who's been inside that suit

through this entire battle.

(BOTH PANTING)

Now, you die.

Today is not my day.

(CABLES WHIRRING)

(GROANING)

MANGOLD: All of the work on the samurai was done

by the world-renowned visual effects house in New Zealand, Weta.

The samurai was entirely a digital creation.

All these pieces were shot, essentially, Hugh playing to either just a stuntman

or a large guy in a suit with dots on it.

But this whole suit is entirely a digital creation.

Here we had Hal Yamanouchi inside a breastplate

that we really built with shoulders.

But even the arms that you see

on the right and left of frame are Weta's creation.

And certainly all the moving parts you see in the foreground of Hugh's shots

are Weta's creation.

Surely, I could survive this.

MANGOLD: That's a real point of view

from the upper level of the set, looking downward.

It's only this armor that's kept me alive.

We built it to make me strong...

MANGOLD: That's a matte painting, Weta, also, of what's behind Logan.

That's a green screen behind him on the set in Sydney, Australia.

My legacy must be preserved.

MANGOLD: To do these shots of Hal inside the suit,

we had a special kind of teeter-totter device built

that suspended him about 12 feet in the air

with that mantel piece around his chest and neck.

But also allowed space for the animators at Weta to put his arms.

But it allowed Hal to be at the right height.

You know, I'm giving you the very death...

you longed for.

(CHUCKLES)

MANGOLD: Of course here we see he's draining the life force out of Logan

and returning to the virtual age and look of our young actor, Ken,

who played young Yashida in the opening scenes.

to be invincible...

...like you.

- (MARIKO GRUNTS) - (GASPS)

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

You are a monster.

MANGOLD: Again, this becomes a sequence of Logan saved by women.

In this case, multiple women. Multiple beautiful women.

(GROANS)

(PANTING)

MANGOLD: Of course, we save for Logan the opportunity

to do the coup de grâce on old man Yashida himself.

This, again, we have Ken hanging from 12 feet in the air, off of cables,

as Logan rips at imaginary guts, which then get replaced by Weta

in selected takes with pieces of the robot that he's ripping apart.

The bone claws make their new arrival and plunge into the old man's guts.

In many ways, by cutting off his Adamantium claws,

the way we imagined it,

it actually gave Logan a chance to have a piece of his old self back.

(CRASHING)

MANGOLD: It's one of my favorite shots,

this push-in on the hole with the depth of the set

and the two women standing behind him.

Are you all right?

MANGOLD: And here we return for the last time to the idea of Logan,

who's been a man who's been living on the edge

of whether to live in the past or live in the present,

live in the loves in the present, live connected to the people in his present,

or live connected to the past.

JEAN GREY: (WHISPERING) Logan.

MANGOLD: And in this scene, I think, we also portray Jean Grey's ghost,

figment, whatever she is,

as someone who has very much been calling Logan to death.

Of course.

MANGOLD: But, ultimately, as with Yashida early on, he'd rather live.

I can't.

Yes, you can.

This is what you wanted.

Not anymore.

I'm all alone here.

You put me here.

You were hurting people, Jean.

I had to.

MANGOLD: And in many ways by telling Jean Grey goodbye

I love you, Jean.

and that he knows he killed her for the right reasons,

of course, she had gone mad and was killing people,

I always will.

he releases himself from guilt, if not the ghost from his haunting.

I wanted to make this cut out of Jean Grey's departure into a lens flare

when we're shooting at the airport here.

Of course, the day we're at the airport was gray, incredibly cloudy.

So that one take with that light pouring in the lens

was pretty much the only moment,

I had about a four-minute window that the sun poked out of the clouds.

The rest of the day we were making our sunlight with lamps.

(SPEAKING JAPANESE)

You are my only family.

Be well, sister.

Am I wrong to think you might visit me soon?

MANGOLD: Heroes in western films and heroes in samurai films,

heroes, very often, in mythology, cannot end up with a woman.

End up saddled. End up, in a way, domesticated.

And so you're always trying to find new ways

to keep your hero on the run.

Running. Mobile. Unhinged.

And I think in many ways,

the point for Logan was not to settle down and find a new girl to love,

but was to find himself. Or find his own will to live again.

A two-generation passing of the torch in the Yashida family...

as Mariko Yashida takes the helm from her grandfather...

MANGOLD: Much like in the original Claremont/Miller comic, which I so admire,

his relationship with Mariko

was not one of being a live-in boyfriend or husband,

but was one of visiting every so often.

So, have you decided?

MANGOLD: Scott Frank came up with this really beautifully enigmatic ending

for the two of them in the airplane together.

Which I always wondered,

whether it would make it to the final version of the film,

because it seemed so unlike any large-scale movie I'd ever seen,

ending with such an absolute character beat.

But I was really gratified to see it survive and also be really enjoyed by audiences.

In many ways, this relationship between these two

was the centerpiece and the heart of the film.

These two unlikely allies.

This great angry fighter and his accomplice.

(EXHALES DEEPLY)

Credits on films like this go on a long time

and there's a lot of names.

But every one of these people had a huge role to play

in the building of this universe, in the making of the film.

And in helping me execute an idea and a vision

that is impossible for one man to do on his own.

There's just too many moving parts.

So everyone here very much deserves a bow themselves

because there's a huge amount of thought when you're constructing a world like this.

A huge amount of imagination required to make a different world

than the one we live in.

But no one gets greater thanks from me than Hugh Jackman,

who is a great friend

and made this process in making this film so worthwhile.

First of all because he was so committed to doing something different.

And not lip service to that, but actually taking risks with this film.

And even though it's worth a huge amount of money

as a piece of business for a studio, for Marvel,

and for the future of this franchise,

also feeling like we owed it to the fans

to try and do something adventurous with it

and not just make another X-Men movie in a new place,

but to make a different kind of X-Men movie in a new place.

And that's very much what I hope you feel we succeeded at.

Thanks for listening.

This Easter egg scene that I shot in Montreal

a few months before we released the film.

I flew up to Montreal on an off-day

when Hugh and Ian and Patrick

were not actually shooting Days of Future Past.

On one of their off-days.

And we shot at the Montréal Science Museum,

dressed as an airport, this coming attraction scene.

Which was, of course, among many other things,

I love making movies,

was a great honor for me to get to work with Ian and Patrick,

who are two of the great actors of our time

and who are thrilling to be lining up close-ups on.

Especially shooting them

playing such landmark characters in their own illustrious careers.

There are dark forces, Wolverine.

Human forces building a weapon...

that could bring about the end of our kind.

MANGOLD: I have many friends who are working on Days of Future Past.

And, of course, this scene wasn't developed away from them.

From Hutch Parker and Lauren Donner, to all the people who run Fox,

to Simon Kinberg who was writing Days of Future Past,

and, of course, Bryan Singer,

we all participated in a roundtable fashion in planning what this scene was gonna be.

And then everyone set me loose to shoot it, which, of course, was great fun.

I love this shot of Patrick on that wheelchair,

which by the way is not on a track,

but being guided by one of the world's great wheelchair guiders.

He's going through a slalom of extras with nothing but a little joystick.

And no one can tell me that Patrick can't drive a golf cart or a wheelchair

anywhere he ever needs to go.

You are not the only one with gifts.

MANGOLD: While acting.