Actor-Shared Background: Like her character Laura/X-23, Dafne Keen is of mixed national ancestry (British father, Spanish mother) and a native Spanish speaker (though Laura is Mexican with her biological father Logan being Canadian). She was cast because of this.
Cameo Prop: The samurai sword presented to Logan in The Wolverine can be seen in the smelting mill where Logan and Charles are hiding.
Creator Backlash: While this film was set to be Hugh Jackman's final outing as Wolverine, Jackman himself noted that he very quickly regretted having it advertised as such, as he noted that after watching Deadpool, he wanted to do a 48 Hrs.-style comedy as his character alongside Ryan Reynolds. As such, he was more than willing to do a final Role Reprise of the character for the third film in the Deadpool franchise, which was eventually fulfilled.
DVD Commentary: James Mangold has a fascinating one on the Blu-ray where he discusses virtually everything about the production, including the themes of the film, his thoughts on the comic book genre, the visual effects, and more.
As with all his previous appearances as Wolverine, Hugh Jackman worked out an insane amount to build up the necessary physique, and like he did in The Wolverine, he stopped drinking water in the days leading up to his shirtless scenes in order to show as much definition as possible.
Patrick Stewart lost 20 pounds to portray Charles Xavier as someone who is ill and not taking proper care of himself.
Boyd Holbrook gained 10 pounds of muscle for the role of Donald Pierce.
Bryan Singer erroneously claimed that Mr. Sinister would be the villain of the film, as teased in The Stinger for X-Men: Apocalypse with the Essex Corporation. James Mangold then went back on this to explain that Zander Rice would be the film's antagonist (operating under a corporation known as Transigen) and that Sinister and Essex Corp would not be present in the film. That being said, it can be presumed that Sinister is a Greater-Scope Villain in the sense that Wolverine's blood was obviously needed to create Laura in the first place, which Transigen most likely acquired from Essex.
Hugh Jackman has commented that this film takes place in its own timeline. However, this directly contradicts James Mangold's own remarks, in which he states the 2029 setting was chosen specifically to allow for the end of Days of Future Past, and avoid interfering with continuity. Mangold later clarified Jackman's remarks and confirmed that the film does indeed take place about five years after the "good future" ending of Days of Future Past, and not in another new timeline. The minor time skip to 2029 allows its background events to occur and set up the new status quo in time for the film. Once the movie came out, a handful of Continuity Nods that doubled as Continuity Snarls suggested that the film takes place in its own continuity after all, or at least the reset timeline with a heavy amount of Broad Strokes in place.
Ryan Reynolds confirmed on September 2022 that Hugh Jackman will play Wolverine again in Deadpool 3 set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, despite this originally being his final outing as the character. His return would mean he will break the records set by Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, J. K. Simmons and Patrick Stewart for playing the same Marvel comic book character for the longest time.
Milestone Celebration: The movie was released in 2017, the centennial of Jack Kirby. Even though Kirby didn't have anything to do with the creation of Wolverine, he did co-create the X-Men, the team that Logan is most associated with, as well as the concept of mutants in Marvel-related contexts. In particular, Kirby did co-create Professor X. Logan thus was the first major superhero movie (out of five) that year to feature Kirby (co)-creations, the others being Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Ego the Living Planet and Groot), Spider-Man: Homecoming (Iron Man), Thor: Ragnarok (Thor and the Hulk) and Justice League (2017) (Steppenwolf and the New Gods), and the only one to be released by 20th Century Fox.
Newbie Boom: The unique nature of the film — its violence, its R-rating, its depressing story — brought in many viewers who hadn't seen the earlier solo-Wolverine films and who were otherwise not up-to-speed on the X-Men series. It's likely the film's Broad Strokes low-continuity approach was designed specifically for this effect, since Logan gradually became the most successful and critically acclaimed film of the entire series.
No Export for You: No Good Deed was not featured in theaters outside the U.S. and Canada. In response to fans disappointed on not seeing the short worldwide, Fox released it online and eventually averted in the UK a week after the release.
Caliban is played by Stephen Merchant in Logan, whereas Tómas Lemarquis plays him in X-Men: Apocalypse, released the year before. The two movies' creative teams didn't inform each other of their use of the character.
In the European French dub, this is the only installment in the X-Men Film Series where Wolverine isn't voiced by Joël Zaffarano. Instead, he's voiced by Jérémie Covillault.
This is the first X-Men movie featuring either Wolverine or Charles Xavier since the very first one to have a Canadian French dub. In the first movie, Wolverine was voiced by Gilbert Lachance while Xavier was voiced by Jean-Marie Moncelet. Here, they are instead voiced by Daniel Picard and Jacques Lavallée respectively.
Real-Life Relative: In the Italian dub, Laura was dubbed by Ginevra Pucci, daughter of Wolverine's dubber Fabrizio Pucci.
Shane was always going to be featured in the film, but Xavier's lines about seeing it when he was a boy weren't in the original script; they were added in after Patrick Stewart told James Mangold what a profound impact the movie had on him when he saw it in theaters as a child.
Dafne Keen improvised many of Laura's behavioral quirks, while her angry rant in Spanish the first time she speaks was either itself improvised, or written based on her improvisations while auditioning with Jackman. As noted under YMMV, Mangold has subsequently advised future directors to give her space to work and build on characters herself.
Patrick Stewart claimed that much of the dialogue at the dinner table scene, in which Logan and Charles Xavier obliquely tell the family about the school for mutants, was improvised by the actors at the request of director James Mangold, after having filmed takes of scripted dialogue.
Torch the Franchise and Run: Hugh Jackman claims that James Mangold finally convinced him to take this attitude to the film. They approached it as if it was the last X-Men movie, and certainly the last time Jackman would play Wolverine. They relegated most of the continuity to Broad Strokes while refusing to clarify whether the film takes place in a canonical future or not, leaving the continuity to Fox producers to handle. Its ending makes it impossible to conceive of an X-Men film set after it, at least one with any of the classic characters, and its plot ties up or ignores any remaining loose ends. Off-screen drama a year after the film, i.e. the Disney-Fox buyout, essentially makes this the last real X-Men film from the earlier era, unblemished and unaffected by any external factors, which isn't the case with Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants.
Not quite to the same extent as Deadpool, but present nonetheless: the official Instagram account posted a new teaser image from the film almost every day at precisely 10:23am EST. Most of the posts were innocuous — shots of a puddle in the middle of the street with a face reflected in the water, a bathroom stall with "Where are all the mutants?" scratched on the wall, etc. — but occasionally let slip more significant news, such as confirming Boyd Holbrook would be playing Donald Pierce. Many fans immediately noticed the pattern, particularly the unusual choice of time. This led to widespread speculation as to whether there was a hidden meaning. Among the most popular theories was that it meant the trailer would be released on October 23, or that it was a hint of X-23's presence in the film (October being the 10th month of the year, and X being the Roman numeral 10, means 10/23 becomes X/23). As noted under I Knew It! above, the trailer dropped several days earlier. However on October 23, 2016, another teaser image (again dropped at 10:23am) confirmed Dafne Keen's casting as X-23.
Another with 1974 Frames of Logan, a promotion to receive a single frame as a limited edition post card from the second trailer.
Millie Bobby Brown screen-tested for the role of Laura before the casting of Dafne Keen. When asked about her audition, Brown responded with this.
Brown: Honestly, for me, I felt so — I felt an actor, in the audition room, hitting Hugh Jackman, and James Mangold sitting right in front of me.
There were plans to bring back Sabretooth from the first Wolverine movie at one point, where the character would've appeared in Oklahoma City as a wealthy casino owner, with Logan and the others surprisingly going to him for help this time. This idea fell through early on during the scripting phase, as Liev Schreiber mentioned that he was never asked to return to the role at any point (although he expressed interest in coming back if the opportunity presented itself).
Cliff Martinez was originally hired to do the score, but for unknown reasons, dropped out and was replaced by Marco Beltrami, who had previously worked with Mangold before on The Wolverine.
Jackman: If that was on the table when I made my decision, it certainly would have made me pause. That’s for sure. Because I always love the idea of him within that dynamic, with the Hulk obviously, with Iron Man, but there’s a lot of smarter people with MBAs who can’t figure that out.
Earlier drafts of the movie featured explicit flashbacks to the "Westchester Incident" where Xavier lost control of his powers, which resulted in 600 injuries and the deaths of several X-Men. The scene was cut because it was decided that leaving what exactly happened ambiguous (including which X-Men actually died) made the whole thing even more tragic. Mangold also felt that showing the death of the X-Men would make the film about them rather than about Logan and Charles, while also knowing that the scene would likely be much more expensive than the rest of the film due to the high-profilecameosrequired.
Originally, X-23 was planned to be a teenager like her comics counterpart, partly due to concerns as to whether a younger character would be viewed as a legitimate threat. The change was made because Mangold wanted to break away from the convention of casting a very attractive teenage actress and putting her in a "hot" uniform, as well as a general shift away from a teen hero mold. The teenage X-23 remained far enough into production that concept art was created◊ for that iteration of the character.
Several moments which reference Logan and Laura's enhanced senses were removed, such as Logan recognizing Gabriella is lying to him at the motel, and Laura sniffing Nate Munson.
A slight extension of the scene between Laura and Nate in his room has Laura demonstrating her intelligence by easily solving a difficult problem on the math homework that Nate is struggling with.
In the final battle, Elena (the girl who controls plants) would have been shot and killed by the Reavers. Lizard Boy was also shot in the script, though it wasn't revealed whether he survived.
Logan was going to have a dog at one point.
There was going to be a scene where Laura found a photo of Jean Grey in Logan's jacket and asked if Jean was her mother, prompting Logan to crumple the photo and toss it away.
In an early script, Logan and Charles were living in an old Kentucky bourbon mill.
The water tank Xavier lives in was originally upright.
, a promotion to receive a single frame as a limited edition post card from the second trailer.
