After waiting almost four years for Hugh Jackman to get another standalone film as Wolverine, fans are finally going to get their wish this week when Logan hits theaters stateside. But with the release of Logan, comes an added dose of sadness amongst the fan community, with the film set to be Jackman's last time playing Wolverine on the big screen. After having portrayed the character for 17 years, it's the kind of farewell that the comic book movie genre has never experienced before, as it says goodbye to one of its most impactful and respected performers. The fact that it also features the final appearance of Patrick Stewart's Professor X just adds an extra level of finality to the whole film.
Professor X and Wolverine are, really, the only major comic book characters and mutants set to appear in Logan as well, in addition to Stephen Merchant's Caliban and Dafne Keen's X-23. Set during 2029, the film catches up with Logan and Professor X when mutants have all but gone extinct, with only a few survivors remaining, which only reinforces the film's sense of isolation and bleak, dystopian nature. However, it looks like Logan almost included one of the genre's most requested character and actor returns.
In a new interview with Cinema Blend for the film, screenwriter Scott Frank was asked about what other mutants and recognizable characters were possibly going to be included in Logan throughout the years. Specifically, he was asked about Liev Schreiber's Sabertooth from 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Frank reveals there was actually a moment when Sabertooth was going to make a return appearance in Logan:
"There was a moment when we were thinking about, as I recall, Jim [Mangold] had an idea where when they were on the run, and they go to the gambling town, there may have been at that point they were going to see [Sabertooth] for help. He was going to be there for help. Now that you mention it! I wouldn't swear to it, but we thought that would have been an interesting thing to do. And then for whatever reason we didn't do it."
Similar to Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool, Schreiber made his debut as Sabertooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and not many fans would argue that it was a necessarily successful debut. But even despite the critical and fan-bashing that the film deservedly received, fans have always maintained that Schreiber is a practically perfect choice to play Sabertooth onscreen, and because of that, there have been talks of him making his onscreen return over the past few years. The hope was that Jackman and Schreiber would get to face off as the two characters again, in a film that felt more deserving of their talents.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Schreiber will ever get to reprise his role as Sabertooth again now, with Jackman saying goodbye to the X-Men cinematic universe once and for all this week. But it is interesting to think that he had originally thought of including Sabertooth in Logan, and even more interesting to think about why he and James Mangold decided to cut it from the final version of the film. He's not the only mutant who was possibly going to appear in it either, with Mangold recently confirming that there was, at one point, going to be an underground railroad-esque network of mutants, both familiar and not familiar, that Logan was going to run into in the film. Both ideas were inevitably scrapped, and judging by the early reviews and critical acclaim surrounding Logan, it looks to have been for the best in the end.
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Source: Cinema Blend
