Some interesting news from the X-men world. The new Wolverine movie is not a direct sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I kind of like the idea of the X-Men movies not really needing to be connected. X-Men comics have been around for so long and there are so many stories you can convert to film from the series, why be bogged down by something a director in the past has done?
Ignoring past, not very popular, films in a franchise has been done before. X-Men: First Class took this approach when it completely ignored the events of X-Men 3 and Superman Returns did the same with Superman 3 & 4. Of course, it would be nice if everyone of these projects was simply done well in the first place, so future directors wouldn't have to ignore them, but it's also interesting to see each director put their own unique spin on things.
Mr. Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackson, had a few things to say about the new film:
"We've deliberately not called it Wolverine 2 because we want it to be placed and feel like a standalone picture," Jackman said. "With an all-new cast and setting it in Japan, it's going to give us a whole new visual aesthetic."
"The approach to character means we won't be overloaded with mutants and teams and the like, so it'll be more character-based. I think in many ways it will feel like a completely different X-Men film."
I do like a less cluttered movie. Having lots of characters works better in a comic book because there are so many issues (and many characters get their own spin off comics) that we really get to know each character. In a movie, you only get around 2 hours so it's hard to really build 5 or more character up in that time. Typically they end up focusing on one character the most and ignoring the rest (like Cyclops in the original X-Men movies).
