Dark Phoenix Director Explains Wolverine’s Absence in The Movie

X-Men franchise is mostly famous for Wolverine. Hugh Jackman has done justice with the role of Wolverine from 2000’s X-Men.

Hugh’s entry to X-Men franchise instantly catapulting him into the Hollywood spotlight and crafted the way for him to become one of the biggest stars of his generation.

Wolverine remained a vital part of X-Men franchise, with eight subsequent films, with Logan serving as not only his character’s sendoff within the franchise.

X-Men: Apocalypse, the last film in X-Men series, Logan got very less screen time and now completely disappeared from upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

Wolverine’s Exit from X-Men.

Now a writer and director Simon Kinberg offers his own reasons to Rolling Stone why the actor and character are not in the film.

Wolverine was the most prominent character in the X-Men franchise and also a big part of the comic book storyline.

From 2000 to 2017, Hugh played the clawed mutant in every X-Men movie, except Deadpool.

However, since Dark Phoenix is marking the last of the Fox era’s main X-Men movies. Now the fact that he’s not a part of upcoming X-Men flicks might scare their fans.

Here’s what director Simon Kinberg had to say about Wolverine’s absence in Dark Phoenix:

“If you know the Dark Phoenix story, you’d want to really service the love story between Logan and Jean.

And I think the notion of Hugh Jackman, as great as he looks for his age, and Sophie Turner — it didn’t sit well with me. Or anyone else!”

Additionally, Simon Kinberg told Rolling Stone that excluding Wolverine from Dark Phoenix came from not wanting to divert attention from the main character, as this movie revolves around Jean Grey’s corruption. Kinberg continued:

“There was an element of this being Jean’s story.

And I was committing so fully to it that I didn’t want to run the risk of pulling away from Jean by going to the well of a fan-favorite character in these movies.

I wanted this to be a very different experience of seeing an X-Men movie.”

Theories Ahead of Wolverine’s Exit from X-Men…

Simon Kinberg makes a fair point. According to one theory, there was a love triangle between Cyclops, Jean Grey and Wolverine in the era of the comic when The Dark Phoenix Saga was published, and X-Men: The Last Stand continued exploring the latter two’s romantic dynamic.

Although Dark Phoenix and its predecessor takes place in the new timeline, may see Wolverine somewhere in the line to join X-Men.

But as far as Dark Phoenix goes, he’s still doing his own thing nine years after Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Nightcrawler freed him from William Stryker’s facility.

It also supports the theory that Wolverine’s story was wrapped in Logan. Jackman made it clear after Logan’s release that he would not play Wolverine again.

So even if Simon Kinberg and his team had wanted to include the character in Dark Phoenix, it’s highly unlikely the actor would have come back.

Dark Phoenix released this Friday, June 7.