There’s always a weird disconnect with age in Hollywood. You hear actors often suggesting, “Oh, I’m getting too old for this part,” while actors routinely play parts where their character is much, much younger. Andrew Garfield was 28 when he started playing the teenage Peter Parker in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” and yet when the “Spectacular Spider-Man” reboot was announced, much of the news was about how the character was going younger and going back to high school (he had barely left, Parker graduated in ‘”Amazing Spider-Man 2”). Robert Downey Jr. has said much the same, that he’s getting too old to play Tony Stark now that he’s going on 50 (next year). But 50 is the new 40, and RDJ has signed on for even more Marvel films, including a major role in “Captain America: Civil War,” so we’ll be seeing him as Iron Man until at least “Avengers: Infinity War Part 2” in 2019.
Hugh Jackman is, by comparison, a young buck at 47, but he’s also suggested that he’s getting too old for the part of X-Men mutant Wolverine. Is he done? Today, Jackman posted a photo and message on Instagram that read “one last time,” with his famous Wolverine claws sticking out of his hand. Jackman is, of course, referring to “Wolverine 3,” aka the next untitled Wolverine movie, already slated for March 3, 2017, which James Mangold is supposed to direct.
But if you had a dime for every time Jackman said he was done with the Wolverine character, you might be pretty well off by now. Jackman’s been threatening this routinely. Even after “The Wolverine” he suggested if there wasn’t a better story, he was done. He said it in 2013, again in fall 2013, and then in Spring of 2014, after “Wolverine 3” had been announced.
And he may be being disingenuous. There’s “Wolverine 3” coming up, Wolverine is likely showing up in “X-Men: Apocalypse” (incidentally, the character Jubilee has been cast — relative unknown Lana Condor scored the gig ), and there’s also been talk of a Wolverine film team-up film with Patrick Stewart as Professor X (granted, that could be “Wolverine 3”). Either way, Jackman’s been threatening this for years. He’s sick of that all-chicken Wolverine diet, the workouts, all of it. But you wouldn’t be out of order if you called him the boy who cried wolf-verine. We’ll believe he’s done when we see it.