James Mangold Talks ‘Logan’: “I Tried To Make An Ozu Film With Mutants”

Lately, James Mangold — the co-writer and director of the Oscar nominated “Logan“— has been getting pretty testy about superhero movies. Most specifically, the filmmaker has railing against “fucking embarrassing” post-credits scenes, explaining in detail why he hates them (even though “The Wolverine” has a mid-credits scene). On a larger level, he doesn’t want “Logan” to be lumped into the same category of superhero films that are hitting the big screen every other month. And recently, he took great pains to distance himself from his super-powered brethren.

Dropping one truth bomb after another at the recent 2018 Writers Guild Association Beyond Words Panel, Mangold shared with CinemaBlend his dismay when Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Claudia Eller had the audacity to introduce the director, and describe “Logan”as “high-octane.” The horror!

“….we were very clear that this is a movie, like from page 2, we had kind of a little manifesto built into the script about how this isn’t gonna be another one of those CG fuckathons where if someone falls out a building and… You know, there’s kind of an arms race among these kinds of movies. That’s why it broke my heart when Claudia described our film as ‘high-octane,’ it’s like stick a knife in my eye,” Mangold said. “I’d never wanna make a film someone calls fucking ‘high-octane.’ It’s like what a cliché, ‘oh the action movie guy made a movie, it’s high-octane.’ It’s like, I tried to make an Ozu film with mutants.”

In fairness to the director, “high-octane” isn’t how I would describe “Logan” either. That said, it’s also harmless, and not worth the effort of fretting over. Moreover, I’d never describe “Logan” as an “Ozu film with mutants.” Let’s not get pretentious, Mangold — at the end of the day, you still made a Wolverine movie. In fact, you made two of them….