It’s all a little hush-hush, but there was originally an alternative ending to James Mangold’s THE WOLVERINE. It all started a few months ago, as an image emerged showing one of Wolverine’s ‘classic’ yellow outfits. Only a couple of weeks ago, to add further to this, a deleted scene was released showing Wolverine being handed a briefcase by Yuriko. What was in said briefcase? Why, that would be the iconic outfit.

The initial image and that latter scene were both pulled from the worldwide web by the powers that be (although Google may be able to assist the curious ones of you out there). Now, director James Mangold has been explaining as to why the alternative ending was cut.

Speaking to SuperheroHype, Mangold said, “I felt like the fans’ desire to see something like that. The trick was that I felt like, and I think the studio felt strongly, that I was handing a hot potato to whatever films followed, in the sense that it’s one we didn’t know if they could fulfil since we hadn’t even scripted them yet. I certainly didn’t want to burden Bryan with this, suddenly based upon the last six seconds of the film throwing a wrench in the works of what he was up to.”

The director added, “For Wolverine fans, I felt it would be hugely rewarding, but when we screened it, and we did with that ending on, it was very interesting that 60% of the audience didn’t understand what was in the box. So you also have the fact that you’re going to be ending a movie with a moment where a huge majority of the audience was going to going ‘Huh?’ So that definitely wasn’t a feeling I wanted.”

Mangold concluded that the initial scene was “creating more questions that it was answering and maybe it wasn’t the most responsible thing to do.”

As a fan, it was awesome to see the suit and to see the scene in question, but I can actually understand the reasoning for Mangold deciding to cut the scene. As a comic book fan, I loved seeing that suit, but you have to realise that sometimes the bigger picture and the bigger audience may need to be looked at, I guess.

If such a large percentage of your audience, your casual audience that you are trying to draw back in, are leaving confused, that’s not a good thing. The comic book fans, the established fan base, are always likely to be a cert to return for a follow-up film, but you need to make things accessible for the general public to get enough understanding and intrigue to want to return for any follow-up picture.

With a third Wolverine solo film seemingly on the horizon, maybe we’ll get to see more of Logan’s classic look at some point in the future.

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