The last 17 years has been made up of 11 different X-Men films, 8 starring Hugh Jackman's Wolverine as a main character, 2 featuring a Wolverine cameo, and one without Jackman. The only film in the X-Men series not to feature Wolverine in any capacity is 2016's "Deadpool", which is the R-rated surprise box office sensation that motivated "Logan" to keep the necessary R rating.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW
Read at your own risk
First up is the very first X-Men movie, released in 2000, but set in 2003. When we first meet Logan, he's wandering around Canada with no memory of who he is or how he got those awesome meta claws. He's literally cagefighting in underground clubs for money; it's pretty awesome actually. By the end of this movie he's in this group the X-Men, he's a bit happier now that he's got some friends and what he considers to be a family. Professor X sends him to an abandoned military complex called Alkalai Lake, in Canada, to find answers about who he is.
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| Courtesy: Collider.com |
The next film in the series was released in 2003. X2: X-Men United, takes place directly where the original film left off. He arrives in Canada at Alkalai Lake, stares down a wolf or something (he's really into nature, but doesn't find anything up there until the end of the movie. At the end of X2, the X-Men have to rescue Professor X from the main villian William Stryker. At this point, Jean Grey has to sacrifice herself to save the rest of the X-Men, which Wolverine is torn up about about because he was in love with her, even though she was dating Cyclops.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand is the final film of the original trilogy. Taking place and released in 2006, we have Wolverine still upset about losing Jean Grey, but at this point acting as more of a leader of the X-Men team. Early in the film, Jean Grey somehow comes back with new powers and being referred to as The Phoenix. She cannot control her powers though, as she ends up killing Cyclops and disintegrating Professor X, which was pretty nuts to see. At the end of the movie, Logan then has to kill Jean Grey in order to stop her from killing many more people. Also at the end of this movie, somehow, Professor Xavier somehow transfers his consciousness to a replica of his body (but for some reason is still confined to a wheelchair).
Here's where things start to get a bit more difficult to follow.
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| Courtesy: PluggedIn.com |
So X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a pretty bad movie. Like, awful. But it does reveal a lot of new information about the character. We learn that Logan is born all the way back in 1832, and due to his healing factor he ages at an extremely slow rate. This is alluded to in the first X-Men film, as Professor X couldn't tell how old Logan was after a full DNA study. His powers first manifest themselves in 1845, as the mutations often begin to show signs in this universe with the coming of age that is commonly associated with puberty. In Logan's case, the manifestation of his powers result in the accidental killing of his father. After this, he and his half-brother Victor Creed, later to be known as Sabertooth, have to survive on their own. They go on to fight side by side in every major American War after this. In an awesome title sequence for the otherwise terrible film, we see a montage of them fighting in the American Civil War, World War One, World War Two and the Vietnam War.
While fighting in Vietnam, he meets a man named William Stryker for the first time, Stryker is the man who is responsible for Logan's unbreakable adamantium skeleton and retractable claws. He recruits them into a group called Task Force X, where they are tasked with black ops missions and assassination jobs. At the end of this film, Wolverine is shot in the head with an adamantium bullet, which gives him amnesia.
From this event in 1979, all the way until to 2003, Wolverine is in Canada...cagefighting and stuff, probably.
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| Courtesy: themarysue.com |
X-Men: First Class, a prequel released in 2011, is set in 1962. The film is about Professor X and Magneto starting the X-Men and recruiting for members. Wolverine only has a cameo in this, where he tells Xavier and Erik Lenssher to "Fuck off."
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| Courtesy: Deadline |
2013 brought us the second solo film, The Wolverine which takes place first in 1945 as the atomic bomb was dropped in Nagasaki. He wakes up from a dream about the bomb dropping, at which he saved a young Japanese man's life, in 2013. He is living as a hermit in caves in Canada. This is only 7 years separated from having to kill Jean Grey, by which he is still emotionally traumatized. He is tracked down by the man who he saved in Japan, now very old and dying, but also wealthy enough to try and use science in order to copy Wolverine's healing factor. By the end of this film, he gets his metal claws chopped off and his healing factor reduced. He at this point as his original bone claws, as he did as a child.
Still with me? Okay, pay close attention.
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| Courtesy: Empire Online |
X-Men: Days of Future Past is the movie that confuses people most, even though it is the film that actually cleared up most of the plot holes left by the previous films.
The film starts in 2023, in a dystopian future where mutants are being hunted down by robots called Sentinels. Fellow mutant Kitty Pride uses her powers to send Wolverine's consciousness back to his body in 1973. This is done so that Wolverine can help halt the creation of the Sentinels by keeping Mystique from killing the creator of the robots, Bolivar Trask.
The mission is successful, and by changing history in 1973, Wolverine rendered all of the previously occurring events to be no longer existent. At the end of this film, the alternate 2023 features all of the X-Men alive and well, including Cyclops and Jean Grey who had been gone for 17 years in the original 2023.
The events of Days of Future Past created an alternate timeline.
However, Wolverine still ends up in the hands of William Stryker, as seen in the following film.
X-Men: Apocalypse is another film in which Wolverine only has a cameo. Set in the new version of 1983. The younger versions of Cyclops and Jean Grey are at Alkalai Lake rescuing their fellow X-Men, when they come across the experiment that is revealed to be Wolverine getting his adamantium skeleton. When they set Logan free, he kills his way out of Alkalai Lake, and runs out of the base, and does not reappear in the film. This presents the difference that now Wolverine has met the X-Men 20 years earlier than the original timeline, and does not have his memories wiped.
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| Courtesy: Screen Rant |
All of that brings us here, the alternate timeline's version of 2029. Most of the mutant's are dead, no new mutants have been born for 20 years, and we are only 6 years removed from the end of Days of Future Past where everything seemed to be perfect. This future in which Logan lives is not a welcome one, he lives in hiding taking care of a mentally weakened Professor X, and works in a small town in Texas as a driver-for-hire. At this point, Logan has lived for 196 years, but emotionally and consciously he is 252 years old. He's lived two different lives with memories from both, and has seen all of his friends come and go on two separate occasions. This film takes a very in-depth look at a character who is seemingly a shell of himself, as his healing factor has weakened and his body begins to fail him, while his depression begins to consume him.
Hopefully this summary of the Wolverine timeline(s) has cleared up some of the confusion that seems to cloud the X-Men franchise. It may seem intimidating to try and follow, but give it a chance. Logan is out in most theaters now, and has made $237.8 million in its opening weekend.
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