The ‘Logan’ Movie Won’t Have Mister Sinister Because James Mangold Says He ‘Doesn’t Belong In It’


The upcoming Logan movie will apparently not be taking the route that the end credits scene of X-Men: Apocalypse may have made it look. Director James Mangold has stated that Mister Sinister won’t be in the movie at all. However, this doesn’t mean the magic-based super-villain won’t eventually show up in a future film.

In the end credits scene, a man who works for Essex Corp shows up to collect a sample of Wolverine’s blood or something. According to the fan and media speculation, that man was Mister Sinister. However, according to the comics and the director of the upcoming Wolverine film, it appears he won’t be the villain in Logan.

The second R-rated movie planned in the X-Men franchise will not be taking the same route as previous films, toning down the CG in favor of more practical effects, much like Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. This may be the result of budget issues related to the film’s rating, and a villain like Mister Sinister just “doesn’t belong in it,” according to Mangold. He might show up in the planned Gambit movie, though, another film that is set to practically reboot the mistakes from the first Wolverine movie.

‘Logan’ will have the same practical effects as ‘Batman Begins.’ [Image by Warner Bros. Pictures]

Director James Mangold told Cinema Blend that the DNA-obsessed villain won’t be in the film and why, aside from the obvious tonal choice.

“Now that you’ve seen some of the movie, I think [what] you get a better sense of is, that’s exactly the kind of thing this movie avoids. Meaning, the kind of operatic highly-costumed, stroboscopic villainy … that’s not in this movie. Everything is kind of as real as we can make it. The movie is trying to kind of take a step backward from that kind of spectacle, so that we get another kind of gain, you know. There’s that loss, but the gain is that the movie feels extremely real.”

The trailers so far mirror Mangold’s statement well, giving us some subtle meta humor when Logan catches his adopted “daughter” reading X-Men comics. With the phrase “maybe a quarter of it happened, and not like this,” he basically dismisses the comics and calls it mostly fantasy. It clues us in that the Logan movie is set in a more realistic world in the year 2023, and the girl has romantic thoughts about who the X-Men were.

There are apparently two levels of father figures happening as Professor Xavier has practically adopted Logan, who in turn appears to be struggling with being a role model for a younger female version of himself. In a film like this, the villain, played by Richard E. Grant (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), could end up being very low-key, not one of those colorful type villains the X-Men and Avengers franchises regularly throw at us.

‘Avengers’ and ‘X-Men’ villains are often flashy, like Ultron. [Image by Marvel Studios]

Digital Spy says Grant is playing Dr. Zander Rice, who is obviously obsessed with the young mutant and is one of the “dark forces” Mangold claims to be the movie’s villains. Rice is one of the collateral survivors of Wolverine’s escape from Weapon X, as his father was killed in the resulting carnage. It appears Rice is obsessed with re-creating the facility, and Wolverine is dead set on stopping what happened to him from happening again.

Much like Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, it appears Logan will focus on the real-world consequences of superheroes and super-villains doing what they’re known for. Likely being the last appearance of Hugh Jackman in the role which made him a star, the film appears to be set to tie up one major loose end which X-Men: Apocalypse left hanging.

The Logan movie is apparently set to be the end of Wolverine and the Weapon X program. Since Mister Sinister has nothing to do with that storyline, we likely won’t see him until the X-Men spin-offs hit.

[Feature Image by 20th Century Fox]

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