James Mangoldhas directed a little bit of everything — drama, romance, biopic, action, thriller, western – and now he’s attempting to bring all that experience to the superhero genre. On July 26 he’ll presentThe Wolverine, the big screen return of everyone’s favorite adamantium skeletoned mad man.Hugh Jackmanis once again putting on the claws for a solo adventure that’ll take the character to Japan in search of a cure to his immortality.

AfterIron Man 3andMan of Steel, audiences might feel superheroed out this summer. However,watching the first 20 minutes of the film, it’s obviousThe Wolverineisn’t anything like those massive films. Audiences have already seen the character inX-Men, X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine(and to some extentX-Men: First Class) but here Mangold is digging deeper with the character, telling a much more personal story.

I, along with reps fromLatino Review, FirstShowingandScreenRant,sat down with Mangold for a half hour to discuss the film. Whilethe previous articlehad some highlights of that talk, what you’ll find below is the full transcript. In the discussion we talked about working around the constructs of the Frank Miller/Chris Claremont Wolverine story, the original movies, his trepidations about the project, how the superhero audience is changing, how Christopher Nolan’s approached influenced him, if he had to hand off toDays of Future Past,developing the bullet train sequence, marketing in the Internet age, meeting Mark Millar, the work of Darren Aronofsky and Christopher McQuarrie and more.

If you’re looking forward toThe Wolverine,this interview is packed with insight and information. It’s a great long read.

You know that the last [Wolverine film] wasn’t well received. What was your approach,  knowing that you had a damaged legacy to deal with?

It seems like you’re using the other movies or our perception of them to build on. You use Jean Grey there—

I was going to make mention of the Claremont storyline. You appear to have put your own spin to it — there isn’t that much to the storyline but you’re expanding on it in your own way.

There’s a lot more to expand on when it came to the original storyline, and it looks like you’re taking advantage of that.

But also there were themes I wanted [to explore]. I knew Hugh [Jackman] a long time, I’ve watched these movies. I’ve been a comic book fan, both Marvel and DC, for my whole life. Particularly [in my] younger years. For me there were things I saw the opportunity to explore that were touched upon in the saga. But because, honestly, the comics are never-ending, you’re able to explore these themes in a kind of expansive, horizontal way. In the end I have to somehow construct something that has a middle, beginning and end in a two hour period.

So you have that, and that offers you things that you have to deal with. In Miller’s storyline he’s got a preexisting relationship with Madripoor. Well, that would be really weird to just open a movie and he’s already been to Japan. In a way I had to do the origin story of his relationship with Japan. Like if there was something I had to introduce it was so that you’re not only falling into a new point in his own life, but you’re falling into a place where he’s already made a host of new connections and you don’t know how any of them came to pass. So there’s very simple redirection like that that we made.

My own feeling about putting it after everything, for me was a huge opportunity. Yet another idea that was less acutely explored in Claremont-Miller but I thought would fuse with it very well was this idea — when I saw the first script they had developed for it, the thing I wrote down was “everyone I love will die.” It was this idea to me of what it is to be immortal, and in a way Logan is cursed. So you have a sense that, in the storylines of the existing films, what served me was that everyone you love is gone. Everyone, your mentors are gone, your sense of belonging to any kind of fraternal organization whether you dismissed it or not was gone. People you loved are dead, either at your own hand or because of who you are or because of people who hate you. That’s a really charged emotional place to find a character especially one who is condemned to live forever. So that you kind of go that’s really interesting, what happens if you come upon a hero like this. A dark hero like this who has lost any real purpose for being and perhaps even lost some of his interest in trying to help mankind in anyway.

It seems like even in the scenes we just saw obviously that’s the theme — the immortality — that drives the plot a little bit.

But also there was a level of if you’re making a movie about a guy who lives forever, outlives everyone he ever loves and almost wishes he can get off that train, then you have a really loaded situation. You almost give him that [mortality] and now that is a problem. Meaning that he gets what he wanted and it isn’t what he wanted. That’s what’s ironic and interesting about the film is that it just asks a lot of questions about what it is to be a God in a way and whether we want it.

Because of the time period Mutants are mainstream, well-known entities. So these enemies are very aware in this case of Wolverine’s abilities.

I know this is a story Mr. Jackman has been wanting to tell for a long time. Can you describe your relationship with him and how maybe both of you came to this project, and how the project evolved?

I saw a fresh start and I saw…maybe this in some way addresses your question without putting down other films but I saw the opportunity of unexplored avenues for this character. Miraculously, given how many times Hugh has done this role in movies, there are aspects of this character that have gone unexplored. I think that’s mostly a function of when you make an X-Men film it’s kind of a round robin. When you really get down to it there’s two hours and six or seven heroes and even if you give each one eight minutes you’re out of time. So the fact is that there’s this huge ability to focus in on one character and watch him exist, be, do things and not feel under this continuant pressure to keep having it have the to turn the plot around.

You mentioned Kate & Leopold. Hugh has become a much bigger star than he was then; he’s also played this role multiple times. Did you see that affect his performance? Is he just automatically on?

One of the great things about Hugh is that he’s not cynical, meaning that there’s no aspect where he started this project looking at it as a paycheck on a sequel movie. I think he views it as kind of a role of a lifetime, and I think that the character has such incredible depth. Even when I was saying about the losses he’s had to suffer, what he’s made of both a genetic accident and meeting up with mankind’s own kind of Frankenstein ambitions, it’s a huge amount of scars to carry and a huge task. It’s also really rewarding as an actor to play someone so interesting, not just a leotard. I think he is very ambitious about what he hoped to get out of this. The places he hoped to go that he hadn’t gotten the chance to hit.

Is there still an element of “human versus mutant” in this film,? Is there room for that?

We haven’t seen much about the Viper character. Can you tell us anything about her?

Everyone’s got secrets and everyone’s got surprises, not just Viper. The joy of the film to me is trying to figure out, like Logan is… You land in this Oz, you don’t really have your feet planted on the ground, you don’t know the way things operate here and you don’t know the language. So there’s a level where the interesting quality of the movie is watching him with us unpeel what the hell is going on.

And I’m sure he’s going to have one big epic fight with Silver Samurai.

From seeing the footage we’re getting a darker Wolverine. Superhero movies in general are starting to take a darker, more serious tone.

You talked a little bit about how freeing it was coming up with this story. What challenges did you face, not having other characters to fall back on?

I felt more like I was making a western with Hugh Jackman without horses in Japan. From the moment you’re doing that, you’re adjusting to the fact that you’ve got to believe in the people on ground level. That’s the one thing that a western teaches you. The cliché that the tentpole action picture has that you don’t have in a western, noir or a samurai picture, is that you don’t have this crutch of being able to turn towards over-the-top action to hide the fact that you’re not actually telling any story at all.

For a western or a noir picture or a samurai picture to function, it actually needs a story about character. So that kind of reductive way of thinking about the movie, and then adding the large action as a kind of deserved bonus that you get now that you care about these people and predicaments is a slight different way to think about it.

Does Wolverine emerge from this permanently changed, physically or emotionally?

You talked about seeing this as a genre piece, but it ultimately still is a comic book movie. Do we see that all the way through, the comic book-ness of it?

Is there a story, is there a legend, is there how they came to be, are there secrets, are there special tools in their special belts? Yes. So I don’t actually recognize if they’re actually that different. To me, what’s dangerous is in the world of studios, calling something “comic book” has a danger of being a way of making it do anything. Meaning that it doesn’t have to make sense, it’s a comic book. I think the reality is that it does have to make sense and that the comic books did make sense.

Sometimes it’s too easy to take a brand and shovel a movie out where it doesn’t all add up, but people are going to show up anyways because it is a comic book and a brand. So the point is, my whole thing is “take it seriously.” Take it seriously like you were making a western or another kind of film of classic lineage, in less pulpy lineage. In a way that’s what I think Christopher Nolan and others have done, which is take it very, very seriously. I don’t think the first thing Chris thinks about in making those movies is a comic book. I think he thinks about the story.

Were you forced to ensure this lines up for Days of Future Past?

Once the story moves to Japan, which we saw in the intro, the rest of the story…

This movie is sort of its own one-shot, but it’s also the first movie to come out after Mark Millar began working with Fox’s heroes. Can you talk about Millar’s role and influence?

Could you talk a little bit about shooting in Australia?

You consider that theNarniafilms were made there, the last 3Star Warsfilms, all of Peter Jackson’s movies, it’s an incredibly rich environment. You need special swords made, special claws made, some new device, someone is up to fabricate it. Some of the greatest designers, prop makers, artifact builders, and weapons people are all down there. They’ve done some of the most imaginative and fantastic work because of the kind of films that have landed there. In some ways it’s a tragedy for this country but so many of those movies have landed there that it dawns on you how talent-rich they are in servicing movies like this, and doing it with style.

Dave Leitch was the 2nd unit director, how much of the action did he bring to that and how did he get involved?

To me, these movies live and die by having a very strong sense of tone staying the same throughout the picture. And it was very important to me that the action, which is what Dave and I worked on more than anything, be believable. That it not be so CG- or wire driven that it feels like…obviously we wanted scale. And visual effects are going to play a role in that kind of scale. But there’s just a level where I don’t want Logan reaching up and pulling aircraft out of the air. I want it to exist in a more physical reality where he isn’t Spider-Man or Superman, he is a man – with a crazy strong skeleton and incredible strength and an ability to heal but he can’t leap over buildings in a single bound.

So we live within and push at the edges but live within the realm of that, modeling ourselves as much on movies likeFrench ConnectionorJosey Walesor theBournefilms. We’re trying to pull things back to some place where his own darkness and intensity and physicality have more of a chance to shine, instead of every gag and every piece of action being so huge that it almost overwhelms. I want to see his character in the action. Even in that train sequence, it’s an effort to kind of make sure, even though the visuals are big, that you’re feeling connected to him and who he is and the moves he’s making and not just that your going on a kind of kaleidoscopic journey.

Can you talk about that train sequence? Did you look at other train sequences, such as in Mission: Impossible or Spider-Man 2?

To me, most often the best action sequences are always, and again this gets back to westerns and the simplicity of them, a simple metaphor, a simple idea. Something that allows your characters to reveal more about themselves and their abilities in the face of one very interesting physical reality. And then not much more is needed. Sometimes people try too hard and there’s a lot to explore. You learn watching Cirque Du Soleil, they’ll just pull out one trampoline and do 150 incredible things with it. Movies too often to me pull out a trampoline, jump on it once, then pull something else out. To me the inventiveness is how much you can keep finding new petals, layers, underneath something and inverting the idea, then inverting the idea again.

How do you market a film when you want it to remain a mystery?The first trailer didn’t give away too much, but now we know about the train sequence. Do have a hand in that?

Was the Vine thing your idea?

But what I didn’t understand — and the second I saw it I completely understood — is the way you could share something that small. Almost like a living playing card, in an email or a tweet or anything. Just as a chunk of data it’s so small, it’s a pellet. It has a different kind of power. Which I think was more prevalent. I mean, we got incredible saturation with it, a lot of people saw it and part of that had to do with the newness of it and interest in the movie, obviously, but part of it is it is really convenient. It is really smart. And I don’t think it’s because people wouldn’t want to see something a minute and a half or three minutes long. Because then, god knows, why they would even bother coming to the movie? But the fact is it’s our currency now, these little nuggets and quotes and objects. But it was a great idea and a great name: Tweezer.

How much did you use from previous development efforts under Christopher McQuarrie and Darren Aronofsky? I know you said ‘This is my movie’ and put your stamp on it…

The real thing was, I see my job and as I write myself… I mean I worked on the script as well. What you are always trying to do to set down just an idea. I try and evangelize, like I did with you guys… like the first 5 words I wrote on the script were “Everyone I love will die.” This is a movie about that. So now what do I do? How do I follow my journey through the Claremont/Miller saga and touch upon that? Are there other people wrestling with issues of immortality? Are there other characters who wish they were dead but are mortal? Wish they could live forever but are mortal? Or are immortal and want to live forever and don’t have the same abilities? How many permutations of this idea can I populate this story with, in which you suddenly get something really rich? To me, that’s the best of what comic book films have done, is to exist in a pulpy universe but at the same time deal with deep themes. I mean Shakespeare played to the groundlings he didn’t just play to the royals. So who knows what makes a comic book a comic book? You know what I mean.

The reality is just you just kind of sit down and its not so much I’m trying to get rid of someone’s work or enhance someone elses work, I go ‘How can we set sail toward this theme? What is on this theme? What is a different theme and therefore taking me in the wrong direction? What’s going to carry me this way?

The Wolverineopens July 26. Thanks to 20th Century Fox and James Mangold for their time.