Marvel may have gotten the ball rolling for potential R-rated superhero flicks in the future with Deadpool 3, but Ryan Reynolds’ Regenerating Degenerate has been cruising through the PG-13 wave long Wolverine got his claws in it.
Surprisingly enough, however, Hugh Jackman-led Logan – back when 20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox) had still exclusively been overlooking the menagerie of mutants – faced hindrances with the film’s rating. And then there’s Deadpool. Chalk it up to his deadly charm, perhaps?
Unlike Deadpool, Logan Struggled With An R-rating
Everyone knows Deadpool films – perhaps some of the most lucrative R-rated features, at that – are strictly a no-kids zone, what with all the slashing and thrashing and bashing and, well, you get the point.
20th Century Studios did the honors by giving an R-rating to the 2016 Ryan Reynolds-starrer, and James Mangold’s Logan followed suit shortly after that. But, as it turns out, the Hugh Jackman-led dystopian action faced a much more complicated vetting process than Tim Miller’s directorial debut.
In a conversation with Slash Film, Logan producer Hutch Parker disclosed how the deliberations regarding the 2017 film’s R-rated content antedated the first Deadpool outing. And yet, the studio was much more hesitant about greenlighting the former’s controversial rating, unlike Reynolds’ superhero exploits.
The studio, they certainly had questions, but from early days — particularly Emma Watts, who was a big champion of the project, as was Steve Asbell, actually, the two of them — it was always about how do we tell the story correctly? And it became clear as the story took shape that we needed and R rating. We needed to be able to go to that place.
While the studio had been envisaging a family-friendly mutant adventure with Logan, the storyline was such that it ended up being perforated with violence, gore, and other such mature themes. Of course, that made it a high-risk high-reward situation, since, as Parker remarked, R-rated films have a “limited” success rate.
But Deadpool‘s record-breaking victory made the filmmakers sigh with relief, and before they knew it, Logan – which churned just shy of $620 million at the global box office – turned out to be one of the highest-grossing R-rated projects, bagging an Academy Award nomination in the way (via IMDb).
James Mangold Had Been Crystal Clear About the Film’s Goal
While 20th Century Studios may have had some qualms about the bloody, brutal themes portrayed in Logan, director James Mangold had been clear about what kind of audience they’d be catering to from the get-go.
“This was not a film about selling lunch boxes or action figures,” The Wolverine creator told Variety once. “
It [Logan] was oriented toward adults. The goal was to make something gritty that was also a character piece.
Mangold saw Jackman’s swan song as the iconic mutant (up until Deadpool & Wolverine, of course) for what it was – an “adult drama.”
“That’s why, for instance, we wanted an R-rating,” the 60-year-old filmmaker said at the 2018 Writers Guild Association Beyond Words panel. “It wasn’t because of the violence and it wasn’t because of the language, but because I didn’t have to write a movie, and neither did my compatriots, for 11-year-olds.” (via Cinema Blend).
Both Deadpool & Logan can be streamed on Disney+.
