Comic Book Movie Roundup: (Almost) Au Revoir Hugh Jackman, TASM2 Director On the Mary Jane Scene That Almost Was
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It’s been five X-movies (counting the upcoming Days of Future Past), one X-cameo, and one origin story-shaped cinematic travesty for Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine, but after one more solo film Jackman is hanging up his claws. He swears. He’s almost one hundred percent certain. No, really.
After the mess that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, last summer’s The Wolverine surprised a lot of people by being quite the serviceable little superhero movie. It wasn’t great, but it was good, and a sequel was greenlit in short order. And that sequel, set for a 2017 release, had better be good, because it’ll probably be Jackman’s last Wolverine movie. If he does it. Said the actor to SFX:
“I don’t know yet. We’re talking it through. I still am very ambitious for the character. And tonally I feel like we corrected the ship with the last one. But I feel we can still go further, in a way. If I did another one I’m 99.9% sure it would be the last, so that will inform what it is for me.”
Another comic book character who might be saying adios to their actor is The Amazing Spider-Man trilogy’s Mary Jane, who was supposed to have a cameo in the second movie before it was cut because, seriously, that movie already has twelve thousand characters. Did you forget that Felicity Jones is there, too? Because I did. In an interview with Movies.com, director Marc Webb explained what Mary Jane’s scene would have been and why it was cut:
“There was one little scene at the beginning where she is next door and it took place right around the montage where he comes back and there was another little moment between Gwen and MJ. But it just tipped over. The relationship between them [Peter and Gwen] is so sacred and so powerful, that it just didn’t feel right. And it sucks because Shailene [Woodley] is such a f**king great actress and so cool and magical but it was just about having this obligation to this romance that I thought was sacred. It was just one of those things.”
And while Webb wants “f**king great actress” Woodley to be Mary Jane in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, she might not be able to because “Divergent is a massive hit and I think it’s going to be tricky for schedules.” Early reviews for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 haven’t been good—the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes rating is 56%, which, for comparison, is only 6% higher than a movie called Bad Johnson starring one of the dudes from Twilight. So Woodley might just have dodged a bullet.
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