Comic fans rejoiced this week as on-set photos of Hugh Jackman donning Wolverine’s iconic yellow suit popped up online. Like everything with comics, there’s a lengthy backstory, but suffice to say folks have been waiting for this for a long time.
It’s difficult to consider now, but in the year 2000, the success of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men revived the lagging genre of superhero films. Just three years prior, the diminished reception of Batman & Robin led to Warner Bros. shelving their flagship brand. The campy Batman sequel had its problems, but it mainly got labeled as being too silly and “comicbookish” for its own good.
Batman & Robin’s failure and Blade’s success the following year surely had an impact on the production of the first X-Men movie, which began filming in 1999. If they were going to bring the familiar band of mutants to the big screen, they were gonna look a bit different than we were used to.
This idea is hammered home in a scene from the film. After the gang suits up in matching black leather bodysuits, Wolverine mockingly asks, “You actually go out in these things?”
Cyclops hits back with the rejoinder “What would you prefer, yellow spandex?”
Of course, the joke here is a reference to Wolverine’s classic look from the comics and cartoon series. You probably know it from all the memes.
Anyway, Cyclops’ shitty little comment, while a fun Easter egg at the time, was actually kind of a fuck you to fans of the source material. It’s basically saying, “We made that lame shit you like cool for you. You’re welcome.” And then Cyclops slides on his sweet pair of Oakleys and calls you a virgin.
Films in the X-Men franchise would continue to tease Wolverine’s classic costume for decades following the first film’s release. In 2009, the abysmal X-Men Origins: Wolverine would feature an elderly man inexplicably gift Logan with a leather jacket that was styled after the character’s original brown costume.
Then we went full-on with 2013’s The Wolverine. A deleted scene from the film showed Logan being gifted with his traditional yellow suit. It’s an odd moment that never paid off.
That brings us to the standout that was 2017’s Logan. This film seemed to serve as a great send-off for Jackman’s Wolverine. Even though it strayed from some of the more extreme and exaggerated elements of the Old Man Logan comic series, the movie felt like a well-earned wrap-up for the character Jackman had embodied for nearly two decades. While Logan did not don the yellow suit in the film, we see X-Men comics created for the film that hint at Logan’s former glory.
And then we started dealing in multiverses.
Deadpool 3 is set to feature a ton of cameos from comic-accurate characters from across Marvel’s rich history. At the very least, we know we’ll be seeing Jackman finally put on his silly “yellow spandex.”
