Following in the footsteps of Mad Max: Fury Road’s “Black & Chrome” edition, Logan director James Mangold says he’s producing a de-colorized version of the X-Men blockbuster, which hits theaters on Friday.
Mangold, who has also shared several black-and-white photos from the production, evidently has a fondness for the old-fashioned look, and though it’s set in the future, Logan makes a point of tying its story to the past through repeated, sometimes heavy-handed, evocations of the 1950s Western Shane. But it’s also of a piece with the movie’s efforts to set itself apart from the rest of the comic-book movie crowd, with its gory violence and strenuously downbeat outlook. What better way to do that than to leach out its color entirely, reducing comics’ traditional four-color palette to none? The move would also parallel Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1, which shifted from color to black and white in the middle of a supremely bloody fight scene in order to secure its R rating, but since Logan already wears its hard R like a badge of honor, it’s doubtful Mangold would try to get it knocked down to something more kid-friendly.
