Come Christmas time, there’s a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby coming to theaters, directed by Moulin Rouge‘s Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the mysterious Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan.
I’ve read Gatsby a half-dozen times over the years, drawn as much to the characters as by Fitzgerald’s prose. I often say that Fitzgerald is the type of writing I strive to match, but the best I manage sometimes is an abundance of dashes.
Thus, it’s not without disinterest that I’ve watched the trailer for Luhrmann’s Gatsby at least a dozen times since its release on Tuesday:
At first, I didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure that Fitzgerald would have recognized the world in the trailer; certainly, Jack White and Kanye West are entirely inappropriate to the Jazz Age. I wasn’t sure about the visuals, either, and I kept thinking that DiCaprio and Maguire are a decade too old for their characters.
And now, I’m more intrigued by it.
At the very least, it’s inspired me to reread Gatsby for the first time in a few years, this time on my Nook.
But then there was a random, silly thought. Someone pointed out on Facebook that this version of Gatsby has Spider-Man in it, and I turned that thought over in my mind until something unexpected emerged.
Well, this is going to contain spoilers for a nearly ninety-year-old novel.
One of the mysteries in the novel is who, exactly, Jay Gatsby is. Characters have theories, speculating about a shady, mysterious past, and Gatsby has a story of his origins himself, only none of these stories are true. In reality, Gatsby is a fiction, a person named James Gatz who remade himself into someone else entirely because of a lost love and a life he desired.
What occurred to me is who this sounded like.
Wolverine.
He has a shady, mysterious past that he’s put behind him, largely because he can’t remember it, partly because he doesn’t want to remember it.
So…
What if Jay Gatsby is actually Logan, better known to comic book readers today as Wolverine?
Wolverine is immortal (or as close enough to it to make no difference). If Logan was, in fact, Wolverine, then that means that Logan doesn’t die at the end of The Great Gatsby when George Wilson decides to avenge himself upon the person he believes murdered his wife. It just means his healing factor just hasn’t kicked in yet and everyone assumes that Gatsby is dead.
Then Logan picks up a new life, putting his life as Jay Gatsby behind him. And years later, he becomes drawn into the Weapon X project and the adamantium is grafted onto his skeleton.
Hey, Marvel Comics, you want a story? I think I have one… 😉