The last time Hugh Jackman played Wolverine, the comic-book superhero he has portrayed onscreen for 17 years, was not an especially decorous occasion. In the midst of his work on a coming movie musical, he had to return for two days of reshoots on “Logan,” the 10th film in Fox’s X-Men franchise, to inflict some beatings and take some beatings, and he ended up shouting his voice hoarse.

“I yelled and screamed so much, and then I had to go back to the musical the next day,” a more restored Mr. Jackman recalled recently with a laugh. “I actually said to someone, ‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’”

His claw-popping alter ego fares no better in “Logan,” which opens March 3. Set in 2029, it finds the title character weary and weakened, unable to heal as rapidly as he used to. The X-Men are long gone, and he’s reduced to driving a limousine while he tends an aged Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), whose psychic powers have become a dangerous liability.

From the moment Mr. Jackman became a movie star, with the original “X-Men” in 2000, he has been synonymous with Wolverine, a feral mutant with a metal skeleton and a tormented, decades-long past lived under the name Logan. It is his most visible and successful role, and one that, as recently as late January, he still wasn’t finished with. Because there was always one more dialogue rerecording session or conversation to have with his director, “I’m uncomfortable saying goodbye,” he said.