Logan
I watched Logan last week, and, shit, it does live up to its reputation as one of the best superhero movies ever made. Perhaps the hype surrounding it might be a wee bit too much, but damn, it's still a great movie. Now Logan is meant to be a sendoff not to the main character Wolverine, but also to longtime X-Men stars Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, ending an era as two of the longest-running superhero actors in live-action. They've been doing this for nearly two decades, and have became the definitive versions of Wolverine and Professor X for an entire generation. But they're not getting any younger, and it's far better to retire their characters at a high note.
SPOILER WARNING, by the way, if you haven't seen this movie.
It's also R-rated, so instead of Wolverine dropping "fuck" once or twice in the movie, the character gets to drop it every other scene. Even Professor X gets in on the profanity, dropping f-bombs here and there and seeing a character we've known and loved as the wise old mentor be reduced to anger and cussing really shows just how far we've gone from the more upbeat X-Men movies we're familiar with.
And it's a very, very different beast to the X-Men movies, just like the excellent mind-fuckery Legion TV series we've gotten this month. It doesn't get fully gritty and humourless the way Batman v Superman or Dark Knight Rises did, though, and through it all it still feels like an X-Men movie with a message of optimism even in the face of overwhelming odds, and despite the more downbeat and depressing note it has, it doesn't feel like a deconstruction of an X-Men movie. Rather, like Wolverine himself, it's a more... mature version of an X-Men story.
In this alternate future of 2026 (good luck trying to fit this in the X-Men movie timeline, guys -- I certainly can't) big, badass Wolverine is no longer the immortal, unstoppable killing machine we all know and love. No, he's an older, aged man driving a limo cab around. There aren't any huge school for mutants, or colourful costumes, or even giant Sentinel robots running around hunting mutants like Days of Future's Past. Age has caught up to the Wolverine, and all the more fantastical elements of the comics are briefly gone. His attempt to fight the gangbangers needs more effort than Wolverine would have done in other movies. He even has difficulty popping his claws, and the super-fast regeneration isn't working as well as it should. Things are worse and wore as we learn that Professor X is delirious, kept inside a water tank with drugs in order to stop him from unleashing psychic bursts to everyone around him -- where normal old people have slight tremors or seizures, Professor X's mind causes psychic quakes. It's a sorry state for the once leader of the X-Men... which is all gone now, save for the irritable sun-hating albino Caliban, the only other ally Logan and Charles have in all this.
We learn, later, slowly through the movie through hints and pieces of dialogue what has happened. Professor X's mind attack had unleashed such a gigantic blast that killed the X-Men. Wolverine's being poisoned from the inside out by the Adamantium inside him, and it's reached critical mass, slowing down his body's natural regeneration powers. The government has been sterilizing people and basically choking out the mutant gene.
Logan and Caliban don't really have much that they look forward to. They just keep Charles in control, with Logan looking for money to buy the Sunseeker, a cruise ship that'll allow them to live out the rest of their days in the ocean away from everyone. It's a very depressing tone for the movie, yet at the same time heartwarming -- despite all the damage Charles is unleashing to him, despite how much Charles is indirectly responsible for the deaths of the other X-Men, despite how deteriorated Charles has became, how Charles tells Logan what a disappointment he is -- Logan is still caring for him, and we even get a couple of moments where Logan identifies Charles as his father.
Of course, things aren't that simple as a young, mute girl called Laura shows up and plunges Logan into encounters with the government once more. The leader of a band of cyborgs called the Reavers, one Donald Pierce, is a classy villain that asks for Logan's cooperation. It's a bit of a temptation that Logan never even considers giving in to -- despite how he wants to remove himself from the conflict, Laura's guardian is killed, Charles insists that they help rescue Laura... and everything goes to hell from then on. Caliban is apparently killed by Pierce (we learn that Caliban survives for quite a bit after this, but Logan and Charles never did), the Reavers besiege their little abode, and even Wolverine is taken down.
And then Laura, of course, reveals that she's not just a cute kid and unleashes her claws and her true identity as X-23. I don't know where they found the actress for Laura, but damn she's amazing. She manages to pull off the socially-distant cool girl, the psychotic bloodthirsty animal, and being just a cute ten-year-old that wants to hold hands with daddy and play with remote wheelchairs and ride horsey toys and eat pringles and generally be adorable yet badass at the same time.
While avoiding the government agents, Logan and Charles bond with Laura, but at the same time Logan also rejects all the colourful comic book optimism that the mute Laura has... for good reason, because this mysterious 'Eden' that is claimed to be a mutant sanctuary is actually lifted from the comics. Charles' naivety in the face of all this, like insisting that hope is more important than pragmatism, or asking Logan to stop to allow Laura to enjoy life's simple things, is a very interesting bit where, yes, if we're just talking about this as an action movie, Charles has kind of fucked a fair amount of things up... but without those stops, Logan wouldn't have rediscovered his own soul, so to speak.
Mind you, it's not all just soul-discovery and touchy-feely stuff. Everything is pretty well-shot, and for a relative newcomer to all this Laura is amazingly charismatic without feeling like a Mary Sue or the load. Logan discovers that, of course, Laura's actually his biological daughter -- albeit grown in a lab as a weapon -- and must come to terms with this young child who's a stranger yet also shares so much familiar things with him. Not just their geners or powers or adamantium skeleton, but also the fact that Laura's going through everything Logan went through while part of Weapon X -- only she's far younger. The bond between the two, how Logan tries to reject having Laura around him (from refusing to take responsibility and later to not wanting to hurt Laura the way he did others) is very much well-told.
While Laura is unmistakably the breakout star in the movie, and both Charles and Logan are played phenomenally in their fitting sendoff, I really must say how much I love the wry Caliban in this movie. He's just such a classy dude and I really want to punch Donald Pierce in the face for doing that absolutely agonizing-looking sunlight torture scene.
On the other hand, where Donald Pierce is pretty awesome, the movie's other antagonist, Zander Rice, the scientist at the head of the X-23 program, is more of a plot device and exposition tool, showing up for a couple of talking scenes with Caliban, Pierce and later Logan before being unceremoniously killed off. No, the final boss of it isn't even Pierce, but rather Logan has to face... himself. Or rather, a near-perfect clone of him at his fighting peak, X-24.
X-24 literally shows up out of nowhere as Charles gives a very touching final speech to Logan, before coldly stabbing Charles in the chest, making a very excellent use of the bait and switch trope. Charles' broken heartedness, and Logan later telling Charles that "it's not me, it's not me, Charles" is absolutely heartbreaking, and the portrayal of Professor X's final death is absolutely tearjerking.
I thought the movie was a bit too slow -- perhaps necessarily so to build up the Logan/Charles/Laura dynamic -- when they shacked up in the farmer's house, and later when they shacked up with the other X-23 program refugees in 'Eden'. But it all builds up to a very explosive end. Yes, the other mutants do get to play a part, including a very cool moment by the fat electrical-shooting kid Bobby and the older leader of the group, Rictor, and the Eden kids get to murder Donald Pierce in the most horrifying yet justified execution ever...
But make no mistake, it's Logan and Laura that's the real stars here. Logan manages to break out a rampage that puts all his previous rampages to shame with the aid of some green-injection steroid things, but it quickly wears off as he fights X-24, and it's clear just how outmatched Wolverine is by the evil version of his younger self. Laura and Logan's back-to-back action scene is still amazing, though, and seeing Laura just jump and leap and stab-stab-stab everything in the face, even taking on X-24 and actually winning for a bit... it's a very amazing action scene which ends with X-24's head blown apart by Laura.
The movie ends with Logan succumbing to his wounds in an absolute tearjerker of a moment. It's one of the questions that's been hanging over this movie's head ever since it's announced that it's Hugh Jackman's last performance as Wolverine -- is his character going to be killed off? Even without the thought of recasting Wolverine, seeing Hugh Jackman's Wolverine finally succumb to his wounds, dying with no regret as he has defeated the biggest threat to his daughter's survival, is a very touching end.
Logan is a pretty emotionally hard-hitting piece of superhero movie, an amazing swan song for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's Professor X. An era in the superhero movies have ended, and seeing the older X-Men movies brought to a close with this absolute gem of a movie is just amazing.
SPOILER WARNING, by the way, if you haven't seen this movie.
It's also R-rated, so instead of Wolverine dropping "fuck" once or twice in the movie, the character gets to drop it every other scene. Even Professor X gets in on the profanity, dropping f-bombs here and there and seeing a character we've known and loved as the wise old mentor be reduced to anger and cussing really shows just how far we've gone from the more upbeat X-Men movies we're familiar with.
And it's a very, very different beast to the X-Men movies, just like the excellent mind-fuckery Legion TV series we've gotten this month. It doesn't get fully gritty and humourless the way Batman v Superman or Dark Knight Rises did, though, and through it all it still feels like an X-Men movie with a message of optimism even in the face of overwhelming odds, and despite the more downbeat and depressing note it has, it doesn't feel like a deconstruction of an X-Men movie. Rather, like Wolverine himself, it's a more... mature version of an X-Men story.
In this alternate future of 2026 (good luck trying to fit this in the X-Men movie timeline, guys -- I certainly can't) big, badass Wolverine is no longer the immortal, unstoppable killing machine we all know and love. No, he's an older, aged man driving a limo cab around. There aren't any huge school for mutants, or colourful costumes, or even giant Sentinel robots running around hunting mutants like Days of Future's Past. Age has caught up to the Wolverine, and all the more fantastical elements of the comics are briefly gone. His attempt to fight the gangbangers needs more effort than Wolverine would have done in other movies. He even has difficulty popping his claws, and the super-fast regeneration isn't working as well as it should. Things are worse and wore as we learn that Professor X is delirious, kept inside a water tank with drugs in order to stop him from unleashing psychic bursts to everyone around him -- where normal old people have slight tremors or seizures, Professor X's mind causes psychic quakes. It's a sorry state for the once leader of the X-Men... which is all gone now, save for the irritable sun-hating albino Caliban, the only other ally Logan and Charles have in all this.
We learn, later, slowly through the movie through hints and pieces of dialogue what has happened. Professor X's mind attack had unleashed such a gigantic blast that killed the X-Men. Wolverine's being poisoned from the inside out by the Adamantium inside him, and it's reached critical mass, slowing down his body's natural regeneration powers. The government has been sterilizing people and basically choking out the mutant gene.
Logan and Caliban don't really have much that they look forward to. They just keep Charles in control, with Logan looking for money to buy the Sunseeker, a cruise ship that'll allow them to live out the rest of their days in the ocean away from everyone. It's a very depressing tone for the movie, yet at the same time heartwarming -- despite all the damage Charles is unleashing to him, despite how much Charles is indirectly responsible for the deaths of the other X-Men, despite how deteriorated Charles has became, how Charles tells Logan what a disappointment he is -- Logan is still caring for him, and we even get a couple of moments where Logan identifies Charles as his father.
Of course, things aren't that simple as a young, mute girl called Laura shows up and plunges Logan into encounters with the government once more. The leader of a band of cyborgs called the Reavers, one Donald Pierce, is a classy villain that asks for Logan's cooperation. It's a bit of a temptation that Logan never even considers giving in to -- despite how he wants to remove himself from the conflict, Laura's guardian is killed, Charles insists that they help rescue Laura... and everything goes to hell from then on. Caliban is apparently killed by Pierce (we learn that Caliban survives for quite a bit after this, but Logan and Charles never did), the Reavers besiege their little abode, and even Wolverine is taken down.
And then Laura, of course, reveals that she's not just a cute kid and unleashes her claws and her true identity as X-23. I don't know where they found the actress for Laura, but damn she's amazing. She manages to pull off the socially-distant cool girl, the psychotic bloodthirsty animal, and being just a cute ten-year-old that wants to hold hands with daddy and play with remote wheelchairs and ride horsey toys and eat pringles and generally be adorable yet badass at the same time.
While avoiding the government agents, Logan and Charles bond with Laura, but at the same time Logan also rejects all the colourful comic book optimism that the mute Laura has... for good reason, because this mysterious 'Eden' that is claimed to be a mutant sanctuary is actually lifted from the comics. Charles' naivety in the face of all this, like insisting that hope is more important than pragmatism, or asking Logan to stop to allow Laura to enjoy life's simple things, is a very interesting bit where, yes, if we're just talking about this as an action movie, Charles has kind of fucked a fair amount of things up... but without those stops, Logan wouldn't have rediscovered his own soul, so to speak.
Mind you, it's not all just soul-discovery and touchy-feely stuff. Everything is pretty well-shot, and for a relative newcomer to all this Laura is amazingly charismatic without feeling like a Mary Sue or the load. Logan discovers that, of course, Laura's actually his biological daughter -- albeit grown in a lab as a weapon -- and must come to terms with this young child who's a stranger yet also shares so much familiar things with him. Not just their geners or powers or adamantium skeleton, but also the fact that Laura's going through everything Logan went through while part of Weapon X -- only she's far younger. The bond between the two, how Logan tries to reject having Laura around him (from refusing to take responsibility and later to not wanting to hurt Laura the way he did others) is very much well-told.
While Laura is unmistakably the breakout star in the movie, and both Charles and Logan are played phenomenally in their fitting sendoff, I really must say how much I love the wry Caliban in this movie. He's just such a classy dude and I really want to punch Donald Pierce in the face for doing that absolutely agonizing-looking sunlight torture scene.
On the other hand, where Donald Pierce is pretty awesome, the movie's other antagonist, Zander Rice, the scientist at the head of the X-23 program, is more of a plot device and exposition tool, showing up for a couple of talking scenes with Caliban, Pierce and later Logan before being unceremoniously killed off. No, the final boss of it isn't even Pierce, but rather Logan has to face... himself. Or rather, a near-perfect clone of him at his fighting peak, X-24.
X-24 literally shows up out of nowhere as Charles gives a very touching final speech to Logan, before coldly stabbing Charles in the chest, making a very excellent use of the bait and switch trope. Charles' broken heartedness, and Logan later telling Charles that "it's not me, it's not me, Charles" is absolutely heartbreaking, and the portrayal of Professor X's final death is absolutely tearjerking.
I thought the movie was a bit too slow -- perhaps necessarily so to build up the Logan/Charles/Laura dynamic -- when they shacked up in the farmer's house, and later when they shacked up with the other X-23 program refugees in 'Eden'. But it all builds up to a very explosive end. Yes, the other mutants do get to play a part, including a very cool moment by the fat electrical-shooting kid Bobby and the older leader of the group, Rictor, and the Eden kids get to murder Donald Pierce in the most horrifying yet justified execution ever...
But make no mistake, it's Logan and Laura that's the real stars here. Logan manages to break out a rampage that puts all his previous rampages to shame with the aid of some green-injection steroid things, but it quickly wears off as he fights X-24, and it's clear just how outmatched Wolverine is by the evil version of his younger self. Laura and Logan's back-to-back action scene is still amazing, though, and seeing Laura just jump and leap and stab-stab-stab everything in the face, even taking on X-24 and actually winning for a bit... it's a very amazing action scene which ends with X-24's head blown apart by Laura.
The movie ends with Logan succumbing to his wounds in an absolute tearjerker of a moment. It's one of the questions that's been hanging over this movie's head ever since it's announced that it's Hugh Jackman's last performance as Wolverine -- is his character going to be killed off? Even without the thought of recasting Wolverine, seeing Hugh Jackman's Wolverine finally succumb to his wounds, dying with no regret as he has defeated the biggest threat to his daughter's survival, is a very touching end.
Logan is a pretty emotionally hard-hitting piece of superhero movie, an amazing swan song for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's Professor X. An era in the superhero movies have ended, and seeing the older X-Men movies brought to a close with this absolute gem of a movie is just amazing.
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