Logan Gets it Backwards

Everyone knows the third film of a trilogy is always the weakest. They even made a meta-observation about it in “X-Men: Apocalypse” after the characters emerged from seeing “Return of the Jedi.”

Trust Wolverine, the trouble maker, to get it exactly reversed.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is generally acknowledged as one of the weakest X-films ever made; certainly the weakest featuring Wolverine. Overlong, confusing, boring, plus they completely screwed up Deadpool, because when you have the Merc with a Mouth, naturally you want to sew his mouth shut so he can’t speak. The Wolverine was considered something of an improvement. Featuring a post-Jean Gray’s death, bummed out Logan, the story was much more solid and the characters were involving.

And then came Logan.

Holy crap, what a movie. This is quite simply the best cinema use of Logan as a character, ever, even managing to surpass his breakout performance in Days of Future Past. Drawing inspiration from the Old Man Logan comic books, Logan presents us a future with Logan, a Caliban who seems to have learned personal pronouns, and a genuine human WMD: Charles Xavier with a mind that’s breaking down (and who has hair for some reason.)

Many years ago I introduced a character in the pages of What Th–? named Wolverina. A female clone of Wolverine, she was supposed to represent the notion of a Marvel Comics that had fallen to the absolute nadir of creativity. Some years later, X-23, Wolverine’s female clone showed up and I just shook my head. But holy cow, kids. Jackman and Stewart give the kind of performances that you would expect from actors with their experience, but Dafne Keen makes her big screen debut as X-23, a.k.a. Laura, and she’s just amazing to watch. This kid was something like eleven when she shot this film, and she easily switches between sullen and psychotic. Her killer rages are a wonder to behold, and without giving too much away, if they decide to continue her story then I’m at the ticket counter with money in hand.

James Mangold, who directed The Wolverine, is back at work and also wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay. To some degree it’s a road trip, but one of the guys is homicidal, another has Alzheimer’s, and the third is silent for more than two thirds of the film (and then starts talking for pretty much no reason except plot, which is a weakness, but one of the few.) As a bunch of ultimately forgettable bad guys pursue them, we explore Logan’s and Chuck’s characters in a way that is wholly alien to superhero films in general and X-films in particular. This doesn’t feel remotely like a comic book film. It’s a straight up drama with cursing and tons of blood shed, for which I suppose we can thank Deadpool (who also has a three minute intro film, which you can see here.

It is also the first X-related movie where I’ve actually gotten choked up by the end. If this film is Jackman’s exit as Wolverine–and we have every reason to think it is–then he went out on a hëll of a high note.

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22 comments on “Logan Gets it Backwards

  1. I keep hearing stuff like this about the film. I was going to wait until I could rent it. But now I’m thinking maybe this film demands a movie house.

  2. I saw it last night and I was very pleased with it. One non-spoiler question to anyone who’s seen it. I had to leave to get to the bathroom before the credits finished. Was there anything post credits that I missed?

  3. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I had two issues/queries (spoilers follow):

    1) Early in the movie, when Donald Pierce (the villain so forgettable I had to look up his name) is unconscious, Logan tells Caliban to drive him into the desert and leave him. Why not kill him — especially since he initially tried to blackmail Logan and then led an all-out assault on him, Charles, and Laura? Normally I’d say Logan has a code against killing helpless/unconscious people, except during Charles’ episode in Las Vegas, Logan has no problem killing the Reavers who are temporarily paralyzed. Maybe it’s a RETURN OF THE JEDI-type thing, where good guys killing the biggest bads is a big no-no, but the good guy can mow through underlings without a second thought.

    2) If they do want to make Laura into a cinematic X-23, will she grow? If her bones were coated with adamantium, they wouldn’t grow as she does and we’d have an 11-year-old heroine. If she somehow only got claws, she’d lack the indestructible skeleton that made Wolverine so tough. And if she did grow up, would it be in the bleak future where mutants are no longer born but only made in a lab?

    1. Spoilerific comments responding to another spoilerific comment.

      Well Dafne Keen is certainly going to grow, so it seems highly likely that Laura will as well if they make another movie with her in it. They could explain the ability for her bones to grow as some sort of improvement on the adadmantium infusing process if you need a noprize-like explanation.

      Also, they can easily introduce new born mutants. First, those kid mutants (dare I say New Mutants?) will likely stay together and I wouldn’t be surprised if they started having little mutant babies of their own in short order if the film-makers wanted them to. Also, I got the impression that lack of mutants was due to them being hunted down. The film-makers can say that there is an actual Eden that is a hidden mutant colony that they could populate with whatever mutants they wanted. We never see what the kids find at their destination.

    2. Judging by how it was done as a surgical procedure rather than the elaborate method needed to insert adamantium in Logan, it’s likely all they did was coat Laura’s claws, leaving the rest of her skeleton in the clear.

  4. I took X-23 not talking as a throwback to the early days in the comic when the X-Men would find out information about him, (his first name, he can speak Japanese, he has unbreakable bones) and they would ask why he never told them that before and he would respond with “you never asked”. Granted that never came up in the movies but I still took it as a like farther like daughter moment.

  5. For the life of me, I cannot ever visualize any situation where it would be comfortably appropriate to call Charles Xavier “Chuck”, except maybe by Logan himself.
    .
    I saw Patrick Stewart say on both THE VIEW and THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW that after he and Hugh Jackman sat together watching the ending at the Berlin Film Festival, and both of them were moved to tears, that this was going to be his last film as Charles Xavier as well.
    .
    Sir Patrick is also applying for U. S. citizenship, specifically so that he can (his word) “fight” against Donald Trump from within, which he can’t do as a non-citizen.

    1. He has since said that he’d be willing to play Chuck in a Deadpool sequel.

      1. He apparently also said he’d play Xavier in the LEGION TV series if asked.

    2. I laughed when Logan called Prof X, ” Chuck “, because it came from an issue of Uncanny X Men when Prof X asked to call him Professor or even Charles, but not Charley. Logan simply replies ” Sure, Chuck.”

    3. I also saw many of the interviews on both UK ,Australian and television
      All said the same thing I.e. Join the resistance ! Dump trump movement which
      Quite frankly is all of the U.K. and most of Europe already. I did notice sir Patrick weaken when they suggested a Picard meets professor x movie or even the chance to be in legion ! The comics have already done both so it’s still possible !

  6. I remember that issue of What The !? Poor Wolverine just wanted to go fishing.

  7. I am so curious about HOW they could continue her story…

    By combining X-23 and Old Man Logan in 2023, they’ve made any merging of her story and the X-Men difficult.

    Time travelling her to the rest of the X-Men is an idea – but they seem to be avoiding convoluted time-travel origins (remember they left Rachel out of DoFP).

    I think more likely Laura and her old pals end up under the wing of Department H and wards of Alpha Flight. Which would a fantastic movie.

    1. They are planning a New Mutants movie, and Magik did have the ability to teleport through space, time, and dimensions, so they could easily bring Laura into the modern continuity if needed.

  8. I gotta say, i kept hearing/seeing echoes of another film with an Australian star and wondering how come Laura didn’t have a razor-edged boomerang…

  9. Do you think the Jericho Hill cigar in the glass on the gas station counter was a hat tip to you? (and two comments in that regard – that cigar has major staying power to still be around and secondly – cigar abuse!)

  10. I’ve seen it today, and I quite agree : this is a very good movie that deserves to be watched in a theater. Loved the reference to “Shane”. And we better look out for Daphne Keen. If she continues into acting, I’m pretty sure she’ll turn just as fine as Kirsten Dunst one of these days. Best line of the movie for me ? ‘I’ll be fine, then.” (you’ll have to wathc the movie to understand). And I’m not ashamed to say that I shed quite a few tears in the end. One of Jackman’s better performance, and that’s saying a lot.

  11. If only other marvel films especially X-men, FF and spider man could be as good as Logan.
    Gwen Stacys would have really meant something !!!

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