Cinemutants - Logan (2017)

At a time when superhero movies are starting to lose their stranglehold on pop culture, there are really only two options: go back and watch old movies, or kill off an entire cinematic universe in spectacular fashion. This July, Marvel’s taking the latter approach with Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems primed to seal off the 20th Century Fox film universe. And while director Shawn Levy promises, “This movie is built [...] with no obligation to come prepared with prior research,” skipping the research has never really been my strong suit when it comes to franchises. It’s a perfect excuse, then, to go through the last 24 years (and 13 movies) with everyone’s favorite mutants, the X-Men.

This week, from 2017, it’s Logan. In the near future, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has retired, caring for an aging, ailing Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). But Logan too is plagued with a sluggish healing factor, declining eyesight, and the world-weariness of a man who wants to die but still cannot. Though mutants haven’t been born in years, a young girl (Dafne Keen) arrives in Logan’s life with what appears to be his exact power set. 

1. The man comes around. Logan is such a good movie that I was, I’ll confess, a little disappointed when I heard that Hugh Jackman was returning for Deadpool & Wolverine. Jackman and director James Mangold were explicit about Logan being the grand finale for the character, and as good as The Wolverine was, Logan is leaps better. It barely feels like a superhero movie, and you know I mean that without any sense of self-loathing; it feels like a film about these characters, what makes them tick, and what proves to be their undoing. Jackman embodies all the contradictions of an aging, dying Logan, still possessed of his compassion and his rage in equal parts. The movie Shane gets invoked, which might be too cute by half, but as a trilogy, we’ve seen Logan as superhero, ronin, and now gunslinger. Through it all, Jackman has always found something consistent in the character, some core emotional truth that made him one of the best there is at what he does.
2. Something unspeakable. Logan is Jackman’s show, but it’s very nearly a two-hander with Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier. (We also get Stephen Merchant as a very different Caliban from the one we met in Apocalypse.) Now in his nineties, this Xavier is heartbreaking, tortured by his failing body and the death of his dream for mutantkind. It’s also quite possibly Stewart’s best and most human performance as the erstwhile leader of the X-Men; no longer just a symbol, this Xavier is wholly mortal and deeply fallible, yet there’s still a glimmer of the school’s founder when he reminds Logan, “Someone has come along.” In another emotionally devastating beat, he refutes Logan’s overwhelming cynicism with a reminder, “It is [real] for Laura,” accidentally expressing one of my core beliefs about what empowers comic book readers (which Laura happens to be). It’s unclear whether this is the end of the First Class timeline, an older timeline, or a completely detached epilogue outside of continuity (a la The Dark Knight Returns) – but nor does it really matter; this is one end of the road for these characters.
3. Both hunter and caregiver. Adding a kid sidekick can sometimes be the death knell for superhero stories, heralding the end of original stories or watering down the material for a younger generation. But Dafne Keen’s interpretation of Laura as part feral child, part lost childhood is so compelling that folks are still beating the drum for her to continue in the role of X-23. Possessing none of the pretentiousness or precociousness of many child performers, Keen holds her own opposite Jackman with a fully realized and deeply human presentation. She’s both denied and been cagey about reprising her role in Deadpool & Wolverine, but I think we’d all be tickled to see her don the yellow costume of her ersatz father. (The fact that she’s stayed close to the mouse’s fold, with a dynamite role in The Acolyte on Disney+, bodes well, I think.)
4. I believe you knew my father. Raise your hand if you’d forgotten that Richard E. Grant plays the villain in one of the best X-Men films. I do recall that when his casting was announced, folks logically assumed he’d be playing Mister Sinister, following on from the Apocalypse post-credit scene. While he would have been fantastic as the vamping, besotted mutant geneticist (and is perhaps now sadly too old for the role), there’s something equally powerful in the banality of Grant playing Zander Rice, whose father was one of the nameless scientists who gave Wolverine his adamantium claws back in 1979. It’s a nice touch that ties together a trilogy of Wolverine movies with almost no connecting tissue, and Grant brings a certain snarl and menace to a role that requires him to believe he’s acting in humanity’s best interest. I’d speculate that we might see Grant in a different role, perhaps as a comics-accurate Reverend Stryker, but then I remembered we already have Richard E. Grant in the MCU as the time-lost Old Loki.
5. Holding your own heart. I’m not breaking new ground with this one, and indeed apparently James Mangold has long since confirmed it. But watching Logan so close to The Wolverine alerted me to the truth in Yukio’s vision of Logan’s death: “I see you on your back. There’s blood everywhere. You’re holding your own heart in your hand.” Indeed, this Logan passes away, covered in blood, holding Laura’s hand, finally tasting something of the peace that Xavier had promised could come from having a family. It’s a perfect and fitting end for this character, and we all believed Hugh Jackman when he said it was the end of the road. Even with Patrick Stewart’s Doctor Strange cameo, I didn’t think a Wolverine variant was in the cards because of how well Jackman stuck the landing here, so now I’m more curious than ever to see what lured him out of retirement – and which Wolverine (and from whence) he’s bringing with him.

Sound off in the comments, true believers: should Logan have stayed dead? Or do you think the old bub still has one more in him? Up next, perhaps the most important film in this rewatch series, or maybe just one of the most fun. It’s Deadpool 2.

Logan (2017)

Does anyone else feel old when we consider that Fox has been making X-Men movies for seventeen years? I haven’t missed a one among the ten – and yes, Logan brings us squarely into double digits (the Marvel Cinematic Universe, incidentally, hit that milestone in six years and will double it by 2018). But fortunately it’s only the characters who are showing their age, as director James Mangold, his performers, and the story are as fresh and vibrant as can be, sending out Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine with what is undoubtedly his strongest solo outing yet.

In the year 2029, the world has seen the last of the mutants, with only Logan (Hugh Jackman), the ailing Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), and his caretaker Caliban (Stephen Merchant) left. Though Logan is looking to rest as his healing factor shows signs of slowing down, the arrival of a mysterious child (newcomer Dafne Keen) forces him to unsheathe his claws to protect her from the forces pursuing her.

Logan is not a film that is likely to leave you cheering in your seats, eagerly awaiting for a post-credits tease for the next chapter in the story. (Indeed, there’s nothing after the credits.) Instead, it’s a complete package that left me stuck in my seat for a little bit as I processed what I’d just seen. It’s a film, and I say that as someone who loves the popcorn movie installments of the X-Men franchise just as well (well, maybe not all of – or even much of – The Last Stand). Whether it’s the best of the X-Men films makes me wonder if critics have forgotten the masterful X2: X-Men United, certainly the best movie about the X-Men as such, but Logan is certainly the best of the Wolverine trilogy and the best work done with the character.

I’m not, then, terribly interested in ranking this film among the X-Men canon, nor do I care much for whether the comparison to The Dark Knight is an apt one. (For my money, Nolan’s middle Bat-film is such a slick piece of work that I think we can safely enjoy one without comparison to the other.) What I care about are the characters, which is something I haven’t often felt about the X-Men movies; sure, it’s been a hoot to see Jean Grey and Beast alongside Magneto and Jubilee, but the X-films have always leaned perhaps a little too heavily on the benefit of fifty years of source material without doing the yeoman’s work of characterization on film. “Whoa, I care about this,” I remarked to myself near the end of the film’s second act, due in large part to the careful precision of character development on display in Logan. Rather than rely on the previous films’ relationship dynamics – or worse, their messy continuity – Logan takes that all as prologue to (re)introduce Logan and Charles as caretaker and curmudgeon.

Jackman and Stewart are doing what is demonstrably their best and most interesting work as these characters, in part because of how different they are from the Wolverine and Professor X we know, but also because of how deftly they manage to convey that difference without losing the core of the characters – the sublimated pain and rage of one, and the desperate need to nurture of the other. Fitting so comfortably into this dynamic is Dafne Keen, who’s so compelling as the girl who would be X-23 (and currently the All-New Wolverine) that I’m genuinely excited to see her grow into the role. That Keen’s role is largely silent speaks volumes (pun intended) for her dexterity as a performer.

I had worried that those who cried “Too dark!” at Batman v Superman might prove the dominating voice in the conversation about the evolution of superhero film as a genre, but between Logan and Deadpool I am gladdened to see a contingent of directors who, in very different ways, are challenging what superhero movies can be by allowing the characters, not the merchandise, to dictate the tenor of the narrative. The fact is that Logan is brutally violent, unflinching in its use of profanity to illustrate the frustrations of our protagonists, and it earns its R-rating with that breathless “wow” feeling.

We’ve got at least five more superhero movies coming this year, but the bar’s been set pretty high by Logan. It’s also a crying shame that Jackman and Stewart are signing off with this one, because one does leave the theater with the acute sense of loss at the X-Men movies that could have been if only they’d been this good from the start. In that sense, Logan is like The Dark Knight, in that it shows us what’s possible when a filmmaker is allowed to take these characters in fresh directions. Sayonara, bub. We hardly knew ye.

Logan is rated R for “strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity.” Directed by James Mangold. Written by James Mangold, Scott Frank, and Michael Green. Starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, and introducing Dafne Keen.