Logan

LOGAN
(2017)
Dir - James Mangold
Overall: GOOD

Comic book movies are in an interesting state.  In fact the movie industry in general is.  More money than ever before is plowed into a handful of select blockbusters, nearly all of which are films that continue, start-over, or adapt a pre-existing franchise in some medium.  While at the same time, less money, promotion, and effort from major studios, (which are becoming more and more monopolized since probably in our lifetime it is looking like Disney will own even the air we breathe), are being given to smaller, not-based-on-any-previous-source-material movies than ever before.  It is an inevitable shift because A) the internet and B) inflation.  Complaining about it will pretty much get one nowhere.  So let us not bother with that.

When it comes to movies that have superheroes in them, I pretty much spend my disposable income to go see all of them in a movie theater.  Except Suicide Squad of course.  So they get my money willingly and fortunately, most of these movies I see are pretty good.  Very few of them are great, but that is OK too because when they ARE great, they are really great and stand-out above the "worth my cash" ones that come out, several deep a year.  Also a splendid thing is that in the last two decades when comic book adaptations have begun to become serious business and are being made in more hefty numbers, a few advances seem to be being made.  Last years Deadpool per example proved that a Fox/Marvel movie could be both intentionally ridiculous and very R rated and this directly impacted what we have here, 2017's Logan; Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart's last hurrah as both Wolverine and Professor Charles Xavier respectfully.

Give it time Mr. Stewart.  Give it time...

So how was this final curtain bow of a superhero movie?  Pretty solid.  It was also pretty violent and there was enough profanity from virtually every character in it to make up for the lack of profanity in every other X-Men movie combined, besides the aforementioned Deadpool of course.  Both good things.  Why not have Wolverine hacking limbs in CGI laced, bloody detail that makes you wince while dropping the F bomb like Lewis Black wrote the script?  Ask any comic book fan and most if not all will probably tell you that Logan should have been doing this since day one.

That brings us to the MARVELous, (har, har), Hugh Jackman, who has been playing the animistic, adamantium-boned, healing machine Wolverine for seventeen years now.  Patrick Stewart likewise gave his first Prof. X performance in that same X-Men movie that same number of years ago, but Jackman has appeared on screen nine times now with the claws, a record thus far that probably Robert Downey Jr. will be the first to break.  These many years as the uber-brooding mutant, and Jackman looks and IS understandably old.  At forty-eight, he more closely resembles a seventy-eight year old here, as is appropriate for the (very) vaguely Old Man Logan storyline.  This was no doubt deliberate as from the very first shot of the movie, it is pretty clear that these are the last days of Wolverine we are witnessing and he is very much done.  Just done with it all.

That moment when looking at your fake wounds in a mirror for the bazillionth time is no longer worth the fat pay check.

In the cinematic universe that Fox has created for the X-Men, Jackman has done a more than admirable job.  Yeah he is about a foot taller than Wolverine is "supposed" to be, but from X-Men till now, he has portrayed an arc for this beloved character that is absolutely pitch perfect.  He has killed a lot, seen a lot, done a lot, and the people he loves or that love him are all fucking dead.  This comes back to the curse of the immortal, where at first being indestructible might seem great, but the longer you stick around and the more people you outlive, the more mind-numbingly brutal day-to-day-life becomes.  Nobody can tell Logan to cheer up, (even dear old, demented Xavier, try as he might).  Jackman's scowl and battered-down limp says it all.  Walk that long in Wolverine's shoes and the only thing bombarding your mind is "when will this shit finally end?".

This whole concept has been part of Wolverine's arc for a long, long time now and the movie version is no different.  I am sad to see Jackman go, but understand that just like the character, enough is enough.  The actor himself obviously is not getting any younger, so eight films in, let us make the ninth count.  Let us use profanity, brutally kill lots of people where red stuff comes out of their hacked bodies, even show some quick boobies, and wrap up the rather tragic life of James Howlett as a stylistic Western that literally quotes Shane in the finale.  Yeah that speech was a little eye-ball rolling btw, but hell, it deserves a pass.

Her other mutant ability is to be able to memorize entire monologues from movies after having seen them only once.

I am glad that Logan did not pander to the comic book dork too much.  In general, I feel we should get past this.  Captain America: Civil War could be the to-date biggest offender of "fuck it, let's just put everyone on screen together cause fans will eat this shit up" motif, where making a really fantastic movie that works as a movie comes second to supplying the screen with superhero geek masturbation.  I certainly understand this as each film has to top itself, but the novelty of The Avengers is something to leave in the rear-view mirror.  I recall saying "this is so fucking cool" just to see Captain America and Iron Man share their first screen shot together, but now, I just want a better movie and again, these films are good, but why not make them better?

The MCU is going to get more and more crammed up, frame by frame and that is a given.  It is going to take everyone in top form to take down Thanos afterall.  I expect those movies to be fist-throwing spectacles of course; pure popcorn fare.  Go big and make everybody yell in slow motion.  These movies have their place I suppose, but they need not necessarily be the norm.  Look at the cliche, go-to-example of superior comic book movie making The Dark Knight.  That film was not great because it had two iconic Batman villains in it and he got to punch Joker in the face a lot.  It was great because the cinematic scope of it was huge yet firmly rooted in reality and every character's motivation was crystal clear and only helped build upon that scope.  Take all the costumes and comic book imagery out in other words and it was still a damn good movie.

And now Christopher Nolan gets to make a hugely budgeted WWII film.  Everybody wins!

The refreshing thing all the same about Logan is here we are at the end of an arc, even an era, and the story is simple, the characters are sparse, and it is a far more emotionally pleasing film that any X-Men movie ever was.  This is what we need more of.  Take a single character and tell a story, a good story.  We all want sequels and we all want to spend our money on sequels.  Shit, we all binge-watch TV shows on Netflix now, so everybody and their mother likes to see the story continue.  There is a wide, vast world of fascinating mutants whose personal journeys we can patiently explore through the years and films.  As First Class brilliantly proved, you can even keep recasting these same mutants and keep telling their stories and the movie going public minds not a tit.

Logan is something beautiful to aspire to.  A bloody bow on a long-in-the-wrapping package.  Wolverine can have his rest.  Let us now open up the gates to the others in Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and see where their stories lead.  So many can carry their own films and franchises and I am confident movie executives will realize this even if in their mind, they are just scraping the barrel.  Also if it is a prequel and Hugh Jackman wants to swing by and say "fuck off" on camera for a quick cameo, who amongst us can honestly complain?

Bang-up job good sir.  You've earned the right to dance.