Logan is a 2017 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman. The film, distributed by 20th Century Fox, is the tenth installment in the X-Men film series, as well as the third and final Wolverine film, following X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and The Wolverine (2013). It is directed by James Mangold, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Frank and Michael Green, from a story by Mangold, and also stars Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant and Dafne Keen. The film follows a past-his-prime Logan embarking on a road trip across a dystopian future America for one final mission.
Development of Logan began in November 2013, when Mangold was hired to write a treatment that took inspiration from the graphic novel Old Man Logan, by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. In March 2014, Jackman signed on to star as Logan, in what is intended to be his final portrayal of the character, after having played the role for 17 years. The same month, Fox set a release date and officially brought Mangold onboard to direct. Green took over writing duties in April 2015, and by the following April, most of the supporting roles had been cast. Principal photography began in New Orleans on May 2, 2016, and moved to Natchez, Mississippi, before ending on August 19, 2016, in New Mexico.
Logan premiered at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival on February 17, 2017, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 3, 2017, in standard and IMAX formats. It received praise from critics, with some calling it one of the best films in the X-Men series, and has grossed $237 million worldwide against budget of $97 million.
Cast:
Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine/ X-24
Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier / Professor X
Richard E. Grant as Zander Rice
Boyd Holbrook as Donald Pierce
Stephen Merchant as Caliban
Dafne Keen as Laura Kinney / X-23
Elizabeth Rodriguez as Gabriella, a nurse for Transigen and Laura's surrogate mother.
Eriq La Salle as Will Munson, the father of a family who helps Logan, Charles, and Laura.
Elise Neal as Kathryn Munson, Will's wife.
Additionally, Doris Morgado, David Kallaway, Han Soto and Krzysztof Soszynski appears as Maria, Danny Rhodes, Valet and Mohawk respectively. In the commentary to X-Men: Apocalypse, director Bryan Singer had stated that his film's post-credits scene would directly connect with the on-screen debut of X-Men antagonist Nathaniel Essex / Mister Sinister in Logan; however in January 2017, Mangold stated that the character would not be appearing in this film, a choice he made to keep the film's grounded style consistent. Though Mister Sinister does not appear in the film, Kinberg confirmed the scene has correlation to how Laura was created, and that he will make an appearance in a future X-Men movie. Ryan Reynolds makes an appearance as Wade Wilson / Deadpool in a pre-film scene, rather than the traditional placement after the credits, meant to be a teaser of sorts for the untitled Deadpool sequel. The short sequence, which plays before the opening scene of Logan, was directed by David Leitch who will also direct the Deadpool sequel.
Plot: (FULL Spoilers)
In the year 2029, mutants are on the brink of extinction due to a virus created by the Transigen Project. Logan, who has aged greatly because his healing factor has begun to falter due to adamantium poisoning, spends his days working as a chauffeur and hustling for prescription drugs in Texas. He and mutant outcast Caliban live in an abandoned smelting plant across the border in Mexico, where they care for a senile Charles Xavier, who had inadvertently killed several of his X-Men in a seizure-induced psychic attack one year earlier.
Logan is approached by Gabriela, a nurse for Transigen, who asks him to escort her and an 11-year-old girl, Laura, to a place in North Dakota called "Eden". After reluctantly accepting the job, Logan discovers that Gabriela has been murdered. He, Xavier, and Laura narrowly escape from her killers — Transigen's Chief of Security Donald Pierce and his cybernetically-enhanced enforcers, the Reavers — but Caliban is captured and ordered to use his mutant powers to track them. Logan and Xavier learn through a video on Gabriela's phone that Transigen was breeding children with DNA samples from several mutants, but upon completion of the "X-24" project, the children were to be put to death. Gabriela helped several children escape from the Transigen compound before smuggling Laura across the border. Furthermore, Laura is revealed to be Logan's "daughter", as she was bred with his DNA.
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| From the way Laura took out those Reavers at the beginning, it's a hard sell at all that she needs Logan's help at all. |
Logan and Laura arrive at Eden, which is a safe haven run by Rictor and former Transigen test subjects. There, Logan learns that the children will make an eight mile journey across the forest to the Canadian border and entrusts Laura to them before departing on his own. However, when the children are located and captured by the Reavers, Logan uses a mutant serum given to him by Rictor to restore his strength and plows through the Reavers, but the serum quickly wears off before he meets Zander Rice, the head of the Transigen project, who sought to avenge his father's death during the Weapon X program by creating the virus. Logan kills Rice while the children overwhelm Pierce with their powers and kill him.
Logan confronts X-24, but is outmached and impaled through a tree during the fight, before Laura shoots X-24 in the head with an Adamantium bullet, which Logan had kept with him for years. After Logan succumbs to his wounds, Laura and the children bury him before continuing their journey across the border.
The Verdict:
It's been about days since I saw the Thursday night premiere and I'm honestly split on this movie 50/50 on whether I loved it or wasn't really crazy about it. For those who don't know, this film is loosely based on and influenced by the Old Man Logan and Death of Wolverine storylines of Marvel Comics.Much like most fans, I got excited in anticipation in what would be the last film that Hugh Jackman has agreed to play this character in that he has played in every X-Men related film outside of last year's Deadpool for roughly the past two decades. The trailers definitely got people talking, along with the fact that this would be sporting an R-rating along with theatrical debuts of X-23, the Reavers, and Donald Pierce on the silver screen. With all of this, along with a new director to boot, one would think that this film has the formula for a great last hurrah doesn't it? Well, we're going to talk about that...
Narrative
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| You cannot deny that they weren't going for a The Last of Us vibe here... |
My biggest issue with the narrative is that it doesn't really bring the whole Weapon X saga full circle. Sure, Rice is revealed to have ties to the program that made Logan what he is but at the same time, Rice is killed off so promptly during the film's finale that viewers don't even remotely care why he's there in the first place. He had a hand in wiping out what was left of mutantkind after Charles Xavier managed to wipe out majority of the X-Men following a seizure. That fact isn't clearly put out there as it's merely hinted at and glossed over between two different conversations first between Logan and Pierce and later with Logan and Charles. Even with that information, I can't fathom that ALL of the X-Men would be put down by that attack despite what William Stryker tried to do when he tried to weaponize Xavier's powers using Cerebro's technology in X2: X-Men United.
Even with Caliban's tracking abilities combined with Rice's virus, I still can't fathom that mutantkind would be wiped out completely too. You want proof of that? Look no further than in Marvel Comics post-M-Day and the current situation with mutants on the verge of extinction, thanks to Terrigen Mist proving to be fatal. Even if I did somehow believe all of that, there's a few things that I can't just react to like it's something new in this film.
One of the biggest revelations that is brought to the table is the fact that Logan is carrying one of those adamantium tipped bullets that Stryker had made in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. One thing that's inconsistent here is that how did Logan get hold of one of these when his memories got wiped back during that event and the fact that facility was destroyed after the events of X2: X-Men United. You can say that the timeline was corrected following X-Men: Days of Future Past, but the events of the X-Men: First Class films tend to exist in their own parallel universe away from this reality that these Wolverine-centric films have followed.
Logan has kept one of those bullets with the plan of an exit strategy to off himself if things got too hard for him to bare. That shouldn't come to be too much of a surprise for both comic book fans and casual fans as the previous Wolverine film, The Wolverine, had a narrative that was tailored around the idea of Logan wanting to die after finding out there was a way to "turn off" his healing factor after he was struggling to cope with having to kill Jean Grey following the events of X-Men: The Last Stand. The whole point of that film was that Logan would get through that pain and found meaning in his life again, so audiences are subjected to another story where Logan is moping around like a sad puppy for all of the horrible things that he's done in his life. I'm sorry, but the whole premise of that is lost when it wasn't him who killed the X-Men like the original Old Man Logan comic book that this narrative is loosely based off of throws that aspect out of the window. You would think it was Charles Xavier who would be riddled with guilt between his episodes of dementia.
Can someone explain to me why Logan is the one so distraught over with what happened when he wasn't to blame for his friends' deaths? Sure, maybe he wanted to join them in death or maybe he wishes that he could have stopped Charles before the fact, but the latter doesn't explain why he's going out of his way to keep Charles alive. That aspect is completely lost to me, coupled along with the fact that Logan doesn't want anything to do with helping Laura and the mutant children, especially when Wolverine went out of his way to protect the kids in almost every X-Men film to date - Rogue in the original X-Men, the children in X2, how he was convinced to stand with the remaining children and his peers in The Last Stand, the captive children that he freed in X-Men Origins, he stood with Yukio throughout The Wolverine from start to finish, and he definitely helped out his peers in Days of Future Past despite telling them to go fuck off in the previous film. Not to mention that he was convinced to help out the younger X-Men in X-Men: Apocalypse as well. It just doesn't add up. I guess you could argue that he's still convinced that everyone he cares about gets hurt in the end no matter what, but it's a bit extreme to tie that whole thing with the X-Men on his own shoulders. While we're on the subject of things not adding up, can anyone explain to me how Logan got adamantium claws back on that hand that clearly had them chopped off in The Wolverine. They really didn't explain that in Days of Future Past either...
I honestly can't knock Mangold's usage of Pierce and the Reavers here either as they were merely minor obstacles to Logan's greater conflict (much like their comic book counterparts most of the time) - the struggle against his own personal demons which was manifested into the deadly clone X-24 in a sick-twisted turn of irony that Logan's final opponent would be himself at his prime (not to mention, deadliest potential of all of his abilities). You can't get deeper symbolism than that when your protagonist has to face his own demons literally and figuratively like this. In that aspect, this film does the narrative beautifully well. From that horrifying moment where X-24 is introduced to his demise, his inclusion added a dimension to this film that would have been yet another boring "been-there, done that" entry of the X-Men universe, especially for these Wolverine-centric movies.
One thing that shines above anything else in this film is Laura and Logan's on-screen chemistry. Major props go to Dafne Keen for her portrayal of the character and Hugh Jackman's characterization of Logan. They took some cues from the current comics continuity where Laura and Old Man Logan met for the first time and they weren't too keen about each other. Logan wasn't willing to accept her has his "daughter" from his reality while Laura didn't want to accept him as the "father" she lost shortly prior due to the Death of Wolverine story event. In this film, Logan wasn't willing to accept this clone as his daughter while Laura was just looking to be accepted by someone much like her and saw a father figure in Logan. That moment of seeing a cowboy hold the hand of his daughter was etched into her mind for the course of the film with Logan rejecting her at every turn, much like how he refused to allow himself any happiness, until the final moments of his life when he realizes that he truly has lived.
I gotta say that moment where Laura turns the cross on his grave to a "X" was a nice touch. That was a better grave than leaving the poor guy sealed up in an adamantium tomb like the comics did. By the way, Laura's eulogy was an excerpt from the film that her and Charles were watching earlier in the film at the hotel. The only reason I know that is that film was one of many I watched during my Westerns class during my film studies courses in college. That "X" on Logan's grave represents an end of an era of X-Men films as from this moment forward, the X-Universe will be continuing on without Hugh Jackman as the character.
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| Wonder what version of X-Men they were going with from those comics they shown here? Those costumes look fucking awful. |
As much as I like Dafne Keen as Laura/X-23, I think she would have to grow up or allow someone else to take the role if Fox is serious about her taking over the Wolverine mantle in this continuity.
R-Rating
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| Logan and Laura with the fastball special! |
Is it justified? Yeah, definitely. I doubt X-24's debut at about the halfway point would have had as much impact if they went for the PG-13 rating. That would have been as bad as trying to watch those horrible TV edits to the original RoboCop when Peter Weller dies without the R-rating to show the extremes of the violence here.
Visuals & Influences
The biggest thing I can rave about this film is the obvious influence from Old Westerns and film noir with the approach of how this film was handled in terms of cinematography. From start to finish, director James Mangold stylishly weaved this film in a manner that respects and admires the tone of the comic(s) that this titular character originates from. I loved how this film didn't stick to one genre for it's cinematography, but blended aspects of several genres into one. The film opens with that gritty, old Western feel for its first act before dwelling briefly into horror for its climax and slowly winding down into a mash-up of noir and Western for the finale.
I noticed this on several occasions throughout the film, but there's at least 2-3 (there's probably more of these) fight sequences that are heavily inspired by previous X-Men films. Laura's first run in with the Reavers is reminiscent of Logan's assault on the guards breaking into the X-Mansion in X2 while almost the entire sequence in the woods is taken from The Last Stand where Logan ran through Magneto's guards in his attempt to take Jean away from Magneto's camp. Seeing these influences here gave me the same sense of nostalgia that the final boss fight from Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots did, whereas the protagonist of that game, Solid Snake, was forced to relive every encounter with his greatest adversary.
Watch It or Don't Bother?
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| For most people, this was the most heartbreaking moment of the entire movie... For me, it was the most obvious thing to see coming. |
Throughout this review, it might seem like I'm knocking Logan, but for the most part, it's a good film. It has it's shortcomings as there a LOT of inconsistencies in terms of the time table and continuity lining up and making sense here (I'm sure other comic book savvy fans like myself will be picking this film apart for years to come...), but I have a feeling that director James Mangold wanted this film to exist in its own space without ties to the rest of the X-Men film universe that his been established to date. For casual fans and comic book fans alike, I recommend watching this film. Logan serves as a Hugh Jackman's formal goodbye to fans and the X-Men film universe as a whole after playing the Wolverine character for roughly two decades. It's heartbreaking to some to see him go, but I can't say that I didn't see the emotional ending to this film coming. Logan represents what we all have to come to grips with eventually, no matter if we have superpowers or not - our own mortality, the struggle to confront and conquer our own personal demons, as well as what legacy do we leave behind when our lives come to an end.
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