Logan
X-Men Unorigins: Wolverine
+: Hugh Jackman can do this in his sleep (and sometimes does), Patrick Stewart in general, Dafne Keen a revelation.
-: a little too telegraphed in parts, villains slightly dull.
Back in March, when Logan was first released, the reaction got a little excitable, and in all fairness, this is a film that hits hard on first viewing. Comparison to The Dark Knight (2008) didn’t seem unreasonable, and it still isn’t. Logan does truly offer innovation to the form. No other superhero film has gone this small (at least, not intentionally — there are plenty of low-budget efforts which have gone smaller), nor portrayed the superhero battle in such a weary, grubby, undignified manner. And with the possible exception of parts of the Dark Knight trilogy, no other superhero film has been willing to defy its potential audience.
And yet. On rewatch, the cracks in Logan appear. We’re not talking crippling flaws, here; this would be ridiculous. No, the minor issues arise in part because James Mangold just isn’t Christopher Nolan, for better or worse. On at least two occasions, and probably more, we have Wolverine uttering “oh, shit” for those in the audience too slow to react likewise. On another occasion, a music cue jumps in point out how what’s happened is really bad, although by that point it should be incredibly obvious (everything in said moment is bleeding or on fire, for starters).
Of course, the problems within Logan are in most respects less than the problems Logan causes. Fox’s X-Men continuity hasn’t made any sense since at least X-Men: First Class (2011) (and X-Men 3: The Last Stand (2006) started taking the piss three entries in), but now the studio’s decided to leap ahead to a distant finale (and not that distant, either — the X-Men rights will probably still be at Fox when the real 2029 comes around) causes intense headaches for anyone making the mistake of applying a small amount of thought. There are at least two timelines (there might be three) in the X-Men film series; at least one is either erased, and hence ‘never happened’, or else one in which mutants were steadily wiped out by Sentinels. In this, the leading-to-Logan timeline, mutants have dwindled thanks to a) the Westchester incident and b) conspiracies by organised anti-mutant bigots. What this means, in essence, is that the X-Men series is all for nought. The endless fighting against Magneto was futile either way. Remember this, when X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2018) rolls around: no matter how many bits of metal Michael Fassbender chucks about, or how much of the budget goes into crowbarring Jennifer Lawrence into a glorified cameo, or how loudly Sophie Turner goes kaboom, none of it’ll matter for shit. The clock is already ticking down to the day when Wolverine’s girl-clone is terrifying gas station cashiers and nicking their sunglasses.
That’s disappointing. And the unfortunate truth is, there isn’t really a rival Jackman performance for Logan, either — and there kinda needs to be. For what it’s worth, I’d say it’s worth combining X-Men (2000), X2 (2003), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) for necessary backstory, but we’re Scotch-taping a legacy here. After all, on its own, Logan is a compelling story — but one lacking context.
It’s also a very straightforward one — a chase from Mexico to Canada, a geriatric version of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)’s first half. And, as hinted above, all of the three protagonist leads are brilliant. It’s a hell of a task to take a child actor, throw them up against Patrick Stewart, and make them make it work with less than half the dialogue, but Dafne Keen manages it with apparent ease.
Overall, then, Logan isn’t quite the classic it seemed on first glance — besides the aforementioned problems, it could maybe lose some minutes and its weary tone isn’t for regular viewing — but it is a striking high point in its series, let down, predictably, by the clomping idiocy of the studio releasing it.
