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 hell of a high note.

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