Off My Shelf: Logan (2017)... An Extremely Long, Spoilerific Review

In a nutshell: Logan was basically entertaining and, if you love Hugh Jackman's Wolverine character, you should probably go to see it. But you might have a few issues if you also happen to love the X-Men franchise in general.

Everything from here on out is a spoiler, so be warned... **DON'T READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT BIG SECTIONS OF THE MOVIE SPOILED FOR YOU!**


Okay. Although this movie kept my interest pretty much throughout, I was left feeling overall a faint disatisfaction, and it took me days to finally formulate all of my vague feelings into a specific set of issues. The problem was, of course, that overall, the movie moves pretty well and is pretty sound -- but there was still a nagging sense of something not quite right.

PERFORMANCES: The performances were great. Even the worst movie I've seen that featured Wolverine (which would pretty much be a toss-up between X-3: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine)... was not bad because it featured Wolverine, and no part of Hugh Jackman's performance has ever been found lacking. I think his sincerity is what makes him -- that, and his convincing ability to portray physical pain (see The Wolverine [2013]. If there was ever a man who could convincingly take an atomic bomb blast, it would be Hugh Jackman.)

Just walk it off, buddy.I have never seen such convincing "exhausted, sick, old person" staggering as we are treated to in this movie. That doesn't really sound like a compliment, but there were certain points (like when he was exhaustedly running up the hill at the end of the film) that I just wanted to laugh at how convincingly horrible he looked. And, of course, Patrick Stewart was great. The kid wasn't bad -- which is to stay, she did a good job of hopping around and stabbing things, and not talking for the majority of the film. I don't know, I feel like I never connected with the kid -- I never disliked her, nor particularly liked her. I guess I was just neutral to the kid. She was a bit Wednesday-Addams-ish for my tastes.

Don't know why I got that vibe.SPECIAL EFFECTS: The special effects were fine... but, in my opinion, CGI blood continues to behave unlike real blood ought to behave. And I don't care how sharp Wolverine's claws are -- anytime somebody gets stabbed in the head, it looks fake to me.


TONE: The tone of this movie was dead serious, realistic. It seems very difficult to believe that it takes place in the same universe as all the other X-Men movies. (If you want to get real technical -- it's not really clear that it does take place in the same universe as all the other X-Men movies, considering that Professor Xavier has previously died once already and that Wolverine has previously gone back in time and changed the past. Not to mention that X-Men Origins: Wolverine flat-out ignored the chronology of the other films. ...I think I'm just going to assume that it's in a different timeline).
This gets to my overall main issue -- which is that I think the problem is in the story.

STORY: The main thing is that -- although it's a generally respectful treatment of the character Wolverine -- it's an overall unsatisfactory treatment of the X-Men franchise. And that's because the comic book this is based on was never meant to be the official end of the X-Men -- the comic book was written as a one-off, "What if?" story with no real connection to the overall universe. Remember all those other characters you got to know and love in the X-Men films --  Rogue, Cyclops, Storm, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler?  You know, all those people who generally stand behind
Wolverine in pictures?In this version of the story, THEY'RE ALL DEAD. Killed off-screen by one of Professor X's brain farts. Professor X? Drooling incoherent vegetable kept in an oil drum out back. UNTIL, that is, the story needs him to be more coherent -- and then he Grandpa-Joes-it right out of there.
In a figurative sense, of course. I'll just come right out and say it -- I don't like the treatment of the Professor's character in this story. For one thing, why is he in this movie? What purpose does he serve? It seems in the beginning like he kind of gives Logan a raison d'etre  -- except that he doesn't. Did we really need him? Couldn't Wolverine have just been living on his own, and then encountered the kid, and then gone on his adventure? I do think Patrick Stewart did a great job with what he was given (he was impressively feeble) -- but I also think it was a sad end to a character we all knew and loved (although maybe not a more ignominious than his former death in X-3: The Last Stand. You know, the death he inexplicably recuperated from in later films.) In other words... I don't feel like the character has had a good death in this franchise. He deserved better.

Ultimately, though, I know this movie wasn't really about Professor X -- or even Wolverine. They just wanted to put the nail in the coffin of this particular franchise. (You know. So they can re-boot it two minutes from now).
Not that this franchise hasn't had its ups and downs. X-3: The Last Stand was a bad movie -- and even more disappointing coming off the high of X-2. And everybody knows that X-Men Origins: Wolverine was one big fat mistake -- even Hugh Jackman makes fun of it. It's a terrible story with shockingly bad special effects.


What's weird, though, is that this movie (Logan) features some of the exact same beats as X-Men Origins. Story element about the government collecting mutant kiddos in order to weaponize their powers? CHECK. Scene where Wolverine is taken in by kindly farm folks (who are then violently murdered)? CHECK. Adamantium bullet to the brain featured strongly in the resolution? CHECK. Wolverine fights an evil version of himself? CHECK. (From X-men Origins: Wolverine I'm counting his brother, Sabertooth, as an evil version of himself. There were too many, "We're the same!" "You can't walk away from who you are!" -type moments in that movie to not draw this parallel).

They even had the same mutton-chops!So, yes, the filmmakers just lifted these elements from one of the crappiest films of the Wolverine saga. (Maybe to show they could do it better? I won't deny that they did do it better... But it was just very strange to feel like I was watching scenes I had already seen in a much crappier film.)
Whether or not that was purposeful -- I think that there are some big things that were under-explained in this movie. There's a very fine line in script-writing between artfully under-explaining something in such a manner that it's an interesting and thought-provoking mystery... and just plain failing to explain something because you're a kind of lazy script-writer. I'm very much inclined to say that these things fall towards the latter end of the spectrum, because...
1.Why the hell is Wolverine dying? This is important. He suggests it has something to do with the Adamantium in his body... but that's never clarified. Since when is Adamantium poisonous? Is Adamantium just poisonous after eighty or so years of exposure? Is the little girl going to die because of this? Or is it actually something else killing him? All this needed was a single line clarifying the situation... and it was never offered.
"I'm dying... because the script said so."2. So, it's explained that the government has been running this secret program to breed and weaponize mutants using stolen mutant DNA (including Wolverine's). They more or less do some cloning (I say "more or less" because these kids aren't straight-up clones. If they were straight-up clones, they would be identical to the originals, and they're not) to make little kids with mutant powers who are then trained to murder people. But that's kind of hard, so the government decides they have a better idea ("We need something without a soul,") and decide to shred the evidence of their experiment (including the kids) -- proceeding to their next plan. Well, at this point, I began to wonder if they were going to re-introduce Sentinels...

...Giant robot police, essentially, which were featured heavily in the comics and yet have never really (in my opinion) had a solid outing in the movies. They don't have souls, right? That's the only thing they could be talking about, right?

No, their big idea that's better than sorta-clones is just a straight-up identical adult clone of Wolverine (wait, what?!) who dresses in black. So... why or how does he have "no soul"? (The film's words, not mine.) Please explain. Also explain how or why he's an adult, when your first clone project, that came before him, is still composed of seven-year-old kids. (It's my understanding that the comic this is based on featured some time-travel stuff. That would have solved the logistical problems of this film -- but, oooooh, this movie is too realistic for that sort of thing. So, they just don't explain it. Again, this is not a clever mystery -- this is loose and/or sloppy screenwriting.)

So, evil clone Wolverine kind of looks like this. Just without
the suit and the Jason Bateman haircut.Now, I fully admit that their introduction of the identical Wolverine clone to the story was a surprise -- for a few moments, a really big surprise -- but, in the end, kind of disappointing, because it was so easy a device. Red Letter Media thought it was symbolic of Wolverine vs. his own darker side -- but, frankly, I think they were giving the film too much credit, because -- although this the evil clone is defeated -- he's defeated with all the stuff that goes into the symbolic darker side of Wolverine (i.e. rage and killing). There's no moral to this story. He tells the girl a few times that she can't just keep killing people and stealing stuff -- and then he steals some stuff and kills a bunch of people. His last actions on earth? Killing people. (Since he's dying, he technically can't steal stuff at that point.)

So what was the overall moral again? OH YEAH, the overall moral was putting a cap on this franchise. I have no doubt Marvel already has a re-boot plan ready to go, and the only thing stopping them was Hugh Jackman's unending popularity as this character. WHO DOESN'T LOVE HUGH JACKMAN'S WOLVERINE?

Well, a handful of uber-nerds who complain he's too tall, but they don't count.And let me just say this: they're going to have trouble going on with Wolverine without Hugh Jackman. His success as Wolverine is going to be every bit as unrepeatable as Christopher Reeve's Superman. There's a reason "people cling to" Christopher Reeve's Superman, and it's not just to spite big-fat-sour-patch-kid Zack Snyder -- it's because his performance as this character was perfect. He was everything we needed and wanted Superman to be. Even in laughably awful movies, like Superman 4: Quest for Peace, there was nothing lacking about his performance or interpretation of the character.
This photo generously blurs out the very-visible black
curtains in the background of the moon's surface.MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: First of all... I've never read the comic series that this is based on, Old Man Logan.
[image error]
... But I went to see this movie with three people who had, and those people assured me that the plot of this movie has practically nothing to do with the plot of the comic book. For instance, do you see on this cover how we've got a creepy old version of The Hulk, what appears to be a Red Skull version of Captain America, Spider-Woman with a gun, some kind of lizard-dog, monsters, and a child wearing Ant-Man's helmet? Not to mention, this scene happens in the book...

That's Hulk eating Wolverine. And then Wolverine
exploding out of the Hulk's stomach.... Yeah, none of that stuff is in the movie, because they couldn't use any characters who are owned by Disney's half of Marvel, which includes Captain America, Hulk, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, and so on. Therefore, use of this comic alone classifies itself as one big missed-opportunity for a crossover extravaganza. In fact, I'm not even sure why you would do this comic if you couldn't include all those other characters -- especially when all you're taking from it is the very basic premise (Wolverine is old now, and he goes on a road trip) and you just fill in the gaps with plot elements from X-Men Origins: Wolverine... (you know. The worst movie in the franchise. Are they just assuming people didn't see it?)

Second missed opportunity : Okay, this may be a small point, but at one point the characters are watching the movie Shane . Particular emphasis is made on one scene (it's a bittersweet scene where the Shane tells the kid that he's a fighting man, and that he can't settle down and live a normal family life, and has to go away). I can see the parallel they're drawing. It's pretty obvious -- especially when they directly quote those lines later in this film.


... However, a better and far cleverer parallel to draw would have been to this line from Shane:


Don't you think you would be able to do some deeper philosophical stuff by examining this line, and what it therefore means to people like Wolverine and the girl, who have basically been raised to be tools? (There's even a line to the effect that, "They're not children, they're tools." Not those exact words, but something close.) This line could have spawned an examination of the fact that neither of them is inherently all bad -- that they have a choice about how they use their murder-skills, and can use them for bad OR good purposes. It becomes an interesting examination of the nature of free will -- and not just a rather heavy-handed attempt to make this more like a Western by referencing one of the world's most famous classic Western films.

OVERALL: The film kept my interest throughout... Mainly because it was extremely difficult for me to detect the story structure. My general sensation while watching the movie was "interested, but not engrossed"... I was kept interested because I couldn't figure out what was going to happen next --not because I was so wrapped up in the story. So, I feel like this movie will suffer on a second viewing, because I'll know exactly what's going to happen, and there won't be that level of superficial interest to keep me watching.

I felt that the relationship between Wolverine and little-girl-clone wasn't all that strong (due to the lack of personality on her part) -- which meant that the central thrust of the movie, the father/daughter dynamic, was lacking. (And, frankly, was done better in a little movie called X-Men that you might have heard of).

They seemed like they were going for some kind of western-flavored experience... but failed to truly achieve that by failing to have a decent moral to their story.

In the end -- I think it's an entertaining Wolverine movie, and if you like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine you should see it -- but it's a not a great X-Men movie, and a bit of a letdown as an end to the franchise.

RECOMMENDED(...with reservations.)