Logan
Composite Score: 85.18
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal, and Quincy Fouse
Director: James Mangold
Writers: Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green
Genres: Action, Drama, Sci-fi, Thriller, Superhero
MPAA Rating: R for strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity
Box Office: $619.18 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Logan is James Mangold’s film about the Marvel superhero Wolverine. It serves as the tenth film in the 20th Century Fox X-Men series and the third film in the Wolverine trilogy, following X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine. The story follows the titular hero in the twilight of his life, no longer healing as fast or taking hits as easily as he had previously, forced to live in secret with a debilitated Professor X near the Mexican-American border, saving money to purchase a boat that will allow them to live safely away from other people who might be affected by Xavier’s intense seizures that have resulted from his declining state. Their situation changes when Logan encounters a mutant girl and her caretaker offering him money for protection and transportation to the Canadian border in North Dakota before they are found by the pursuing agents from the sinister Transigen corporation. The story, and apparent close to Hugh Jackman’s run as Wolverine (prior to the whole Deadpool 3 thing), draws heavily on western tropes of lone wolf heroes, violent men, and protecting innocents and truly delves into the experience of outcasts, immigrants, and the elderly in an increasingly capitalistic and streamlined society while remaining an entertaining superhero action flick. It stars Jackman in the titular role, joined by Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Boyd Holbrook as the villainous bounty hunter Pierce, Stephen Merchant as the mutant Caliban, Richard E. Grant as Transigen’s head researcher and developer Dr. Rice, and Dafne Keen as the young mutant that everyone is after, Laura. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and it currently sits at number 215 on IMDB’s list of highest-rated movies.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Like many superhero films, Logan tackles a slew of contemporary political issues, while focusing most of its story on its characters. In the case of Logan, most of that tackling feels well-intentioned and, indeed, intentional, but some of it still feels fairly thin in its execution in favor of the film’s deeper character study on Logan. As such, it does a good job of exploring the concept of heroes and legacy and even, to a lesser extent, fatherhood, but its secondary themes of immigration and commodification feel like pieces that naturally stem from the source material but don’t get a lot of attention from the filmmakers. They’re there, and for someone looking to explore them, they have some skin on their bones, but they take a marked backseat to the less controversial and more marketable themes from Logan’s story. It’s not necessarily even a bad thing. I think this film wouldn’t really benefit too much from increasing the amount of thematic exploration in it, but it always feels a bit pander-y when a superhero film has these kinds of themes floating around without ever fully addressing them. It’s not something unique to Logan by any stretch of the imagination, but it remains frustrating as someone who would love for a mainstream superhero film to really get overt in its exploration of such themes.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
I do think that there’s an argument to be made for Logan as the best standalone superhero film of the 2010s – a decade dominated by superheroes. None of the film’s conflicts stem from events of other films; none of the references to other films do anything other than serve as minor Easter eggs, and all of the characters feel like they could have just existed in this story without any prior writing or other such “homework” for the audience to do. Combine that freestanding nature with the facts that the film’s story is so classic and genre-blending, that its action offers more intensity than your standard superhero fare, and that the performers all do a phenomenal job in their roles, and I don’t know how you could come to any other conclusion than this being the best standalone superhero film of the decade. (The Dark Knight is still the best overall, unless you don’t count Batman as a superhero, and even that’s a little iffy just because of all the Rachel stuff that carries over from Begins.) The film’s blend of cyberpunk and western imagery and tropes comes so naturally and creates a unique aesthetic that adds to the film’s sense of detachment and isolation by leaning into the most alienating aspects of both genres, forcing Logan, Charles, and Laura into their increasingly fraught situations. The gory superhero action that then gets inserted into those genres elevates the whole thing by bringing in a third genre but also by utilizing those other genres (gadgets, showdowns, isolated locales, fights with personal stakes) to improve upon the familiar formula of superhero films. Jackman and Stewart then bring to bear two of their career-best performances to seal the whole deal. Stewart’s aging Charles becomes the most moving and engaging form of the X-Men founder, tapping more deeply into the character’s humanity and showing us a side that often gets overlooked in the more reserved and/or angsty versions from the rest of the X-Men films, portraying aging in an authentic way that still remains true to the character’s nature as a former superhero. Jackman also gets to do more than just smoke cigars, forget his past, look ripped, and fight people with his claws in this film, getting to showcase a more nuanced version of Logan that utilizes the actor’s more emotive capabilities. Yes, he still does all those things (besides the past stuff, we’ve pretty much handled that by this point), but we also get to see the character’s regrets and the ways that his violent past has shaped him into a jaded shell of his old self, waiting for his friends and then himself to die. His development from aimless degenerate to driven paternal protector feels natural and fully engaging thanks to Jackman’s skillful performance and his intimate knowledge of the character for so many years.
Whether you agree with the intensity of my above statement, there’s no denying that Logan is one of the best superhero films of the 21st century, offering audiences more depth of character and story combined with more intense action and quality acting than they often expect, making this one of the Greatest Films of All Time. It still suffers from mainstream superhero films’ tendencies toward introducing a lot of talking points without actually fleshing any of them out, but it improves upon that formula by offering a moving central story about its titular character coming back into touch with the world he lives in and the people important to him. This film can currently be streamed via Disney+ for anyone who needs to check it out in the coming days.
