If there was a standard in films it's the unwritten rule (that was dropped in last years X-Men: Apocalypse) that the third film of a franchise is always the worst. No franchise has ever been able to break away from this tradition. I never thought I would see anything like that and that's why I'm a little bit shell shocked right now at how great a film Logan happens to be. This film is a revelation, an oasis in a desert of the tried and true comic book movie formula. Like last years Deadpool, Logan breaks the conventions and succeeds at several levels.
The year is 2029 and Logan (Hugh Jackman) is a chauffeur, saving up his dollars to buy a boat and live out his days on the high seas. Mutants are all but extinct with Logan having a safe house across the border in Mexico with a senile Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and albino tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant) caring for the professor while Logan is away driving prom dates and bachelorettes around in the wee hours of the morning. When a woman mysteriously tracks Logan down and asks for help in taking a young girl named Laura (Dafnee Keen) to "Eden", a sanctuary for mutants that gets them into Canada and safety. They need Logan's help because they are being pursued by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and the corporation that has managed young Laura since her birth.
Director James Mangold almost had it with The Wolverine, but that film derailed in its last 20 minutes. With Logan he makes it to the finish line with a film that isn't all about explosions and flashy costumes. The film takes a swipe at the comics that furnished the characters and how ridiculous the stories contained within them. Logan is a character piece expanding between generations and the passing of the torch that occurs in our lives. Both Logan and Xavier are old and beginning to feel the pains associated with aging, like we all do. Jackman is Wolverine and always will be, but he goes beyond the typical Bub and one liners by bringing a raw emotion to the tole that hasn't been there before. The breakdown of everything he once had has worn him down along with time. The rest of the cast holds up to the subject matter that is well written and doesn't play the audience like idiots. As a story the film does take pieces from the graphic novel Old Man Logan, but has managed to break it down into something else, partly out of storytelling (where it succeeds) and partly out of not having access to all of the pertinent characters.
This is the movie Marvel wishes it could be. This is the movie DC once was (The Dark Knight). A gritty and realistic take on super heroes without the other worldly components. Logan is a film that borrows more from the western genre than the comic books where the characters were born. Shane is referenced heavily in this film as a man resists going back to what he once was only to be pulled back to it like the tides. Nature will always push you there. Logan and Shane are men cut from the same cloth. Add in the feel of The Searchers and you get a film that feels epic without blowing up a city. You just blow up someones life. If only other comic book films could be more like Logan and less like disaster porn. Where Stephen Spielberg compared comic book films to the westerns of old, Logan has embraced that identity fully. Films like this will keep the genre alive.
My son turned 16 a few months back. Thinking back tonight I realized that in all the franchises out there Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is the only consistent throughout his life. The actor and the character have become synonymous with each other and the idea that the next time you see that character on screen played by someone else is a heartbreaking proposition. I can only compare it to Christopher Reeve as Superman for me (By the time I was 20 we had had 3 Batmen) and the attempts to recast that role in the years since have always led me to the finally verdict that "they were OK, but they aren't close to Reeve's Superman". Call it nostalgia or whatever, but that's what we have to face now. Hugh Jackman has (supposedly) stepped down from a wonderful run, though it had some low spots, he played the role with a relish rarely seen in today's franchised film world. Logan is a wonderful (possible) swan song for the man that has given us the original anti-hero in comic book cinema. We will all miss his take on the character and the permanent mark he has made on super hero films. This generation of the genre ultimately started with him and Logan manages to be the best super hero film I've seen in close to a decade.
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