Superb ‘Logan’ uses metal claws to dash X-Men movie norms
In nine “X-Men” films over 17 years, Wolverine’s biggest nemesis has arguably been a PG-13 rating. While the popular Marvel character had the swagger and sideburns right, the conformist limits of big-money blockbuste-rmaking ensured few real surprises.
“Logan” takes its indestructible metal claws to comic book movie norms and destroys them, and it’s a wonderful thing. The new Wolverine film, out Friday, exists in an established universe, but it takes a massive tonal shift from the relatively bloodless earlier X-Men films, going berserk in its own moody and ultra-violent direction.
“Logan” isn’t quite as good as Clint Eastwood’s 1992 revisionist Western “Unforgiven,” but it performs a similar function. The film celebrates the medium by taking itself seriously, with an added hint of apology for the genre’s earlier sins. Best of all, there’s an element of risk. The success of the equally brazen 2016 hit “Deadpool,” and the quality of this adventure, bodes well for the artistic future
of comic book films.
The movie imagines the hero in a bleak future, his powers waning, his body poisoned, and most of his mutant brethren either missing or dead. He drives a limousine and cares for Professor Xavier, a telepath who was once among the greatest minds on the planet, but now battles dementia. Logan, aka Wolverine, is a few dollars away from achieving his final sad dream — buying a boat and sailing away with his old teacher, leaving the X-world behind.
The supporting characters include good people who die without honor or redemption, and (in a brilliant move by director and co-writer James Mangold) real world X-Men comic books, scoffed at by Logan as mostly fiction. More than a decade of technology advancement has given military personnel cyborglike enhancements — so the common soldier-for-hire is on close to equal footing with our diminished hero.
Into this dismal backdrop comes Laura Kinney, a young girl version of Logan who brings the real Wolverine back in the game, as her own mystery unfolds.
Hugh Jackman is wonderful as Logan, clearly rejuvenated by the added depth of character. Jackman, who reportedly took a pay cut to ensure the movie’s R rating, walks with a limp and successfully conveys bigger battles going on inside his indestructible skull.
But “Logan” reaches action movie critical mass with the arrival of Kinney, who has the mute steeliness of Newt from “Aliens” (still the high water mark for flinty cinematic 9-year-olds) plus the fighting prowess of an in-his-prime Wolverine. Actress Dafne Keen is solid in the role, but the character’s success is a group effort, aided by the director, choreographer, stunt doubles and visual effects professionals who keep her action scenes close to seamless.
“Logan” is plodding at times, and inconsistent — after all that R-movie carnage, the ending takes a softer “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” turn. At its best, this is still the second greatest modern Marvel Comics film, behind “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”
But these minor shortcomings are overwhelmed by the relief of seeing a big budget superhero film try something new. If you’re in the rocket that escapes the Earth’s gravity for the first or second time, do you bother complaining about the astronaut food on the way back?
The importance of “Logan” is heightened by the increasingly frustrating superhero movie landscape.
The 21st century has been a geek wish list come true, with franchises for every major superhero, overlapping with each other like a never-ending quilt of awesome. But the more that the stories of Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man and the others weave together, the less allowance for surprise or deviation. When movies are planned in multiyear phases, the master plan becomes bigger than any one filmmaker or actor.
“Logan” is so much better than that. A very dark movie, filled with hope for the future.