Logan: Excellent And Unique

I know that this was probably not the article on film you were expecting, nor the one you were looking for. When you're looking for articles on superhero movies, you're probably searching for bombastic titles such as "The MCU is Better Than You Think" or "10 Reasons The MCU Sucks." You're probably looking for articles about why "The Dark Knight" was fantastic or how "Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse" changed the landscape of superhero films forever. And maybe one day, I'll give my two cents on those topics. In fact, I probably will. However, for now, there's a stone in my shoe, and I need to get it out. And that stone is James Mangold's excellent swan song for the Wolverine: 2017's "Logan."

"Logan" is not the flashiest film. "Logan" is not the loudest film. And despite technically being a superhero flick, "Logan" doesn't have any of the clanging bells and blowing whistles that most people associate with superhero films. So, why, then, is this film held in such high regard by myself and others? It is for the same reason that it's overlooked by so many others. "Logan" thrives not in the moments where it dazzles you with sheer, loud spectacle but rather in the moments where it allows itself to be a quiet, sobering, and earnest meditation on the nature of human mortality and the inevitability that we will all die one day, and it clings to an old phrase forgotten by so many: "this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper."

The philosophy of "Logan" can be perfectly summed up in one quote from the movie when Logan finds a comic book about the purported exploits of the legendary X-Men he used to fight alongside and explains to a younger, less experienced character his viewpoint on them: "Oh yeah, Charles, we got ourselves an X-Men fan! You do know they're all bullish*t, right? Maybe a quarter of it happened, and not like this. In the real world, people die. And no self-promoting asshole in a f*cking leotard can stop it!" And the film would have been fine to keep the interaction to this, but the second part of this conversation shows why this film is so truly special. Charles Xavier, once a powerful and capable leader, reduced to a shell of what he used to be, turns to Logan and asks him to stop, telling him that their young protege doesn't need "reminding of life's impermanence." And maybe she didn't, but sometimes we do.

One of my biggest pet peeves about cinema is how no one can stay dead anymore. Somehow Palpatine returned. Iron Man's gone? Well, here's Ironheart! Fantasy films are where this annoying trope runs most rampantly, and so it was a surprise to me when a film that, for all intents and purposes, should have been a colorful, CGI-fueled paint bucket-dropping spectacle instead turned out to be an incredibly quiet, intimate, and intelligent character study as well as a character study where characters can actually die, at that.

"Logan" doesn't open with a bang. Instead, it opens with a drunken shell of the Wolverine waking up in his limo (he's a limo driver now) with a horrible hangover, a bottle of whiskey lying on the seat next to him as a group of thugs try to steal the tires off his car as he sleeps. It doesn't open with an attention-getting, epic, yet whitewashed battle between two powerful foes. No. Rather, it opens with an incredibly brutal, violent, personal, and dare I say it, realistic fistfight with claws that ends not with a 100-meter-tall explosion but rather with an angry old man throwing a tire iron at some perfectly normal and human carjackers fleeing in a panel van. And being "realistic" and "grounded" visually is all good and cool, and I wish it were a trope more superhero films would delve into, but what makes "Logan" special is it being grounded in its character-building as well as its world-building. Speaking of which, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about these characters.

James Logan Howlett is a man who has never been able to die. He's also a man who wants to die. He's approaching 200 years of age, and the world has moved on without him and forgotten about his kind. Once a capable soldier and hero, Logan is now in his last days. He's dying, and he knows it. He wants to die. In fact, he's keeping a bullet, a bullet that could actually kill him, lying around if he ever feels like ending it all. He's caring for his mentor, the former leader of the X-Men, Charles Xavier, whose once-powerful mind has turned on him in the form of Alzheimer's Disease. A degenerative brain disease in the world's most dangerous brain. What a combo. In a normal superhero film, these two men would have entered the frame with a fanfare blaring, clothed in battle armor reminiscent of some future society. Instead, in this film, Logan dresses in a battered black suit and tends to a bedridden Charles as both men waste away. And, as Logan walks away, a distraught Charles calls out to him, begging him to stay, accusing him that he's just waiting around for him to die as the door on the derelict silo they're keeping him in to protect the world from his mind clangs shut. It's a tragically familiar scene for too many, watching your loved ones gradually forget not just who you are but also who they themselves are. And it's something other superhero films haven't dared to do: talk about death. They'd never before dared to show a character at their worst or in their final days. And the film could have just centered around Logan as he battles his inner demons with a quiet, unimportant death facing him from just around the corner. We've already grown to love this character. That would have been good enough. But thank God for James Mangold, who decided to give us a character that has a thing or two to learn from Logan.

Laura was a bit of a wild card. She had already been established in comic book lore as the biological daughter of the Wolverine, and it was only a matter of time before she showed up in an X-men film. And frankly, I wouldn't have introduced her in any other way. In short, Laura's known nothing but pain and anger throughout her short and traumatizing life. She barely talks. In fact, Logan thought she was mute for most of the film. She seems less concerned with talking and far more concerned with killing people. A lot of people. However, the film takes a really interesting and realistic approach to this idea: Laura is not a malicious character. She's not bloodthirsty. However, she doesn't understand the weight of taking a life. All she knows is that killing others is a way to make them stop hurting her. She doesn't understand life's impermanence. She only understands killing as a means to an end. And this makes for a powerful, powerful dynamic between her and her father, Logan. Logan has to teach her what the weight of death really is, and as the film wears on, Laura begins to learn for herself the brand that killing someone else is something you don't go back from. It's a brand that sticks.

I never thought I would see the day when a superhero film actually took the time to meditate on the ideas of life and death or a superhero film that used a Johnny Cash song in it's trailer. In fact, I never thought I'd ever see a superhero film meditate on anything pertaining to mortality. That would be a bit of an oxymoron. Meditating on death in a genre where no one can truly stay dead. However, "Logan" proved me wrong, and while there are a couple of things I would change about this film, namely some fight scenes that drag on a little bit too long and some sketchy color grading in some scenes, this film will always hold a special place in my heart as the superhero film that dared to treat superheroes not as objects for our praise and affection, but rather as people deserving of respect.

Logan - 8/10

"There's no living with a killing. There's no going back. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand sticks. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her....tell her that everything's all right, and there aren't any more guns in the valley."

- Shane, 1953

Isaiah 40:6-7