James' Review -Logan (2017)

 

For many decades, the team at Marvel Comics have created many iconic characters that have been viewed highly by fans in the pop culture community, from Spider-Man to Captain America to Iron Man. However, one character in the cast of the mutant team -The X-Men- has proven to be the most popular of all Marvel heroes; Wolverine aka Logan aka James Howlette aka Weapon X.

In the early 2000s, 20th Century Fox, with the rights to the X-Men characters, produced and released the first X-Men film, which starred Australian actor Hugh Jackman as Wolverine alongside Patrick Stewart as Professor X and James Marsden as Cyclops. Once again, out of all the heroes of the X-Men and other Marvel legends, Wolverine was popular and, in 2009, Fox released X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which focused on Logan. The film failed. A few years later in 2013, Fox released another Wolverine-focused movie directed by James Mangold and was somewhat more successful than its predecessor.

However, there was one issue when it came to Wolverine. The X-Men films were PG-13, geared towards a younger crowd, and the two Wolverine-focused movies received the same rating despite 2013's The Wolverine receiving an R-rated director's cut. In 2017, the game changed with today's topic, Logan. Set in the X-Men film universe (a version of it) and in the not-too-distant year of 2029, Logan follows Hugh Jackman's Wolverine on his final adventure as he fights to protect Dafnee Keen's Laura/X-23 from dark forces in a dystopian future where the X-Men are no more and mutants are near extinction. And unlike prior films, Logan was R-rated, allowing the Wolverine to be unleashed.

Loosely based on the comic "Old Man Logan" and influenced by old western movies, Logan is a deep, dark and somber action movie that doesn't hold back on the action and the moving plot. Patrick Stewart returns as a dying Professor X and Hugh Jackman plays both Logan and his clone X-24, who kills Charles midway through the movie and is the final enemy for Wolverine. Initially, this film was intended to be the end of Hugh Jackman's time as Wolverine in the X-Men films, but plans changed once Deadpool & Wolverine was in production and Hugh returned to play an alternate version of the character. The end of the movie is a gut punch as Wolverine dies after a grueling and brutal battle with his clone and he shares a touching moment with Laura, who is his daughter.

Prior to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, I was planning on watching this film as perhaps one of the only R-rated comic book adaptations and, before seeing the aforementioned DP&W, I saw this with my dad a few months after we saw Deadpool 2 (which dropped a year after Logan) and it's available for viewing on Disney Plus. Despite the gritty tone and the extreme bloody violence depicted throughout, Logan was nothing short of fun to watch and the action scenes were pretty incredible. 

Next to Hugh, Dafne and Patrick, English actor Richard E. Grant shows up in the movie as the villain and it was thrilling to see him there, especially after I saw him in Loki season one, which dropped a few years after this film released. And watching this a few years before the year it takes place, it's pretty special. My score for Logan is 4.5 stars and I kinda want to see some of the wild west movies that influenced it, cowboys are always the best next to aliens. See ya around, folks.

-James M