If what Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have said were true, that James Mangold's "Logan" will be their final movie as Wolverine and Charles Xavier, then they are definitely leaving the 17-year-old franchise with a bang. And you, breathless. This latest X-Men movie is void of the other mutants we’ve come to love and make its universe colorful. Meaning, there is no shape-shifting Mystique, there is no Magneto bending a fork. In fact, there is not much obvious (and sometimes cheap-looking) CGI at work here compared to that forgettable Apocalypse outing. In this storyline though that takes place in the year 2029, we have Jackman’s Wolverine who is now extremely rugged and is becoming increasingly cynic to everyone around him, including a Professor X who seems to have aged not so very well. Both seems to be withering not only on the outside but also deep within the recesses of their being. And we have Laura, a new mutant who could be the perfect remedy for the numerous doubts and hopelessness of Wolverine. Or not? It is hard not to see this film as a reflection of our current times—the never-ending hate towards people who are different from other people, the uncertainties that meet us in every corner, the fragile thread that connects life and death. This film is brutal, angry, and in several instances, too painful to watch, that it totally upends all of our existing notions of the strong, seemingly unbreakable superhero—which is very ironic for a character with super-healing powers. And for a character that wields sinister blades from the edges of his fists, Logan is a surprise in that we only got this kind of Wolverine movie just now. Although Mangold may have succeeded in finally shedding light on the weaknesses of iconic superheroes, this one ultimately ends on a strong, high note. I am putting this up there, next to Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” [2008] and Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger,” as one of the best comic-book superhero movies in recent memory.
[ image borrowed from this site ]
