Utterly depressing

Rating: 3/10 (14 May 2017)

As if Marvel felt a dire need to drop their legacy of family friendly superhero movies and jump on the current bandwagon of 'realistic' and gritty movies void of any kind of morality, they went completely overboard with 'Logan', snuffing out even the tiniest ray of hope that might be gleaming on the horizon in this utterly depressing movie which not even the solid acting can save.
Without receiving any redeeming background information, we're thrown into some bleak near-future setting where the mutants are now almost extinct and mankind is hunting the last remaining non-government controlled mutants. Logan, for reasons unexplained now a limo driver, is possibly even more dejected and grumpy than ever, and he's lost all sense of hope and purpose. Obviously, something has happened to cause this situation, but this is never adequately explained to the viewer. We are to accept that all he cares about now is collecting money so he can get to some sort of safe haven which is vaguely hinted at but never elaborated upon. But he hasn't just lost all hope and purpose; no, he has wilfully abandoned it and spits in its face, and the viewer is made thoroughly aware of this throughout the film via his unrelentingly callous and self-centered attitude. He's apparently sick and dying,though it was hard to make out exactly why, due to the inarticulate dialogue and the film's annoying habit of not sharing any insight into any of the events that led to the depressing state of affairs the viewer finds their once-heroes in. He's also become an alcoholic,adding to the depressing tone.
Superheroes have lost; big pharma and global corporations are in full control. The movie is littered with F-bombs and gruesome gore, which feel totally out of place in a Marvel setting. Ultimate good guy Charles Xavier has become a weak and senile old bed-wetter, who's constantly in need of getting medication lest he destroy the world with his now degrading mind.
In such a dreary setting, with Logan extremely reluctantly taking on the job of bringing a little mutant girl, who escaped from a government facility out to create mutant soldiers for their dark purposes, to some sort of safe haven, the washed up superheroes receive a constant battering through chase after chase by anonymous corporate monkeys, who are out to get the mutant girl, with only Narcos' Boyd Holbrook breaking from anonymity with a charismatic performance, even though there is no information on his character at all. He's leading the chase, and that will just have to suffice for the viewer.
The corporate monkeys catch up with our ailing heroes at their ramshackle desert hideout, and there we discover that the girl is actually a little Logan with claws on both hands and feet, as she kills, maims and gores scores of corporate military monkeys in full glory for the viewer. No eye, skull, neck, chest or artery is safe from the little girl's fury and all that is lacking from the scene is blood dripping from the camera. They finally manage to escape by means of a clichéd freight train getting inbetween, but have to leave behind the wimpy Caliban, a mutant who has the ability to track other mutants.
Even though Logan reads from the medical file that he is somehow the father of the girl, which, fully in line with the movie, remains unexplored, he still treats her like an unwanted appendage, and in fact wants to leave her behind for being too much trouble, but Xavier, who goes in and out of consciousness due to the medication, somehow manages to get Logan to take the girl to her desired destination, a safe haven which Logan discovers is derived from a Marvel comic and therefore non-existent.
When along the way Logan, Xavier and the girl and a random family are both forced off the road by container trucks speeding autonomously on the highway, Logan and Xavier help the family and get invited to their home. With Logan and Xavier still being chased, the family where they are staying gets brutally slaughtered by a soulless,corporate Logan clone, whose existence was briefly hinted at earlier. The scene would not have been out of place in a Freddy Krueger or Halloween movie.
In a completely offhanded fashion, the Logan clone lethally wounds the bedridden and delirious Xavier, who dies from the wound later on and is buried by Logan in a similarly offhanded fashion. The character who is the backbone of the X-men just fizzles out, and it totally fits the tone of the movie.
While we know the corporation is out to eliminate the group of escaped mutant children, when these heavily armed corporate monkeys finally find and surround the children, they inexplicably opt to hold them prisoner. This obviously goes wrong, but not enough for Logan's clone to do battle with and impale Logan on the thick branch of a dead tree. As "Death Wish" Logan finally gets what he wants and lays dying in the final minutes of the movie, he at long last drops his grumpy self-centered attitude which the viewer had to suffer for so long.
Like Xavier, he too gets buried unceremoniously in some backwoods area, and as little girl Logan takes out the cross of Logan's grave and places it sideways to create the X of the X-men, the viewer is, despite the morally grey overtone and despondency and uselessness of our heroes, thus nevertheless reminded that God is still very much dead and the superheroes and accompanying philosophy are still His replacement.
I'm not sold on a Marvel universe turning ever more gritty and gory and full of f-bombs. The tone of this movie conflicts heavily with the established Marvel Cinematic Universe. Perhaps we can expect a Marvel movie that erases this future, or perhaps the writers expect the viewer to take Big Pharma anti-depressant medication and forget all about it.