Logan Review

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2017)

Logan is the final chapter in Hugh Jackman's Wolverine story. With it's R rating and darker tone, this had the potential to be Marvel's (well Fox's) Dark Night, or burn where it stands like the other Wolverine film. Thank god it was the first one.
In Logan we get an old Logan, an Old Man Logan. While it is extremely loosely based off the comic, it was still great to get this older Logan that just doesn't care. His aged, his body isn't like it use to be, and his starting to become a grumpy old man. What was so great about this aged version of Wolverine, is you can see the younger Wolverine from previous film turning into this guy over time. Everything he did didn't seem out of character and he still had the Wolverine personality he has had for 17 years. I think much of this is down to the performance of Jackman. No matter what quality of X-Men movie he has been in, he has nailed Wolverine and this film is no different.
As well as being Jackman's last appearance as Wolverine, unless there's a Deadpool cameo, it was also Patrick Stewart's last appearance as Professor X. I've always really like Patrick Stewart as Charles, despite not jumping into the X-Men franchise til the new incarnation of McAvoy had come about. In Logan, Professor X is aged and unstable and I liked them playing with the idea of what would happen when the most powerful mind in the world becomes old. Through seizers that is able to freeze everyone in their place, we got to see how dangerous Charles has unintentionally become in his old age. While I've always really liked Professor X as a character through the other films, I think this is my favourite version of him because he comes with so much depth and history that he feels like this powerful and wise mutant. Again like Jackman, Stewart's performance is outstanding during this film and what is done with the character is because of what Stewart was about to do.
Moving on to our new mutant, Laura, aka X-23, was an absolute hit with me. Not meaning to get repetitive but the performance by Dafne Keen brought this innocence yet uncontrollable aggression to the character. While I'm not too familiar with the character itself in the comics, I felt like they were able to give her a great origin and make it clear who she is and how she has come to be. While this film is an end to an era in many ways, it still leaves a slight gap open to a new series, which I would personally be all for because we would have X-23 leading the pack. She was such a strong character and it is disappointing that we probably aren't going to get more of her story because she's a character you want to follow. Now onto the R rating. This film needed it. While Deadpool needed the R rating for the humour, Logan needs the humour the the realisticness. This is the most grounded and realistic X-Men film we have ever gotten. We are in this lived in and matured world that not giving it the realistic treatment. The main reason for the R rating is the language and violence, very similar to Deadpool, however it was used in such a different way. We got to see what Wolverine is, a killing machine, and not only that, his an aged killing machine that just doesn't care no more. With that comes the violence and gore that we got in this movie. As far as language goes, it's one of those things that when it's not there you don't notice it, but when it is, you appreciate it. While the language wasn't too vague in anyway, being able to have the characters say what they do is more realistic than anything else in this movie. These are mutants who have gone through hell, and being able to see them do simple stuff like drop an F bomb when their frustrated or express their surprise with language gives them more of a realistic feel than I would have gotten from anything else.
Touching on the villains, while they weren't the strongest villains you could think of, I didn't mind because they didn't have an extremely strong presence. They act as a way to further the plot and push our main characters further in the story and that's all they need to do. When they are great when they are on the screen they are great and their villain presence is felt and that's all I wanted them to do, especially a certain one that pops up mid way through the movie. For the most part this is a story about Logan's final chapter and him having something he has never completely had his whole life.
For me, there is only one slight negative through this whole film and it's something that I didn't think of til much later. During the film they touch on what happened to the other mutants and while it give you a pretty decent idea as to what happened to them, there is part of me that wanted that bit more and to actually see what happened. It was just one of those situations where I thought they could of done a "show not tell", however I can see from a length point of view as to why they went about it the way they did.
Overall I loved this movie. After Deadpool last year I never thought I would see a Fox Marvel property that I liked more but this is it. This is the Dark Knight for a Marvel character and it's going to go down as one of my favourite superhero movies of all time.
9.5/10