Over my fall break, I spent four days watching every single X-Men movie. It took me over 50 hours and seventy bucks, but I found myself fully engrossed with the entire X-men cinematic universe and its characters, but I was especially invested in Wolverine. Look, I’ll be honest. I love Hugh Jackman and have loved him since the first time I heard him sing (I knew him as Jean Valijean before I knew him as Wolverine). However, the manner in which he plays Wolverine is one of the most needlessly captivating ways that I have ever seen a superhero portrayed and I’m not sure I was able to put my finger on it until I finished my marathon with the critically acclaimed Logan.
Taking place in the near future, Logan is centered around a weary and ill Wolverine who now drives a limousine for a living while caring for an ailing Professor X who is wreaked with deadly seizures. Upon meeting a younger mutant who is very similar to himself, he realizes that his plan to live as a recluse has been upended. When I sat down to watch this movie, I had NO idea what it was about, and only decided to watch this movie and the rest of the X-Men movies after seeing Deadpool and Wolverine. I’ll be honest, I knew how it was going to end, but I didn’t understand how we GOT there. How was it possible that Wolverine, one of the most dauntless characters in the X-Men universe, would be killed?
From the very beginning, this film is set up with a drastically different tone than we’ve seen from any other film in the X-Men universe. The man who can’t be killed is begging for death, having grown ill and survived the rest of the X-Men except for Charles Xavier. Almost Immediately after the film was set up, I came to the conclusion that it worked and worked well because it is bleak, sad, and everything just has a certain aura of hopelessness. It feels very reminiscent of the beginning of Avengers Endgame when half of the cast has been snapped from existence. However, just as these moments of desperation occur like the ailing health and alarming seizures of Professor X, there are also moments like Logan and Charles Xavier swapping stories across the dinner table about how many times Logan got kicked out of the School for Gifted Youngsters.
The steady changes between the two atmospheres that occur in this movie work, because this movie is supposed to encompass the delicate balance of action and drama. The action scenes are well done, but so are the complex dynamics between Logan and almost every other character in this movie. For example, his relationship with Professor X goes from tough love to sometimes feeling like actual misplaced disdain because after all, Professor X is the cause of the untimely deaths of the X-Men.
However, his dynamic with the young Laura is also wildly complicated despite the short amount of time that they spend together. I’d also argue that she provides the most depth out of anyone else in this film, which is definitely saying a lot after Charles Xavier and Logan both share the screen one last time as broken down shells of what they were in their prime. Laura also provides the most symbolic and incredibly poignant part of the movie as she flips the cross above Logan’s grave to make an X. She was brilliant and memorable, and I never once thought, “ugh, Wolverine is dead and now we’re just stuck with her”. No, I felt like this iconic character was survived by her, and the action of moving a cross into the X proved that she understood the weight of Wolverine’s death and all of the X-Men before him.
This was the scene that made me feel like it was more a drama than a superhero movie, and that it almost worked BETTER as a drama. The movies with a younger Wolverine were supposed to be intense and violent. Now, we watch an ailing Logan give up all hope until he finds someone else with his same abilities and provides one last sacrificial action. During this action, he utters the words: “so this is what it feels like.” Is the man who can’t be killed talking about what it feels like to finally die? Or is he talking about what it means to be loved back by someone he cares deeply for to have them depend on him like a father, not only a protector? For once, the fighter understands what it is like to be loved himself.
This movie works because it isn’t about saving the world. The stakes are high in this film but they are high personal stakes. It’s about saving Laura, and caring for Professor X, and Logan fighting for his will to keep surviving. This is seen as Logan fights X-24. He is forced to come face to face with a version of himself that is newer, stronger, and less tarnished. In the dramatic final showdown, he finds himself face to face with X-24, who is all of the parts of himself that he despises and wants to forget, and Laura, also X-23, who holds arguably all of the best parts of him. Here, standing before him, is the inner beast that has the blood of countless on his hands, but somehow, Logan doesn’t choose to die defending himself against this part of him that he hates. He chooses to die for Laura which makes what was already a significant sacrifice hold that much more weight. He was able to die as the hero that he wanted to always be, not the beast that he identified himself as. Logan, one of the most iconic characters of the X-Men and the man who can’t be killed, dies and is not survived by Wolverine, but by Laura.
Lizzie Skaggs
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