The early buzz on Logan was bafflingly praiseworthy. Ryan Reynolds mentioned Hugh Jackman should win an Oscar for his performance. Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman have both mentioned this is their last outing because they wanted to go out on a perfect note. And the movie was very early certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Can Logan be that good? For me, the answer is an unqualified yes; in fact, Logan is now the new standard bearer for best Marvel superhero movie in existence, passing last year’s Captain America: Civil War.
Gone are the days of the X-Men when Logan starts. We meet our hero (Hugh Jackman) asleep, disheveled, and sick from the Adamantium that has kept him alive for so long. He gets by driving a limo for an Uber-type app to care for the mentally compromised Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and sunlight-challenged Caliban (Stephen Merchant). Logan is forced to upend his quiet existence when a mercenary named Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) is hunting a girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) who Xavier swears is a mutant even though mutants have been wiped out by humanity. The group takes a road trip to attempt to get Laura to Eden, a place where people like her have supposedly found paradise.
Logan, believe it or not, owes a great deal to Deadpool, which proved you can make a really good R Rated superhero movie. Logan’s R Rating provides the movie with a visceral and emotional impact lacking in the previous Wolverine films. Logan’s gruff exterior manifests in profane speech, as he and Professor Xavier snipe at each other with cruel profanity that hits deep. The violence in Logan is MUCH more terrifying, with those claws decapitating, impaling, and severing anything that gets in Logan’s way. But more importantly, those scars Logan previously would shake off linger a LONG time. Each new fight hurt me, with the scars lasting for days, and as the movie goes on Logan’s recovery time gets worse and worse. The key point here is that this Logan will make you feel pain. This is a man who’s been around forever, and is trying to forget his past and fade away, only the world keeps pulling him back in because of how good he is as an assassin. However, the deaths, like the Adamantium, give him life but leave him empty and slowly decaying from the inside, reminding us why Logan likes to keep to himself and not get close to anyone. Juxtaposing this aging man with the youthful Laura forces Logan to open up out of necessity, and giving the audience hope that he can find some peace.
Remember when hiring Hugh Jackman to play Wolverine was seen as a big risk? Those days, like Wolverine’s, are forgotten. Jackman is amazing in Logan. He nails the gruff exterior, playing Logan world weary but still scary. But as the story goes along, Jackman links this weariness to Logan’s loner status, and how Laura opening him up opens Logan up. Jackman then throws in heavy doses of melancholy with newfound purpose, lamenting a life he could have had with Laura and Professor Xavier. But the constant pressure from Pierce and the outside forces pushing Wolverine back into assassin mode make Jackman a complicated mess of emotions, which the actor nails. As the movie reached its conclusion, I realized my mouth had been wide open for a good hour, marveling (pun intended) at Jackman’s mastery of what makes Logan tick. Aiding Jackman are Patrick Stewart and Dafne Keen. Stewart is quite good playing a disabled Xavier, kinda there but unaware of his own terrifying loss of control of his powers; Keen is more impressive in a mostly wordless but primally vicious and naked performance.
Hugh Jackman is right; Logan is his perfect swan song. James Mangold and Jackman came up with a pitch perfect near masterpiece to say goodbye to the stalwart of the X-Men franchise. You’ll hurt, and you might cry, but you will definitely feel: high praise for a movie about an indestructible clawed man.