LOGAN: Hurt

Director: James Mangold
Writers: James Mangold, Scott Frank, Michael Green
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant
137 mins.
2017

Logan exists at a fascinating nexus in the development of the superhero genre, a genre which has reigned supreme in Hollywood for a decade and a half. For one, it could not exist as it is without the meteoric influence of Deadpool. That property--the red-suited stepchild that Fox wanted badly to forget about--forcibly redefined the four quadrant parameters of mainstream superhero movies simply by being likable. Everything about Logan was a far riskier proposition than everything about Deadpool, and was certainly only entertained in the wake of Deadpool's box office blowout.

Logan also only makes sense at this point in the careers of Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. Not counting this film, Jackman has played this character for seventeen years in a total of eight films, approximately four of which were any good.* That ubiquity is, I believe, unprecedented in film history (at least until Robert Downey Jr. surpasses it in half a decade). Thus the death rattles of an ultrapopular screen portrayal happen to dovetail nicely with the first time said character's violent nature can be fully portrayed under the aegis of the MPAA.

*Feel free to check my math: X-Men 3/4 good, X2 1 good, X-Men: The Last Stand 1/4 good, X-Men Origins: Wolverine 0 good, The Wolverine 3/4 good, X-Men: First Class 3/4 good, X-Men: Days of Future Past: 1/2 good, X-Men: Apocalypse 0 good.

Even more perfect is the timing for Logan mastermind James Mangold. In the third decade of a storied career that includes the excellent 3:10 to Yuma, and coming off one of the more respectable X-Men movies in The Wolverine, Mangold was in the perfect position to use his influence to shape the legacy of Wolverine as he saw fit.

In addition to all that, Logan deals heavily with themes of hopelessness and fatalism in the face of bigotry as our country is confronted with just such a plight. Despite being written a couple years back, Mangold's script proves shockingly prescient. The plot revolves around a cabal of technologically enhanced white men pursuing a little Mexican girl they wish to control. Non-normative children seek asylum by crossing the border into Canada. Frat boys swill beer and chant "USA! USA!" at the heavily militarized Mexican border. And the only relief from the pervading cultural sense of ennui and apathy is found in adverts for junk food and energy drinks. The masses are content as long as they get their corn syrup. I don't know how Mangold did it, but with every passing day this 2029 proto-apocalypse feels more astoundingly plausible.

This perfect storm of social, cultural, artistic, and economic factors allows for Logan to be that rarest of things in the superhero genre: truly uncharted territory. One could even argue that Logan is primarily a Western with superhero accoutrements. The film plays like a classic retired gunslinger story - but if that gunslinger had metal claws, and his mentor powerful telepathy, and his enemies robot arms. Yet these more ridiculous elements are underplayed and earnest enough that they don't interfere with the otherwise muted tone, but for a handful of jarring expository lines of dialogue.

Logan's summary departure from the norm means that this is the first time we have ever seen a household name superhero committing acts of horrible violence onscreen (putting aside Zack Snyder's PG-13 brutalism). If that thought puts you ill at ease, I am sympathetic. Superheroes are wholesome youthful pop entertainment; craving them to be more "adult" and "mature" (read: bloody and gratuitous) is the exact regressive line of thinking that promoted Snyder to overlord of the abortive and culturally damaging DCEU. Yet the truly admirable thing about Logan is that every moment of brutality is totally earned. After all, the title character has razor sharp blades in his knuckles. But more importantly, Logan is a meditation on violence and killing. The thoughtless, kiddified comic violence of the previous films is recontextualized as a heavy burden on this washed-up hero's soul.

The deep history of Jackman's character fills out these themes. The X-Men films have always espoused hope in the face of adversity, even in the dystopia of Days of Future Past. Logan is heartbreaking because our heroes have lost touch with their ideals. Mutantkind is nearly hunted to extinction. No new mutants have been born in decades. Charles Xavier's dream is dead, the vestiges of which were destroyed by a degenerative brain disease that he cannot control. Logan is suicidal, his healing is slow and painful, and he is being poisoned from within.

Into this hopeless world comes Dafne Keen's Laura. She is fierce, vivacious, with a will to live, a yearning for freedom. Keen gives a dynamic performance, the best by any child in the history of the superhero genre, and better than 98% of the adults. She owns the screen. Without even speaking, using the slightest gestures and glances, Keen makes Laura into a fuller character than we are used to in a movie with a budget exceeding $100 million. She is also an instant action movie icon. She is a devastatingly convincing threat despite her small stature, and her screams of rage are nightmarish. Keen is an incredible discovery, the beating heart of a movie with a tortured soul, similar enough to Logan to earn his respect, different enough to drag him out of his stupor.

In a beautiful, tragic culmination to their relationship, Logan sacrifices any life he might have had in order to care for his senile father figure Charles. All the more biting when Xavier tells him he is a disappointment for abandoning the good fight. Meanwhile, all his demons reassert themselves in the form of Laura, a daughter figure who is more like him than he would care to admit. These familial relationships are buffeted by Logan's concerns with legacy and self-image. On the one hand, there is the idealized mythic version of Wolverine as presented by the pulpy X-Men comic books. This is the version that Laura believes in, and that smarmy villain Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), a self-professed "fan," rubs in Logan's face. Logan considers it to be candycolored nonsense for babies; he knows his inner ugliness, and he knows the toll of killing like no comic book can represent. On the other hand, Logan is literally confronted with his baser impulses in the form of X-24, a virile clone that has been engineered to be driven by rage. This villain is the cheesiest aspect of Logan, but it works thematically. Logan struggles to understand his worth as an individual caught between his ideal legacy and his material limitations.

Stewart is at his best, Jackman has never been better, and Keen is revelatory. Logan and Charles have a withered rapport that alternates between glimpses of affection and outpourings of vitriol. Dialogue is heavy, effortful. Characters try to speak meaning into existence, but trail off into dejected silence, a motif that is mirrored in the hesitant, depressive score by Marco Beltrami. The world is almost too weary to hold itself together, which makes any glimmer of hope severe by contrast. Yet still, the film manages to linger on its moments of aching beauty enough to offset the cynicism of its desolation. Logan is superheroism by way of Cormac McCarthy, a film that wears its influences on its tattered sleeves but is no lesser for it, a dramatic step forward for the superhero genre, and certainly the forefather of a myriad of painful point-missing knockoffs in the years to come.

4 / 5  BLOBS