The end credits sequence, traditionally, comes at the end of a Marvel film. But with Logan, the new R-rated X-Men (kind of) film, the end credits sequence actually comes before. Not just before the credits, but before the entire movie. This quick glimpse into the Deadpool sequel (dropping 2018) is silly, darkly funny, and more than a bit meta*, and putting it at the beginning of the latest standalone Wolverine flick is just one of the many ways that Logan goes beyond everything you may have come to know and expect with an X-Men feature film.
The plot for Logan basically breaks down like this (PS I’m trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible but there will be a few plot details so YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED): It’s 2029, the X-men are gone, mutants have disappeared, and James Howlett aka Wolverine aka Logan is a stretched limo driver with a lot of scars, an obvious limp, and a heavy drinking problem. He’s pretty much shut himself off from the world, living off the grid across the Mexican border and letting only two others into his life – a mutant ‘tracker’ named Caliban and Charles Xavier, once the greatest of mutants and now an old, feeble man, suffering from dementia and possibly worse. It’s a sad, lonely, angry existence for the once superhero, who dreams of nothing more at this point but escaping to sea with the last person he truly cares about in the world. His bitter dreams are upended, however, when a mutant child with familiar gifts is thrown into his life, bringing chaos, death, and destruction in her wake.
If you’ve ever taken the time to wonder just how much damage Wolverine could do with his adamantium claws if not held back by censors and PG-13 ratings, you’ll find your answers in Logan. The filmmakers fully embraced their R rating, and the freedom it gave them to make a film as brutal as it is beautiful. While the fight scenes were choreographed and performed to have as much of a comic-book feel as possible in the X-Men features, here they have been stripped away to instead be as violent and bloody as possible. Logan isn’t just sparring with his enemies here. He’s fighting to win. He’s fighting to kill. His claws tear through flesh and bone like paper and they inflict a world of damage whenever they strike.
The fight scenes aren’t the only things that have been stripped away. The character of Logan himself has been pared down, scraped away, until something much different than what we have become used to has been left behind. Gone is the poofy hair and unique beard style. Gone is the cigar chomping and the snarky back-talking. Gone is the standoffish, gruff exterior, with the heart of gold underneath that was always going to do the right thing. This Logan is a beaten, tired, angry man, who has lost everything that mattered to him and doesn’t know how to or want to try and deal with it. He’s lived too long and been hurt too much to care about anything any longer. He takes care of Charles Xavier and loves him, but they squabble more than talk and they both know this is not how things were supposed to end up. This is not how THEY were supposed to end up.
I can’t go into too much more about Logan or Charles or that mysterious new child mutant without giving away plot details that could be considered spoilers. So I’ll skate around the issue and talk a bit more about the plot itself. There are definitely questions raised as the story unfolds. Why are Wolverine and Professor X the only mutants left in the world (basically)? Why are they hiding out in Mexico? What happened to the rest of the X-Men? How much does this story fall into the continuity set up by previous X-Men or standalone Wolverine films? Answers are revealed to some of these queries, but they’re brief and done so quickly and quietly that they can be easily missed. This is not a film that spends a lot of time reminding viewers of what came before. There is one scene devoted to exposition about halfway through, but it focuses more on explaining the whys and whats of the plot for just this film, and not answering any questions one might have about what happened before we joined this story already in progress. So for viewers that prefer their franchise films to fall perfectly in line with the other films in the franchise, or need a film to explain in great detail what is going on and how the characters ended up where they are, this movie may leave them feeling disappointed.
Logan is a quiet character study focused on the latter days of a weary old man (Wolverine was born in the late 19th century after all), but it also happens to be a frantic action flick with a high body count and a hero who doesn’t want to play the hero any longer. As mentioned earlier, it is as beautiful as it is brutal. It has it’s slow moments full of emotion and pain, followed by crazy moments full of destruction and a different kind of pain. It is dark, it is sad, it is violent, it is still a bit hopeful, and it is an epic final act for Hugh Jackman and the Wolverine he has graced us with since he first brought the character to screen in 2000. He and Patrick Stewart have both announced they’ll be retiring from playing these roles after this film. Luckily for them, ending with Logan sends them out on a very high note.
Logan (released March 3, 2017)
Rated R
Directed by James Mangold
Written by James Mangold and Scott Frank
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant
*Ryan Reynolds posted the Deadpool sequence to the internet shortly after the premiere of the film, so I’m not considering it a spoiler to mention it.
