According to Rotten Tomatoes, Logan is quite simply one of the greatest comic-book movies of all time, sitting pretty on a 93% “fresh” rating that places it behind only The Dark Knight, Iron Man and Superman in the grand pantheon of superhero flicks. The tale of Wolverine’s last hurrah on the Tex-Mex border, struggling against his own body’s mysterious dilapidation and fighting to keep an increasingly senile Professor X from tearing the world apart, has wowed the critics and looks set for the biggest opening of the year so far at the US box office this weekend. Here’s a chance to give your verdict on the movie’s key talking points.
Mark Millar’s Old Man Logan is only a loose influence
The best comic-book movies borrow the right amount from their print predecessors but leave out the self-reflexive silliness that peppers the genre on the written page, especially when Mark Millar is involved. The Scottish author’s Old Man Logan, pitched as the main inspiration for Logan, is an enjoyably nutty vision of a post-apocalyptic US overrun by Marvel supervillains – including a redneck version of The Hulk and his horrific offspring, a bunch of khaki-green inbred hillbillies. But the graphic novel would never have worked on the big screen, even if 20th Century Fox had been able to get the character rights, because its vision of the future is so outlandish.
Director James Mangold has borrowed plenty from the comic book: specifically the concept of a damaged, ageing Wolverine heading out on one last road trip in the company of an old comrade. But it’s a nonagenarian Professor X who comes along for the ride rather than an ageing, ponytailed Hawkeye, and elsewhere there’s little connection to Old Man Logan. In fact, a more recent series, 2014’s Death of Wolverine, appears to have been just as strong an influence. Were you to sorry to see the more left-field eccentricities of Millar’s vision dispensed with? Or is there just no place at the multiplexes for a version of the Red Skull who’s president of the US and likes to dress up in dead Captain America’s bloodstained threads?
The future of the X-Men universe now seems set in stone
If this is where Fox’s X-Verse is heading, we’ll need to enjoy it while it lasts. Logan suggests that by 2029 – only 12 years away – no new X-Men are being born, and there are only a few of the old gang left. A tragic accident, referenced as the “Westchester incident” and blamed on Charles Xavier’s dying mind, seems to have killed off a number of mutants, while Richard E Grant’s nefarious Xander Rice appears to have done for the rest by destroying the mutant gene with a nationwide programme of genetically modified corn syrup.
For those of us who always felt the sheer number of superheroes in these movies has been their greatest downfall, Mangold’s film is a breath of fresh air. Like Deadpool, Logan makes a virtue of intimate storytelling. There are no outlandish CGI supervillains bent on taking over the world; Professor X and Magneto do not spend the whole movie throwing tanks and battleships at each other. In fact Xavier’s greatest fight is against his own dangerously dilapidated mind, while Ian McKellen’s devious supervillain is barely mentioned.
The main X-Men saga, currently stuck in the 1980s, has plenty of room to breathe before it even begins catching up to Logan. But unless our heroes start jumping through time again and changing history, in the vein of X-Men: Days of Future Past, it’s hard to conceive that films such as Deadpool 2 – not to mention Channing Tatum’s mooted Gambit movie – won’t be affected by the events of Mangold’s wonderfully doom-laden epic. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Logan is intended as a standalone entry, with little connection to previous or future movies - Fox has not always done the best job of making sure its X-Men movies all exist sensibly within a wider continuity - but that seems like a cop out. Furthermore, it would be a huge pity if the greatest X-Men movie so far isn’t given some kind of context within the wider saga.
Logan’s illness
The breakdown in Wolverine’s healing powers and near-immortality might have been linked to either the events of 2013’s The Wolverine, in which Logan had his powers drained by the Silver Samurai, or to those in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in which the Weapon X program bonded adamantium to the antihero’s skeleton. In the later case, it might be that the indestructible alloy has broken down over time, poisoning the mutant - which has happened in the comics.
There’s also a third possibility - that Logan has been deliberately infected with a virus by his enemies. In a doctor’s office at one point in the movie, Wolverine is told there is a poison “inside” him, and responds that he knows what it is that’s killing him. For me, that sounds like a direct lift from the 2014 comic book Death of Wolverine, in which a virus infects and eventually kills the mutant. But to be fair, the whole thing does seem to have been left deliberately vague.
The deaths of Wolverine and Professor X
Both Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman have confirmed this will be their final movie as, respectively, Charles Xavier and Logan. So what does that mean for the future of the franchise? In Stewart’s case, it makes sense for the actor to bow out at the top, in a critically acclaimed film, while James McAvoy has made the younger version of the role his own in the current 1980s timeline, so there is a ready-made replacement. The situation is less clear for Jackman’s Wolverine, who up to being infected with the mysterious illness that helped his enemies destroy him was considered immortal. There is no reason why the adamantium-clawed antihero cannot continue to turn up in an earlier timeline, should the Australian actor change his mind. But if he chooses to stay in retirement, Fox will eventually have to recast the role. Which brings us to …
X-23’s emergence as the new Wolverine
In some comics, Logan’s female clone Laura Kinney has replaced her genetically identical forebear in the contemporary timeline, though the Old Man Logan version continues to turn out for adventures in the future. If Fox is lining up a Mexican pre-teen to take over the mantle of its best-known superhero, that’s some radical move. But you have to wonder if the decision was made easier due to Logan taking place in a time so distant from the main X-Men saga’s current 1980s setting. Rather than follow the continuing adventures of X-23, the studio can simply leave her hanging somewhere in the future. Would you like to see a sequel to Logan focused on the character played by young English-Spanish actor Dafne Keen and her cloned companions? For me, the climactic scene, in which X-23’s pre-teen comrades reveal their various mutant skillsets – discovering mini-Magnetos and neo-Icemen – was among Logan’s most powerful.
Hugh Jackman’s legacy as Wolverine
Would it be fair to say that while the X-Men movies have varied wildly in quality since Wolverine first debuted in 2000’s X-Men, the Australian actor has always been resolutely excellent in the role? Two five-star instalments, Logan and X-Men: Days of Future Past, is not a great haul from a total of seven (nine if one counts cameos in X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse) especially when two episodes, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: The Last Stand, are now remembered only for their failure to pass muster. X-Men and X2 are average movies at best, 2013’s The Wolverine a little better, yet hardly a classic. Jackman is an actor who has at times been poorly served by the film-makers he has worked with, robbing his take on Wolverine of a legacy as one of the great comic-book heroes. But perhaps you see things differently?
Fox’s X-verse, not the DCEU, is now the real rival to Marvel’s comic book movie hegemony
There is no escaping the fact that Fox, perhaps inspired by Marvel’s remarkable emergence, has considerably upped its game over the past decade – the relative mediocrity of last year’s X-Men: Apocalypse notwithstanding. The blockbuster success of Deadpool, a movie the studio almost never made, seems to have inspired producers to finally trust film-makers to simply get on with the job. And unlike Warner Bros-owned DC, they are picking the right directors for each project and giving them the time to develop quality storylines. In this context, we should perhaps see the current delays in greenlighting Tatum’s Gambit project as a positive, rather than a negative.
If Fox can make a success of Deadpool 2, launch an R-rated X-Force movie led by the potty-mouthed mutant and revive its main X-Men saga with the rumoured 90s-set X-Men: Supernova, its relatively small corner of the Marvel universe will begin to look more expansive by the hour. There has also been talk of an Alpha Flight flick, featuring Canadian superheroes Aurora, Guardian, Northstar, Sasquatch, and Puck, not to mention a film based on The Exiles. All sound like strong prospects, but right now I’d rather see Jackman returning one last time for a Mangold-directed Old Man Logan prequel. How about you?
