Shmee Takes One Last Ride With Logan!

After seventeen years and ten films Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine needs no introduction.  Even if you have never seen any of the X-Men movies he is instantly recognizable, so the only question you could possibly have about Jackman’s last turn as the titular Logan is, “Is it any good?”  Yes, yes it is.

If you are wondering where Logan takes place in the ever shifting X-Men timeline, I would say don’t worry about it.  Technically it takes places in 2029 or about fifty years after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse since that is the last movie in the current timeline, but both Logan and Xavier reference things that happened in the first X-Men movie which took place in 2000.  However, due to X-Men: Days of Future Past, the first movie probably didn’t happen.  In the end, the movie is based on a comic book that was supposed to be a “what-if”, so it is best to treat the movie the same way.  Logan is ‘a’ future for the X-Men films, not ‘the’ future.  Also all references to earlier films are minor, so there is no need to watch them all before watching Logan.

Polygon wrote that Logan and Legion signal a sift for superhero films because they no longer need to conform to the ‘superhero’ genre.  They are now just films with superheroes in them, and I think that is true.  Logan is very much a western with the horses swapped out for trucks and the hero’s guns swapped out for retractable claws.  It is a genre that works very well for the lone gunmen that is Wolverine.  A lone gunman being forced to care for a young child, who happens to be his clone, and an ageing man, who happens to be the world’s most powerful psychic.

It is a heavy and sad film (I cried a little), but one I am glad they made.  It lets Huge Jackman take his character out on probably the highest note possible, and if this is the last film for Sir Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, he gives a wonderful performance too.  Which only leaves a couple of things to say, “Please don’t take your kids to Logan just because it is a comic book movie, it earns its ‘R’ rating”, and “How are they going to bring Dafne Keen’s Laura back from an improbable future to be the new Wolverine?  Because she was great!”  If you meet the age requirements to view Logan, you probably should.  It is a great movie, and easily one of the top three X-men movies.