Logan movie review: Hugh Jackman's Wolverine swansong changes superhero films f...

Logan
Director - James Mangold
Cast - Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant

From the first moment Johnny Cash’s mournful voice graced that terrific trailer, there was a sense that Hugh Jackman and director James Mangold were not going to play by the rules anymore. For Jackman, it was his ninth time playing Wolverine, and for Mangold, another shot to perfect what he almost achieved in 2013, when he sent Logan to Japan.

For the both of them however, it was now or never. Jackman’s missed no opportunity to tell everyone that this would be his last time playing Logan, the character that has defined his career, and would probably continue define him for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was this pressure to do well, perhaps it was the freedom afforded to it by the success of Deadpool, but Logan is unlike any superhero film that you have seen. Like that Cash song, it is meditative, melancholy, and has nothing to lose anymore. We’ve seen him go through hell, watch everyone he loves die, and all he can do is keep living. Keep fighting. But what for?

It is said that the superhero movie will soon go the way of the movie Western (not by me, but by Spielberg and Lucas), how it has arrived at a saturation point, how the six-shooters and cowboy hats made way for spandex and force fields as they journeyed towards their final destination. For an uncommonly grim film which would much rather contemplate mortality than gleefully demolish a city, the idea of Logan reviving a dying genre – two dying genres – is almost poetic.

There is only way to push this genre forward, to prevent it from becoming obsolete. And that is to deconstruct it, to rip off all the excess CGI, all the capes and cowls, and exhume the essence of what makes these movies so great. Logan does that. And then it does it again, with the Western.

Stay tuned for the full review...