Logan is just an X-MEN movie

Logan is just an X-MEN movie in the same way that The Dark Knight is just a Batman movie. Separate for a moment the different actor who portrayed Bats and consider that it was the same superhero from Batman Forever to The Dark Knight. Logan is the same character that we saw in The Last Stand, yet he’s so very different and so much better.

For us The Dark Knight, heretofore, was the best example of a superhero film. It focuses on film first, made it quality and strong, thus appealing to movie fans, as well as fans of the franchise. In the way that there have been many James Bond film, yet very few of them, aside from Casino Royale, Skyfall and Goldeneye (just kidding…) are films that could legitimately be called ‘a good movie’ by the masses. That is the beauty of Logan; a film that distances itself from its consonant based brothers and sisters, but doing that makes it the best Marvel film to date.

People stopped having that discussion around the time The Avengers came out. Is this the best Marvel movie? Oh, this is certainly better than this or that and people would make their top Marvel films. Something happened with all of the different Marvel movies coming out; they all started to blend into each other to varying degrees of blandness.

Then along comes Deadpool, a rated R violent fun fest that persuaded Hugh Jackman to take a pay cut in order to make Logan rated R too. Some comic books have superheroes that are more at home in rated R films. Sure, the magic PG-13 rating is cool enough for tweens to see, but more often than not, films in that pedigree can tamp down the character’s true nature.

Logan is a superhero film, but it’s unlike any other superhero film that you’ve seen. It does have special effect, but this is the more human Logan, older, slightly washed up and living in places from the comforts of Sir Charles Xavier’s school. The film deals with loss, regrets, weakness, friendship and adamantium.

The film also earns every bit of its R rating. From language alone in the first 15 minutes it’s obvious that this film is intended for older audiences. When the action gets cranking there are countless beheadings, adamantium claws through the skull, arms cut off, legs compromised and half blown off heads. During the film I heard an adult to my right groan when one particularly gruesome scene was happening. And then when you don’t expect it you’ll shed a tear, possibly two and it definitely was not me…I was simply pulling a nose hair.

In the end Logan is just the film that the superhero genre needs. It’s human, represents real loss, massive action, big sequences, great casting and it does it all with the heart that was solely missing from genre films recently.