2017: The Year in Film: Logan Review

So Fox's X-Men franchise - which is somehow still going relatively uninterrupted 17 years after the first film, which is totally cheesy in retrospect but also pretty much sparked the current superhero trend, has totally been a mixed bag. By my count there's Deadpool, which is awesome obviously, there are 3 very good films (X2, First Class and Days of Future Past), 3 mediocre to meh films (X-Men, The Wolverine, and X-Men: Apocalypse), and 2 straight up garbage toilet water films. (X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) So just a bizarre series in that it's lasted forever, is still somehow going, and definitely ended at one point only to get completely rebooted and then folded into the pre-existing continuity because everyone at Fox is on bath salts. Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine 8 times over 17 years counting Logan! That's insane!  By all accounts, this is his final time playing Wolverine (and Patrick Stewart's final as Professor Xavier as well), and the now-classic characters are sent off with a bang.

Of all the ups and downs of the X-Men films - Hugh Jackman has consistently been one of the best parts. A lanky singing, dancing Australian dude shouldn't be able to pull off Wolverine - but he does, and he's done it with gusto for a long time now. Even though the films themselves may not be the best no one can doubt Jackman's commitment to the role and his appreciation for the character. Enter: Logan. It's 2029 and the X-Men are no more. An older and worse for wear Wolverine has hung up the claws so to speak and spends his days working menial jobs and trying to stay under the radar. When a mysterious woman and a young girl suddenly appear - Logan finds himself drawn back in to a world he thought he'd left behind.

The Good: Jackman, as always, kills it. This version of Wolverine is older, slower, sadder and more nihilistic and melancholy, and that makes for a more compelling character than the indestructible killing machine of the earlier films. After the success of Deadpool, the decision was made to make Logan an R-rated film, and that was the best decision anyone associated with this film could have made. As a longtime X-Men fan, let me assure you that Wolverine is an R-rated character. He straight up murders people constantly in a way that your more classic superhero characters do not. This R-rating allows for a darkness and gravitas to seep into the film that simply wouldn't have been present with a PG-13 rating. It allows Jackman to really delve into the character and allows writer/director Mangold, and the rest of the cast to really insert themselves into a violent, quasi-dystopian world filled with dangerous people and plenty of blood. The best way I can describe this film is Clint Eastwood meets superheroes. It almost has an Unforgiven feel, where a fading gunslinger has one last ride in him. Mangold's screenplay is dark, bitterly funny, and touching where it needs to be, as Logan finds himself tasked with protecting a young girl who he's more connected to than he ever could have thought. The film is set in the future, and does a great job of trusting the audience to catch up with what may have happened in the interim. The characters don't dwell on the past or fill in questions with clunky exposition any more than absolutely necessary, and I appreciate that the film trusted its viewers enough to let them fill in the blanks. Jackman really sends Logan out with a bang here, turning in a bitterly melancholy performance and elevating the film to a place where X-Men films have never been before. Wolverine is a much more compelling character in a reduced state, and Jackman revels in the character's limitations. Patrick Stewart is great as well as an elderly, much reduced Professor Xavier, and newcomer Dafne Keen rises to the occasion as the mysterious Laura.



The Bad: this is going to sound lame, but bear with me. I've ALWAYS had a problem with the fight choreography in the X-Men films and the way they use Wolverine in particular. When you juxtapose the way Wolverine moves and fights with the way that say... Captain America moves and fights in Winter Soldier or Civil War and it's cheesy, slow, clunky and too dependent on wires and the like. The action sequences, even though they are terrific, lack a certain pop.  Additionally - the villain was a little disappointing. In a roster of villains as deep as the X-Men's and Wolverine's I feel that the choice was uninspired. Ultimately, these are relatively minor gripes with an extremely strong film.

In all, Logan is dark, violent, bitterly funny, masculine as hell, and more than a little touching. Jackman and Stewart have great chemistry, and Dafne Keen turns in a great performance sharing so much screentime with such talented actors. The film has the sentimentality and spirit of a western with the action chops of a modern superhero flick - it's not a combo that I knew I ever wanted to see but damned if it isn't pretty great. Yet again superhero flicks demonstrate their versatility - as the best western I've seen in years turned out to be a Wolverine flick. If this really is the last time that Jackman will be playing Wolverine - he gave the character a hell of a send off.

This is the best X-Men film by a pretty sizable margin.

8.5/10

2014: The Year in Film: "X-Men: Days of Future Past" Review

Am I actually ahead of DVD releases yet?? I think I am...

Kind of odd that three consecutive movie reviews here at HOB have featured three separate parts of the Marvel Comic Universe brought to film by three separate studios, but that's just the way that my movie going calendar played out in April and May of this year. It's worth noting that the X-Men are among the most popular comic book franchises on the planet, rivaled only by Batman, and that they feature a rich cast of characters that should be pretty easily brought over to film. Fox's X-Men films have been an interesting ride. First, Bryan Singer's original film X-Men, released in 2000 (!!) kind of kick-started this whole comic book film era that we're still in the midst of. Without the relative quality (it hasn't held up great, but considering that the film was released only a few short years after the horror that was Batman and Robin, its success was a necessity if major studios were going to take chances on big-budget comic book fare again. The sequel, X2, released in 2003, still holds up as one of the better comic book films that we've had. Then Bryan Singer left to go make the snoozefest that was Superman Returns, and professional hatchet man Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner was Sony's choice to direct the horrid and continuity crushing X-Men: The Last Stand, which was nearly the death of the X-Men on film until 2011's surprise X-Men: First Class, which took advantage of a stellar cast (Jennifer Lawrence! Michael Fassbender!) to resurrect the X-Men on film. When watching First Class, if you would have assumed that you were watching a total reboot... no one would have blamed you, as that was obviously the intention at the time. However, Bryan Singer returned to the X-Men franchise.. and the studio made the baffling decision to treat all of the X-Men films as one continuity. No, that doesn't seem possible.

Enter, X-Men: Days of Future Past, inspired by one of the legendary X-Men stories in the comics, where a dystopian future where the world has been decimated by mutant-hunting robots can only be prevented by traveling to the past. The film opens with a glimpse at that future, where the remnants of the X-Men struggle to survive, and desperate plan emerges, to send Wolverine's consciousness back in time. to stop the event that precipitated the creation of the Sentinels, robots that hunt and destroy mutants. Wolverine is sent back to the 1970's, to meet up with the First Class cast, and recruit them into saving the future.

The Good: First Class might have gotten more lucky with its cast than any film I can recall. It successfully signed Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence to co-starring/supporting roles immediately before they both blew up into huge stars. As a result, Days of Future Past gets Fassbender at the height of his powers as a young Magneto and Katniss Everdeen herself as villain/antihero Mystique. James McAvoy as a young Professor Xavier was perfect casting as well. Hugh Jackman does a pretty great Wolverine, and here he serves as the bridge between the two timelines. The cast, especially Fassbender, elevates the film beyond the simple sum of its parts, adding real heft and gravitas to the 70's timeline. Story-wise, this film is about 10,000X better than it has any right to be. As anyone who has seen all of the X-Men films can attest, unifying the timelines and treating it as a cohesive whole should be practically impossible, and while this film doesn't pull it off perfectly, it comes PRETTY damn close, which in and of itself is an impressive feat. Despite a runtime of over two hours, the film feels tight and tense throughout, with events in one timeline influencing the other in a palpable way. Despite some big, impressive action scenes, this film winds up focused on character in a very subtle and welcome deviation from what has become the superhero movie norm (namely: HUGE action sequence to close everything).  The film looks great, and really pulls off the differing timelines visually.



The Bad: While it overall works pretty damn well, the film's premise (reconciling two seemingly irreconcilable narratives) kind of falls apart the more that you think about it. This is probably more of a problem for me, the nerd, than it would be for a more casual viewer, but some of the events of the last X-Men franchise don't make sense in light of some of the revelations from this one. And that's fine, it shouldn't have worked AT ALL, so the fact that it does mostly work is impressive.  Additionally, the film's "big bad", Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), feels underserved in comparison to the in-fighting among our mutants from varying timelines. The future timeline suffers at the expense of the 1970's one, and feels underserviced in comparison to all of the 70's action.

In all, this is a fine flick and a smart, thoughtful, surprisingly effective entrant to the comic book film collection that's somehow still not played out. Welcome back, Bryan Singer, and holy hell is Fassbender good. The main draw is the past/future versions of Professor X and Magneto - with some serious acting chops on display, and they do not disappoint.

8.5/10. If you like the X-Men at all, this just might be the best X-movie yet.