#a prime example for this is Wolverine in the first X-men movie vs Logan

[charmin-ultra-strong]

I miss the era of movies where people were allowed to be shirtless without completely destroying their health

[huckleberr1es]

deadpool & wolverine spoilers under da cut

no its been 18 hours since i saw it and im still sitting here wishing i could go back and experience it for the first time again like i haven’t been so consumed by anything in so long. (also would like to note before anyone reads my ramblings im not a huge mcu fan literally deadpool and spider man are the only two franchises i actually like and its been 2 years since i’ve seen any of the other deadpool movies. i also have not watched any of the x-men/wolverine movies in over 10 years.)

1) hugh jackman is fucking hot first of all. white boy of the year jeremy allen white who

2) seeing chris evans and thinking “oh great an alt captain america” and then he fucking ERUPTS into flames and im sitting there like IVE BEEN HORNSWOGGLED ??? THE HUMAN TORCH????? which i know damn well was the intended effect like bro i was 7 when those movies came out but the fact that he got to be flame guy again oh my godddd. i had to hold my hand over my fucking mouth i was about to squeal and shit my pants like a little piglet i was AMPED

3) fucking obviously the clear homoerotic tension between deadpool and wolverine. im sorry they HELD HANDS WHILE SAVING THEIR TIMELINE AND MR LOGAN HAS HIS SHIRT OFF AND THE CAMERA PANS DOWN TOWARDS HIS DICK AND YOU SEE ALL THE BODY HAIR LIKE HES CLEARLY A PRIME EXAMPLE OF SEXY MAN AND DEADPOOLS HEAD JUST POPPING OUT LIKE “owo?” AS IF HE ISNT ACTIVELY FUCKING DYING. ALSO THAT FIGHT SCENE IN THE CAR. that was the most sexually charged beatdown i’ve seen since billy vs steve in season 2 of stranger things. i could go on for hours.

FURTHERMORE im also just excited because you’re clearly supposed to read into their interactions like im p sure it’s canon that deadpool absolutely isn’t straight and me being a little queer gremlin i was absolutely rabid in that theater i really was

i desperately need this movie on disney+ i need to watch it again or i need to wait a few weeks for some putlocker link to pop up

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Logan (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this spoiler review a couple of days after seeing the movie on it’s premiere day. So if you haven’t yet seen it, firstly why not? Secondly don’t read on until you see the movie.

Not a Traditional Comic-Book Movie:

So as I stated in my non-spoiler review, and as Hugh Jackman has stated on the promo tour...this is not your traditional comic-book movie. This is why I liken it to The Dark Knight because that was not a traditional comic-book movie. While they both focus on superheroes, they aren’t the traditional “stop the bad guy, save the world” stories as The Dark Knight was very much about The Joker bringing Gotham into chaos and this was more of a relationship based story rather than good vs. evil.

I really appreciate the fact that the Wolverine movies haven’t been focused on the X-Men at large or multiple mutants, the main focus has always been Wolverine. Okay we’ve had numerous mutants appear in all three movies (some good some horrendous) yet they’ve never pulled focus from who’s trilogy it belongs to. That alone is commendable and speaks to the type of character Hugh Jackman has helped create for the big-screen.

The one thing I liked about this movie that I do not think they ran with enough was the fact that X-Men and seemingly mutants at large at this point in the future have become comic-book stories while still existing in the continuity. When we saw X-23 had that X-Men comic that I do believe is original for this movie, I’m not as on top of the X-Men comics as I should be so I can’t say for certain, but I believe that comic is original. It just speaks to how legendary the X-Men are for fans in the real world and fans obviously in-continuity.

Why I bring this up in its own little section is because in pretty much every single X-Men movie prior to this, we have seen the X-Men and mutants basically live in secret. Whereas here everyone seems to know of the X-Men despite the fact that essentially now they’re all gone. This is one thing I didn’t quite get, all the X-Men are gone...even Logan by the end of this movie and that hit me hard because this is a film series and a franchise that has meant a lot to me for nearly two decades and so to have them made extinct basically here is basically like saying that heroes don’t win in the end...remember in Days of Future Past had Logan rewrite the timeline and so by doing so saved the X-Men for what seemed like a more hopeful future? Well this movie is set several years after those events and only within those several years it’s like all that they went through to save themselves has been unravelled...and we don’t even fully know the reason but I’ll get into that further down.

Characters:

Logan:

Moving on to a happier note, let’s talk about without question the best thing to happen to the X-Men movies and that is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I absolutely love Hugh Jackman in this role and yes I am fully aware that this version of Wolverine hasn’t exactly represented the one from the comics in previous movies but in this movie, as I said in my non-spoiler review, I think everyone will be happy with the fact that he was allowed to go full Berserker Rage.

From that first scene with him waking up drunk in his limo, because he’s apparently a chauffeur now to pay for Xavier’s medication as well as I’m guessing how they live i.e. food, I was loving the fact they made it R-rated for that first scene alone. There were guys losing limbs, there were guys being stabbed through the head...and the fact that Logan went into his berserk mode when they damaged the limo was fantastic, this is very much Logan at his wits end with everything and so the smallest thing will send him into a rage these days.

Something I’ve always struggled with when it comes to both Hugh Jackman and Wolverine is the fact that I find Hugh Jackman quite attractive, it’s not a secret as I basically tell anyone who asks. But something very few know is that when it comes to the Hugh Jackman portrayal of Wolverine...he looks a lot like my dad, particularly in X2 and here. I remember when X2 was released in cinemas and I was leaving school the one day to go to my dad’s who was picking me up and as I met him at the gates he told me that someone either in my year or just in the school had mistaken him for Wolverine...in this movie the “Old Man Logan” look is very akin to how my dad looks now especially with the reading glasses. It’s very troubling because I do think Hugh Jackman is hot, but for this reason I cannot say Wolverine is hot because then it’s like I am saying my dad is and 1) That is disturbing on so many levels and 2) I’d never give him that ego-feed.

Also something I never actually contemplated before is that Logan is officially X-23′s father as he is the male progenitor. So the fact that they actually established that in this movie I thought was very touching; like I said before this film is very much about relationships and that relationship was very evident and very poignant.

As is the relationship between Logan and Xavier; I mean come on this has quite clearly been building up for the past 17 years, the best thing is it hasn’t even been a main plot point of the movies...not even in Days of Future Past although I do think that laid the groundwork with those two conversations first between Logan and Young Xavier about Cerebro and then at the end of the movie when Old Xavier I guess acknowledges that Logan changed the timeline. But all the way through the original trilogy the two of them had this father/son mentor/mentee relationship. By the way on a side-note I loved Xavier’s line “I’d say you were a good pupil but the words would choke me”. I just think the fact that Logan has dedicated his remaining years to looking after Xavier and his only task in life seems to be looking after Xavier is very powerful.

Now when it came to X-24 and that mysterious clawed assailant of Logan’s from the trailer, firstly I wanted it to be Lady Deathstrike and I know fans were thinking it was gonna be Sabertooth but no it was another clone of Wolverine’s simply known as X-24 who was created after all the X-23s (because all the grown mutant kids were known as X-23s and Laura was simply the 23rd X-23) proved to be a failure. I guessed that was who Transigen were creating because I have seen Hugh Jackman’s body for the past 17 years so can easily distinguish him, what I liked about him was the fact they made it so Hugh Jackman didn’t need to be changed cosmetically to portray him whereas for Logan he was obviously aged up. What I didn’t like was the fact he killed that entire family, not just the man but his wife and their teenage son; again I think it shows Xavier in a very bad light as he basically forced them to stay there endangering that family but also it was just so tragic, reminiscent of when Agent Zero murdered that elderly couple in X-Men Origins: Wolverine who took Wolverine in after he escaped from Team X...ironic really how full circle this is.

One of the many things I appreciated about this movie is how well it showed Logan’s degeneration at the hands of the adamantium poisoning. When we see him at the start of this movie it’s obviously already affecting him and from what Caliban says it’s not exactly a new thing. But not only is he not healing as well as he used to, prime example is when it takes more energy to expel those bullets after that opening fight when compared to the fight he had when he first went back in time in Days of Future Past, but also his claws aren’t retracting properly. Now obviously this could simply be him getting older but with his regenerative powers aside the only explanation is the adamantium fighting back so to speak. Also the fact he kept that one adamantium bullet to end it all I felt was quite poetic considering it was a bullet like that which explained his arc in the original trilogy.

Like I said before, Logan’s death was something I had anticipated but not in the way it played out. The fact he died pretty much impaled was not how I predicted such a staple comic-book movie character and moreover a staple movie character in general to bow out. As this was essentially a western, had the movie ended ambiguously with him walking off into the sunset then I would have found it fitting. In the comics he obviously died from suffocation being incased in adamantium whereas here his main death cause was adamantium poisoning kind of fit but the very fact he died in the same way Xavier died which was basically very quick was horrendous to watch. As I said in my non-spoiler review; Logan’s death was the only thing to actually make me cry, with Xavier’s death making me well up, but that was because it was such an emotional climax of a movie after 17 years.

Xavier:

Oh my, there is something quite hilariously uncomfortable about hearing Patrick Stewart’s Professor X swear. It’s like hearing your grandfather swear and technically he is someone’s grandfather in this movie as he is X-23′s surrogate grandfather because he is Logan’s surrogate father.

One thing I will say about Xavier in this movie is his selfishness is showcased marvellously in this movie. We’ve seen his selfishness shown in instances in previous movies like when he gives Logan the cold shoulder of Jean Grey’s Phoenix persona and even Young Xavier’s arrogance when chatting up all those women at the student bar. But here, the fact he basically pushes for “The Howlett family” to spend the night at that farmhouse and knowingly endangers that family just to have “the best night he’s had in ages” was incredibly selfish and considering it did result in not just the mother and father dying but also their teenage son yet Logan was still only interested in saving him kind of made me dislike him slightly but still his death was so sudden and so sad that it was still emotional.

Also this “Westchester Incident” that was alluded to in the movie that apparently killed off all the X-Men...I have a feeling that while originally made out to be Wolverine’s fault in the trailers, that Xavier had a seizure like at the casino but no one was there to stop it in time and so, because Logan is the only one capable of surviving the trauma, all the others died. Having said that, some may still have survived; Jean Grey is still alive in this continuity and her mind is close to being as powerful as Xavier’s so she could have easily survived, as my friend says Rogue could have survived (although unlikely) if she was touching Logan at the time...the possibilities are endless although why they’re not even talking about a reboot after this movie is beyond me because that does seem like the next logical step.

With Patrick Stewart also saying this is his last time as Xavier, and to be fair I can see why, I have to say I think it is the right decision. Not because I think Patrick Stewart has been bad in any way because his look alone screams Professor X but because I want James McAvoy to continue with the role as I feel he is doing a stellar job with it. But I did love him in this movie, not only as playing the senial old man but also the kinder and quieter moments that he had. Patrick Stewart at his best for me.

X-23:

I dare anyone to ground this kid, seriously I think as this was Dafne Keen’s first outing she did an amazing job. Obviously she had a stunt double but those action scenes were something to behold particularly from a pre-teen. I loved the foot claws, Wolverine’s face seeing them was fantastic and the fact she used them so wonderfully was just brilliant. I am glad they kept her young for this movie, but if they did reboot the series and bring her back for say X-Force then I would hope they’d age her up because I feel we’d get more out of her that way.

Now I’ve not seen Stranger Things, I have literally seen the first episode and cannot remember much about it. I do not know who “Eleven” is but everyone seems to be comparing her to Laura here and whether that’s because she doesn’t talk a lot or because she is a cloned child I don’t really care. What I will say is having her not speak for most of the movie really showed us her acting ability because she could only be expressive physically and my god she did that. When she did speak, that first conversation in the car when she was yelling at Logan in Spanish was hilarious especially when she repeatedly said the names of the other kids and Logan just had no idea what she was going on about.

Here’s where Marvel Fox are stuck if they don’t do a full reboot after this movie, eventually fans will want to see more of X-23 and there’s not a lot you can do with her unless you go further into the future to when she’s say 17 or 18 because as a child she needs a Logan or a Professor X to be the main character so she can bounce off them. Whereas if they were to reboot and as I said before age her up and bring her into the years that Deadpool is set in, then she can join X-Force and Deadpool can make some inappropriate joke about the change which will probably be hilarious...everyone wins.

Overall I thought she was good, I feel some nostalgic value to finally seeing X-23 in live-action because I saw her when she first appeared in X-Men: Evolution and she didn’t disappoint here.

Donald Pierce:

Was this guy the main villain? I really struggled with whether or not he was the main boss or just the underling here. At first he seemed like the big bad but then he just seemed to be the slick dick henchman. Again I do think it was a mistake to use a character not really known with mainstream audiences particularly when you had the confusion over who was the main villain as it may not create massive interest in the character like say X-23 does.

Regardless for what he was I did like him, I loved the conversation he had with Logan at the beginning in the limo and thought the way he died was so horrific yet brilliant that it was one scene I really looked forward to re-watching when I saw it again today. Everything else in between was good but not great.

Caliban:

This character was probably my biggest problem right from the trailers for the pure and simple possibly overstated reason that Caliban has already been established in the timeline but back in the 80s during X-Men: Apocalypse and personally I preferred that version. Steven Merchant tries bless him but he genuinely can only play Steven Merchant, only here he’s the albino Steven Merchant. Genuinely this guy has no range what so ever, he’s comedic in places which is great but when you consider what Tómas Lemarquis did with the role it gave me a new found appreciation for it. Sad he died particularly as I think he only took out that one guy and it wasn’t even Pierce but overall I don’t actually know why he was needed here.

Zander Rice:

An interesting choice was Richard E. Grant, I am so happy they didn’t make him Sinister as he didn’t even appear but also that would’ve been wasted casting in my opinion. I do like the fact they tied him in with the Weapon X program as with the comics in being the son of one of the scientists who experimented on Wolverine but the fact he was basically responsible for near-Mutant genocide was an undertone they didn’t quite hit for me...this was the man responsible for killing off the majority of the mutant population yet that point of fact didn’t really have time to hit home as Logan put a bullet in his head and killed him before it could. I did like his line about Xavier saying “A degenerative brain disorder inside the world’s most dangerous brain” as Xavier has now been considering a weapon of mass destruction which is hilarious if you think about who it is but still. Good casting, decent character, nothing really bad to say.

Mutant Kids:

So I’ve talked about the main X-23 but I want to talk about the other X-23s. I am very curious to know who the genetic templates are for the majority of these kids. I obviously know Laura’s, I can guess who the girl with ice breath was grown from (Iceman) and that fat black kid is apparently grown from Chris Bradley’s DNA who was the lightbulb guy in X-Men Origins...and by the way that one shot where it focused on that kid running for longer than it should was quite cruel to that kid. As I said before I did like how they all gathered round and horrifically murdered Pierce combining their powers and by the way that one girl who probably has Terrakinesis gave me one of my favourite shots with her basically apart that guy’s body with nature.

Having said all this I didn’t really feel emotionally attached to any of these kids aside from Laura, Rictor was the only partially developed out of the group and seriously he was annoying...I felt bad when he got shot but then he was okay so really the emotion wasn’t there. I don’t know if these kids are in the comics, I mean we’re not talking New Mutants or Young Avengers here, so I felt a lack of interest in them for me.

X-Men Cinematic Universe:

My final point is on how this affects the X-Men cinematic universe at large and as I have stated throughout I think the best bet for them is to reboot. Do not recast Wolverine but bring in X-23, age her up and make her take on the mantle as she has in the comics. I genuinely do not see what the point in continuing with this timeline, no matter how screwed up it is which is why I didn’t use the word “continuity”, because we all now know that basically no matter what we see in the prequel series that in the future everyone dies. For me to be saying this it is pretty sad because I like the prequel series, I loved DOFP and what they did to amend most of the cock-ups they made to the continuity but now that basically now that they’ve seemingly killed off every main character...unless you turn round and say this was in the now aborted timeline fixed by DOFP which makes this movie lose so much for me because it means Wolverine is still alive....it’s a tough one but something that definitely needs to be considered.

Overall I rate this movie a 9.5/10, this is very much a near-perfect movie. The kids, the villains and Caliban are my only real nitpicks with the movie and they’re not even big nits but at the same time I can’t say it’s perfect when it isn’t. I do love this movie though, I have now seen it twice and while it didn’t make me cry the second time it still got me emotionally...and I saw it with a friend this time which was nice.

So that’s my review on Logan, what did you guys think? Please post your comments and check out more Marvel Movie Reviews as well as other movie reviews and posts.