McHawkson

Re-watched it. I'm still sticking to my first opinion. I don't think Logan is best superhero movie out there.

kefrank

I thought it actually subverted the "superhero movie" book in several ways during the third act:

• The mutant kids didn't get brought back together in a "school for the gifted" or at a secret power source or around some heroic leader. They created their own "Eden", banding together in an old structure with nothing more than notions of mutual survival.
  
• While there was a somewhat typical "final battle" in which the bad guys are defeated, the stakes were far different from most every superhero movie in which the fate of the world, or a major city, or something else of massive scope hangs in the balance. The final battle in Logan was strictly about survival of a few kids who were dealt a bad hand and sought a better life.
  
• Superhero movies pretty much never end with the main hero dying for good. Logan does and does so in a way that honors the character and doesn't feel cheap.
  
• While the relational stuff with X-23 was pretty predictable, I thought it was handled really well in both the writing and the acting. It had a level of emotional weight that superhero movies rarely reach.

johnnysd

Kind of subtle subversions but I can see where you are coming from.

In terms of your first point, they DID hint that there was an EDEN or some other type of facility on the Canadian side, and they mentioned a couple times that they had to get them before they got to Canada, possibly alluding to full grown mutants being there.

I don't know, I just found it just ridiculously predictable from the time that he walked out of the doctor's office.

You knew there was something at the coordinates. You knew that the rest of the kids would be there. You knew that they would get there. You knew that the organization would get them and there would be some big fight. You knew that Logan would be all heroic, he would fight X-24 and the girl would kill him with the Adamantium bullet. And then Logan would die.

For a movie with so many bold choices the ending was depressingly predictable. In fact, it would have been surprising and maybe a better choice for Logan to actually LIVE, and take the Xavier role. They hinted so many times that something was killing him it would have been nice if maybe he had been healed. It would have been surprising actually for such an unrelentingly dark movie. And i have no affection for Wolverine so there was no "desire" to see him love. I just thought that whole bit could have been much better and surprising.

kefrank

Well this is ultimately just a matter of taste I guess. It sounds like you value surprise/unpredictability much more highly than I do in narrative. I am just fine with predictability as long as the execution is good, and I thought the execution in the third act of Logan was fantastic.

I have to staunchly disagree with one particular point: Logan living and taking on the Xavier role would have been an eye-rolling end, straight out of the "superhero movie" book. Is it possible factors external to the actual narrative are coloring your perception of the predictability? Logan's death was predictable only because it was made known that this would be Jackman's swan song in the role. Imagine if you didn't know that going in. The typical "superhero movie" thing to do would have been to put Logan in peril and have X-23 save his life by killing X-24 with the Adamantium bullet at just the right time, so that Logan can live and become the father figure for X-23 and mentor for all those mutant kids. Instead, she's too late and Wolverine, easily one of the top 5 most iconic Marvel characters of all time, dies with finality. That's a subversion of the superhero movie formula no matter how you look at it.

Compare it to another recent big budget superhero movie that featured a hero death (spoilered since this isn't the thread for that movie):

Troy Stiffler

Contains some spoilers.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v_SyrpYk-Ik" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The "Crash" jab @ around 4:00

hanshotfirst1138

As a Bryan Singer apologist (please, God, let him direct Dark Phoenix) who was less than impressed with the last Wolverine solo outing, I owe James Mangold an apology. This was pretty damned amazing. It "went there" a couple times with some events I didn't think it would with the characters, the R-rating was amazingly brutal and intense, and the mix with a western yielded an unusually moving mixture of aging gunslinger and superhero mythology. I actually managed to stand alone and just be damn powerful filmmaking. I was really impressed.

Michael Corvin

^^ "I mean, whose side is Mystique on in this movie anyway?"

johnnysd

Fair enough. But no, the "final" Wolverine performance by Jackman did not affect my perception.

I liked the movie quite a bit, not bashing it at all, I just felt it was let down by the paint by numbers ending and I would contend that in the scope of this movie, Wolverine dying WAS paint by numbers for a movie trying so hard to be the anti-superhero movie.

I am not a huge fan of super hero movies to be honest, and have skipped most of the recent ones and find Wolverine to be pretty dull, and have not watched any of the previous stand alone ones, so it had to be decent to get me to actually want to see it.

I am actually excited to see Wonder Woman, but have little to no interest in the upcoming MCEU movies (maybe except for Thor which looks fun), so I am also coming from a different POV maybe altogether.

kefrank

Ok, I think I'm just confused by your criticisms then. Are you saying that it was predictable in its superhero movie tropes or predictable in its attempt to go against superhero movie tropes? Or something in between?

Can you elaborate on what established formula you felt the ending was following? That might help me better understand what about it was a let down for you.

johnnysd

I simply thought that this movie, removing all external elements such as other superhero movies, last performance by Jackman, etc....just had a really unimaginative and exceedingly predictable and slightly boring ending act that did not really live up to the rest of the movie which was pretty creative and went to some interesting places. That was OK for you, and it seems most people, I just think it deserved something more than what it was.

nando820

^I will give you that the last fight in the woods with his younger clone felt a bit pedestrian, it wasn't as memorable. usually on westerns the last fight is the most epic one.

Michael Corvin

I'd say having your climactic battle a low key affair in the woods between a handful of people (not endless waves of mutants) is more interesting than the over-the-top endings of every other comic movie out there.

kefrank

I see what you're saying. I think what confused me was your original comment that it followed the "superhero movie" book too closely, which we have since agreed isn't necessarily the case and which isn't actually what bothered you. You simply found the ending too pedestrian and/or telegraphed in the narrative of this particular movie, genre notwithstanding, which I think goes back to what I stated earlier about placing a particularly high value on unpredictability. I can't fault you for that - we all have our preferences and personal points of emphasis.

johnnysd

Certainly that would have been silly for this movie.

inri222

I was waiting for the kids to chant "We don't need another hero."

TheMovieman

funkyryno

Good grief. No way am I going to sit through 17 minutes of nitpicking a good film to death.

majorjoe23

The Everything Wrong With series needs to get their videos under 10 minutes.

bluetoast

Looking back on this movie, I'm picturing Michael Pitt begging for an audition for the Donald Pierce role.

TheMovieman

In fairness, does make some good points about the plot.

TheMovieman

I assume that was the role played by Boyd Holbrook? Never remembered the character's name.

bluetoast

Yeah, that's the one. I had to look it up for my post, would have just called him "the bad guy" otherwise.

hasslein

I was constantly distracted by the fact the actress that plays the little girl looks so much like the actor that plays Quicksilver, I'm assuming they are related (the actors)?

Obi-Wanma

They're not, and I actually hadn't noticed that until I read this, but you're right, they do look alike.

TGM

it's the crazy eyes... they both have the same crazy eyes.