Rent Logan (2017)

No More Heroes - Logan review by Count Otto Black

Ever since it was announced that Darren Aronofsky would not after all be allowed to reimagine Batman as a garage mechanic with no cool gadgets whose grimly realistic adventures barely involve him dressing up as a bat at all, and Christopher Nolan was getting the chance to do it his way instead, movie buffs have wondered what that antiheroic superhero film that didn't quite get made would have been like. Well, now they know, because "Logan" is Aronofsky's "Batman: Year Zero" made by a different director and starring a different hero.

Alternatively, it's a superhero version of "The Wrestler", from its weary, scarred, and terminally ill hero hobbling arthritically into battle with nothing keeping him going but a cocktail of booze, drugs, and bloody-minded awareness of his own doomed obsolescence right down to the Johnny Cash song playing over the closing credits. Nobody wears spandex in this movie, except in the drawings we glimpse when Wolverine bitterly complains that very little in the comics portraying his alleged exploits was ever true, while waving a handful of the actual Marvel comics without which the franchise wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Praise has been heaped on Patrick Stewart's unflinchingly realistic portrayal of a ninety-year-old Professor X struggling with Alzheimer's (along with the somewhat less realistic problem of seizures which, because he has telepathic superpowers, are bad news for everybody within several hundred yards), and Hugh Jackman's equally good performance as his troubled but ultimately loving surrogate son, but you know what? This isn't the first film in which such things have been shown. It's just the first movie which took the audience by surprise by including them in a film everyone was expecting to be about men in tights punching robots. Will you enjoy the forthcoming Justice League movie more if it turns out that Superman is dirty and sick and swears a lot while popping pills and coughing up phlegm because that kryptonite gas Batman exposed him to in the previous film gave him cancer? I doubt it.

Yes, this film has two superb central performances from excellent actors giving it all they've got. But were it not for the brilliance of Jackman and Stewart, this would have been a nasty, ugly misfire notable mainly for being so relentlessly and horribly violent that I wondered how it possibly managed to be certified 15. Yes, we do finally get to see, over and over again, what logically ought to happen when a man with huge knives attached to his hands punches bad guys in the head, but I wouldn't exactly call it fun. And I suspect that the decision to show us that even superheroes eventually get old and die has rather a lot to do with the fact that at 49, Hugh Jackman is no longer plausible as a character who isn't supposed to age, and the 77-year-old Sir Patrick Stewart won't be starring in too many more action movies either. Personally I found this a bad, ugly and depressing film based around two performances so good that they almost saved it, and belonged in something far better.

Now that he's hung up Wolverine's claws for good, Hugh Jackman has a great career as a mature character actor ahead of him, and I can see him becoming the kind of star Robert DeNiro used to be. But this isn't a great film. In fact, if you look past those two superb central performances, it's a cynical excuse to kill off an entire branch of the Marvel heroic pantheon who had the misfortune to miss out on being part of Disney's mega-billion-buck Ultimate Cash Cow.

What a waste of effort! - Logan review by CS

Yet another comic book film rehashing old themes and going nowhere. This film see Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart as the only members of the old gang left, helping a bunch of new mutants on their road to fame. Te plot is thin, the action, direction, script, editing, virtually everything about this film is average at best! This really comes across as simply a bridge for brushing aside the old crowd and introducing new younger mutants, most likely for a re-hash of the franchise! I found it a bore to watch, with none of the excitement or thrill of previous episodes. For me this has finally killed off the X-Men-Wolverine franchise once and for all!

Worthy attempt at an adult comic book - Logan review by Alphaville

The good news is that at last there’s a Marvel film with an adult vibe – ‘a comic book film aimed at adults,’ as director James Mangold describes it on the commentary. The bad news is that if you haven’t seen previous juvenile X-Men movies you won’t understand the background or what Patrick Stewart’s role is. He and Logan (Hugh Jackman) are old and tired and hang out in the desert away from people who don’t like them. They’re mutants, you see. Charles (Patrick) has seizures that make the screen go all wavy. Logan is also Wolverine and has claws on his knuckles – must have been a bad day at the office when they dreamt that one up.

The film has a melancholy vibe concerned with ageing and mortality but the plot is complete Marvel nonsense. Charles and Logan are on the run with a mute girl who also has claws on her knuckles. Who is this film aimed at? The usual immature fanboys be bored while adults will simply find the mixture of melancholia and slashing silly.

It does get better as it goes along. The backstory becomes less relevant as it turns into a road movie through the deserts of New Mexico, for budget reasons standing-in in for the Badlands of North Dakota. There’s a formidable new baddie to deal with and the boring green-screen special effects of earlier X-Men movies are replaced by more realistic and dramatic confrontations. Nevertheless, it’ s hardly a spoiler to say it all ends in yet another slash-fest.

Best thing about the film? The director’s commentary by James Mangold. It’s almost a masterclass in film direction. He goes through one scene frame by frame, explaining the importance of Point Of View, how it differs in books and films and how it’s the failure to master POV that ruins many films. Watch the film first, then listen and learn.