Seventeen years. Hugh Jackman has brought one of the comic book universe's most popular characters to life. Seventeen years is a long time to play any character. He is a little too tall by the comic's definition, but Hugh is Logan. In every sense of the character. He has been brilliant in things like X2 and X-Men : Days of Future Past. He has shined despite terrible scripts with X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: The Last Stand. He has gotten closer to the version of the character fans wanted with The Wolverine and now we get Hugh #onelasttime. Let me start by saying it is Wolverine like we have always wanted to see. Gritty, violent, raw, and near perfect.
A lot of time has passed when we meet Logan. Mutants are gone. He spends his days hiding in the desert with Professor X and Caliban. He spends his nights working as a limo driver saving money to buy a boat. He spends both being a drunk and as you can tell by the trailers, he isn't healing very well anymore. A mysterious woman who is on the run with a girl enter his life and he and Xavier are brought back into the world they were hiding from. She is a science experiment gone rogue and being pursued by a cybernetically enhanced army called the reavers.
Everything in this movie works. It is a little bit Old Man Logan and something else all together. The world is perfect. It is the future and it is a bleak one, but not completely devastated like we saw in Days of Future Past. We get every possible form of Logan you could want to see. He is completely broken, but still ferocious. Right from jump. Fans, myself included, wanted Hugh in the suit. We do get it. In the form of toys and comic books. There are so many great things in this movie that you won't miss it. We get nods to the previous X-Men films, The Wolverine, and it even acknowledged Origins. It also introduces us to X-23.
Dafne Keen is solid. She does so well and barely speaks a word. She holds her own with Hugh whether it's combat, conversation, or conveying emotion. If you are not familiar, she is essentially Wolverine's daughter. She is cloned from his DNA, but her powers differ slightly. She does have her father's personality.
Charles Xavier is also one of the best parts of Logan. He is his moral compass and in many ways his father. It is tough to see this broken version of Professor X. His power has become a threat to everyone. He isn't the Charles that we are used to, but it might just be Patrick Stewart's finest version of the character. It is raw, emotional, funny, and at times heartbreaking. It fits perfectly with the world James Mangold has created.
Logan does what most superhero movies seem to be afraid to do. It takes it's time. It develops the characters to the point that you care about what happens to them. It tells you a very raw gritty story with great characters on both sides of the coin. I really liked Boyd Holbrook's Pierce. It is going to be tough when we see someone else play Wolverine. Hugh Jackman is so good in this. He nails the berserker and the broken man. It is a great end to this version of Logan's story. Deadpool being the R-rated success that it was paved the way for this. The violence, language, and above all else the performances make Logan the epic finale that it is. Thank you Patrick, James, and more than anyone else, Hugh. Seventeen years. It was a hell of a ride and a nearly perfect one last time.
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