Logan

I have some small issues with Logan: that the genetically modified super-children are a somewhat tired trope, that the evil-Wolverine never really works very well, that the seemingly endless reams of burly men with guns are nothing but anonymous claw-fodder, that the adamantium bullet is a clunky plot device you can see coming a mile away. I think the last three could have been solved together without too much difficulty and a better movie made as a result. The first would be much harder to deal with and would necessitate the film becoming something else, not a superhero movie.

And there-in is the point, that all my issues are with it are with its superheroyness, the necessarily silly fantasy elements that drive the plot, give Wolverine something to fight for, a lot of someones to fight, and a final someone you don't see how he can beat, and a way to beat him that has hung on the mantelpiece from the first act; but the rest of the film is so good, so not silly, so not comic-booky, that they stand out.

And it is very good, from the opening scene where we not only see Wolverine reluctant to fight and then explode in berserker rage with brutal results, but also see one of his claws fail to extend - a beautiful visual metaphor that tells you exactly where you are with the character; to the penultimate shot of a boy clutching a Wolverine toy having just buried his hero, having learned that hero was all too human, but then learned that he was still a hero after all.

Seriously, just because I am still a bit excited, here are some other very good bits in no particular order:

- At the end of the first act the Mexican lady precisely explains how the third act twist is going to work, but even while you are feeling clever for having spotted the bullet you don't spot that.

- In his short time with her, professor Xavier expertly teaches Laura everything she will need in life. Firstly in the conversation about the lioness, which is not even addressed to her, where he simply says: we know you are a killer and we accept you and value you for it. Secondly in watching Shane with her, saying: this is the moral code you will need. Finally in showing her a family, saying: this is what you are fighting for.

- The high camera angle when evil-Wolverine enters Xavier's bedroom, alerting you that something is up.

- The fundamental power fantasy of superheros writ large in the final child fight.

- Wolverine can't remember if he killed Richard E. Grant's father or not.

- It has the balls to kill off two major franchise characters.

- The mutants are not supermen. Caliban describes himself as a glorified bloodhound. Wolverine is checked by just a handful of well trained burly men. Professor X's very powerful brain fails him and becomes a danger to those he cares about. The children at the end are still just children, maybe lethal, but easy to overpower.

- Genuine throat-slashing, skull-skewering, limb-chopping violence.

- Every scene with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. Literally every one.

X-Men has always ladled on the internal tensions: Rogue's inability to touch another person, Cyclops' inability to look anyone in the eye, Professor X's inability to use his powers without violating his own moral code, Mystique's inability to settle on a form that does not disgust the world, Magneto's inability to reconcile his fight for survival with his friendship with Charles. These are Alan Moore's 'superhero but with a bad leg' 2-dimensional characters to be sure, but this is comic books and they work. 

In this light it is a surprise that Wolverine, who is on the face of it quite a weak character (kills people but then feels a bit bad about it), has proved so strong. I think the secret is his effective immortality and his lack of memory. It makes Wolverine a character disassociated from the world. He lives entirely in the present with no investment in the future. His tensions is his inability to reconcile his morality with his nihilism. He can protect but cannot belong. Only his anger makes him fight.

You also can't downplay the role of Hugh Jackman who has always been the chief source of humour and charm in all the (generally strong) X-Men casts, only Patrick Stewart's chummy sparring with Ian Mckellen has been more fun to watch.

An old and fading Wolverine makes perfect sense then. He's always been old so the only place for the character to go is to finally die. To truly be in the world he has to leave it. When he know's he's going to die he worries about those he'll leave behind.

X-Men has always worked well because the mutants are an all purpose metaphor for oppression, racial when they can't pass - homophobic when they can, and the argument about how to fight it (Martin Luther King vs Malcolm X in a transposition of the role and the initial). 

This one is obviously meant to be viewed through the lens of immigration, the border with Mexico is a prominent background feature, Laura is fleeing toward asylum in Canada, but it's a theme not the plot. There are no excitable fox-news style cutaways vilifying mutants, there is no sense of the general public being afraid of them (quite the opposite in fact). The movie avoids politics and focuses on the characters, which is what makes it feel like something more than a comic-book movie, which is why the comic-book aspects of it (far better than robot samurai or any of Magneto's silly macguffins though they may be) grate a little.

Could Laura had been, say, Logan's daughter from just a fling, not a genetic experiment? Could it be, say, the police pursuing her rather than a shadowy force of cyborg soldiers? Maybe because of something as prosaic as a murder? Or simply because she's only a child and her legal guardians want her back? The situation escalating because of her and Wolverine's tendency to solve problems by slicing throats. Could the final bad guy have been not yet another mutant but, say, a swat team and Wolverine's own weakened state?

The best bits would still be there, Logan and Charles would still swear at each other in a filling-station toilet. Daddy and daughter would still team up to stab people at the end. They would still watch Shane in a casino hotel room. But would it still have been an X-Men movie? I guess not. And maybe if the rest of it became more serious then it would be the silliness of Wolverine and the Professor that grated.

And so it has it's own tension; its inability to be as good as it could without becoming something else entirely. But maybe that's actually what makes it so strong.