Warning: Slight spoilers ahead.
Logan begins with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine at his lowest and most vulnerable.
The year is 2029 and Wolverine, also known as Logan, is almost 200 years old. At this point, he really just doesn’t want to deal with anything anymore — even resorting to killing a group of people for trying to take the hubcaps off of his car.
His mutant healing factor can’t keep up with the level of stress and injury that his body has sustained, leaving him, for all intents and purposes, human (also the reason that he chooses to go by Logan, his real name).
Oh, and he’s dying — something he has avoided for a long time.
The adamantium in his body is poisoning him and since his healing factor can’t keep up, it is moving at an alarming rate.
Logan also shows Wolverine at his peak.
Through the film’s character development of Logan (more than has been seen in all of the prior films combined), the audience sees him living with the family that he never knew he wanted.
By the end of the film, the audience knows that there are at least two people Logan cares for, Professor X (Sir Patrick Stewart) and Laura (Dafne Keen), who I really hope we get to see more of (she has adamantium spikes in her feet, I mean come on).
The film is the perfect ending to both the Wolverine trilogy and this era of the X-Men franchise.
Through Logan’s character development, the audience finally sees Wolverine grapple with his own humanity and mortality.
Logan finally realizes that he can be more than the experiment that he was made into, and he imparts this advice to Laura in one of the most touching points in the film.
But Logan isn’t just filled with character development and heartwarming scenes. It is still a Wolverine movie after all, and an R-rated one at that.
The R rating allows Director James Mangold (The Wolverine) to bring the ferocity and gore that should have been present in the other Wolverine movies.
Because of the rating, we are able to see Wolverine slaughter an entire group of people in slow motion and Laura throw a severed head at the feet of Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook).
The film is also more than just gore and killing. Logan boasts beautiful cinematography as well, which can be seen in the slow motion fight scene as well as in the scene where Professor X has a seizure.
One thing that sets Logan apart from the other movies in the X-Men franchise is that it is a superhero movie without being overly super. Logan is lacking in superpowers during the film, and the focus is on Laura and their developing relationship more than anything else.
Jackman’s Wolverine has been the center of the X-Men universe since its inception. To this day, he is one of the only major characters to not have been re-cast or played by someone else in the new set of films. Even when the role does get recast — and we all know it will — both Jackman’s presence and the presence of his version of Logan will be missed.
In order to see this, pay close attention to last scene of the film. At the end of Logan, there is a grave. At the head of the grave a cross is formed from two sticks.
The very last scene of the film is Laura turning the cross on its side so it forms an X — one final goodbye to Jackman and his iteration of Wolverine.
