I never wanted to think about Logan ever again. I’d prefer the memory of the atrocious movie be blown from my brain with an adamantium bullet. But I don’t have that luxury. I have to write this review.
Why, you ask? Because it is of the utmost importance to me that anyone who thought they liked this movie change their minds. Ideally, if enough people recant their praises, there’ll be such a backlash of hatred that the film will be banned worldwide – even the mention of it punishable by death.
Sigh.
Wolverine Isn’t Cool
Let’s start by facing the obvious truth that Wolverine, as a movie character, sucks. On the whole, he’s stupid. He’s really, really stupid. Right up there with 3-D Man and Asbestos Lady.
His powers boil down to him being a feral animal (not generally considered a good thing, by the way), and having longer life through self-healing. And that last bit has now been voided because of the whole adamantium poisoning thing.
Oh… right. He’s also ok at fisticuffs sort of, which isn’t even a power.
Essentially, when he’s not snuffing people out because he’s lonely and all “roided up,” he stands around the good guys growling. Nine movies of him practicing his surliness. Wonderful.
The worse part is that his universe contains far more engaging characters such as Magneto (who controls magnets), Storm (who controls storms and the weather), and Rogue (who rogues or something). I mean seriously! Imagine a series of movies about Nightcrawler or Phoenix. You can’t tell me that the thought doesn’t make your heart beat just a little faster.
Alright, now on to that piece of trash Logan movie.
1. Wolverine is Essentially Useless
First things first: Why doesn’t X-23’s caregiver just drive her out to Eden? Every other kid that escaped the facility found their way to North Dakota ostensibly without having to rely on anyone else, much less other mutants. Yet somehow, Gabriela needs to track down Wolverine, paying him a large sum of money, just to drive them north?
You might say she needed him to protect X-23, but clearly, that kid can handle herself. Plus, she’s not averse to killing anyone. Quite the opposite. Any chance this kid gets she’s kicking names and taking bullets right to the face. In her book, fighting is always Plan A.
In any case, even when Wolverine does end up driving the little tyke, they go in a straight line to North Dakota. No clever routes, no backwater channels. Just beelining it north. Hell, even the tiny niña has to drive papa Wolverine the rest of the way.
2. Wolverine is a Huge Liability
If you take how casually the other mutant kids were behaving up in their cabin, it’s safe to say that they were barely pursued. They didn’t seem in the least bit concerned about staying in one place. You’ve never seen such lackadaisical behavior from fugitives before. Probably because they weren’t chased across half the country.
Meanwhile, Logan moronically leaves Caliban, a mutant tracker, with a barely unconscious but very much psychopathic Donald Pierce. Obvs Caliban gets captured and is used to hunt down our intrepid crew. Totally Wolverine’s fault.
Logan decides to shlep Professor X with them. Professor X, who he knows has a degenerative mental disorder that can kill hundreds of people in minutes. Indeed, the Professor is so dangerous that for years Logan has been keeping him prisoner in the middle of nowhere. Yet somehow it’s a good idea to bring him along next to the one person he’s supposed to be protecting.
Wolverine is a walking, talking bag of terrible decisions.
3. Wolverine’s Character Arc is Unimaginably Boring
On top of everything, Wolverine is beyond boring. He has almost no character arc worth mentioning. He’s already a hero! We know he’s eventually going to tone down his grumpy gramps routine and bond with X-23, so it isn’t even satisfying when it happens – ten seconds before he dies.
To top it off, there are two other characters in the movie who have the exact same powers as Wolverlame, only way better. First, there’s X-23 who has foot claws and is far better at fisticuffs then Logan. Think about that. He’s “the best there is at what he does” yet a kid with almost no life experience is better than him.
Second, there’s X-24 aka Evil Wolverine who is literally jacked up on super-roids. We didn’t need Logan’s action scenes at all! We got all the blades through necks we’d ever want with the other two.
Every cool scene in this movie had nothing – NOTHING – to do with Logan. All he did was get sliced up repeatedly because he still acted all tough even though he’s all but lost his abilities. So many nice shirts totally ruined.
Enough griping about that piece of garbage. (I’m not talking about you, Hugh Jackman. Loved you in The Prestige. You’re aces.) What about the other characters?
4. Why Was Professor X in This Movie?
Professor X seems to be losing his mind when we first meet him. But as soon as he’s on the run with the gang, he’s calm and collected. Totally chill. A regular cool-cumber. He’s joking, laughing, counseling, he’s doing it all.
So why doesn’t Wolverine tell the dude that there’s a very real chance he’ll go bonkers and kill everyone around?
He could have said: “Hey, Chuck. Remember how you’re such a powerful psychic genius that you can kill huge numbers of people on accident? Like that time Apocalypse used your powers to launch all the nuclear weapons? Or that other time you almost killed all the mutants in the world, ‘member? So – hear me out – I’m thinking we increase the chances of not accidentally killing my daughter if you’re, like, not around. On account of you being kinda out of it for the last few decades and all.”
No, he just keeps driving around with the ticking time bomb who is triggered by stressful situations.
And does Professor Xavier help in any way whatsoever? Maybe, sort of. When he’s unhinged at the casino and starts to slowly kill everyone, it gives Wolverine time to struggle back up to their suite and ease his claws Arya Stark-style into everyone’s faces. That was nice.
But you know what? X-23 could have easily dealt with the four guys in that room. And the three in the hall. And the ten downstairs. We saw her go to town on two dozen mercs with machine guns. She would have been just fine. Clearly, Xavier was her biggest danger.
Still, I would have been fine with all that if this was a setup to Xavier going buck-wild at the end using his WMD mind to do something to someone sometime.
But nope. He just dies.
5. WTF is Donald Pierce Even For?!
The ominous and self-assured henchmen with the mechanical arm, who seemed to scare even the growly Wolverine, was set up as a potentially worthy opponent. If he didn’t have powers, at least he’d be an important figure, later on, right? Maybe his arc would culminate into an epic battle with someone somewhere doing something super sweet.
But nope. He just dies.
6. Caliban is Also Worse Than Useless
Other than his ultra-sensitivity to light and his less than charming looks (which fits the comic so that’s ok), we never actually see Caliban use his powers. We’re told he has been helping the baddies find our traveling band of heroes, but I suppose there was no budget to show how he does that.
Given that comic book Caliban has the ability to weaponize fear, I kept thinking that we’d see him eventually do something super slick to someone somewhere at sometime.
But nope. He just dies.
His death was made even more pointless given that he wasn’t even needed anymore. The evil corporation promptly found their prey again.
7. Dr. Zander Price is all Exposition
Doctor who? Exactly. He’s such a nobody that most people I talked to don’t even remember his name. He’s the architect of this whole affair what with the torturing and experimenting on the children. After showing up at the end to verbal diarrhea his whole raison d’être, does he then do anything of significance? Does he show the cunning and foresight you’d expect from the head a powerful organization?
Nope. He just dies.
8. The Munson’s Family Massacre
Here are fifteen minutes of a story I could have done without. This down-on-their-luck family gets introduced for no other reason than to provide our inglorious bastards with a nice meal. Do we get a surprise twist where one of them is secretly a mutant? Or perhaps they help our mutants out with a crucial piece of information or a tool of some kind?
Nope. They just die. All dead. Each and every one of them. And gruesomely too.
Moreover, everyone knows they’re going to die from the moment they are introduced. It’s so painfully obvious. Not because they are black, but because there’s nothing that our heroes need from anyone. Their only goal is to get to North Dakota and every time they deviate from that singular mission people get killed or nearly so.
One Christmas, my mother decided it would be funny to play a prank on my twin brother and I. When we unwrapped our present we saw that it was a Sega Genesis gaming console. We lost out minds with excitement. However, opening the box, we found it completely empty but for the styrofoam. My mother had a hearty laugh.
That’s how I felt about the Munsons’ murders. Unnecessarily tragic. The difference is, my mother was just joking. When her laughter died down she eventually gave us the actual console hidden behind the couch. Meanwhile, those Munson’s are definitely, and permanently, dead.
9. X-23 Shouldn’t Be Able to Escape
How is it possible that the mutant children aren’t tagged with trackers? With $50 and an X-ACTO knife, I can put a tracker in a kid that will pinpoint their location worldwide. You’re telling me that in 2029 they can coat a child’s bones with adamantium but they can’t figure out how to implant a sub-dermal locator?
Ok, fine. Let’s say the kids disabled their high-tech trackers. How is it that they keep sending goons with guns to capture chibi-wolverine? They know she’s a clawed up ninja. They know she’s impervious to bullets. Yet their plan is to try to get as close as possible to her to strap her down with handcuffs?
Hello?! Magnets!
Magneto figured this out ages ago. Use magnets to move Wolverine to where you want him to be. Would it have been so hard for this multi-billion dollar corporation to get some magnets together to at least slowdown Edward Scissorhands’ love child? Seriously, dudes.
10. Mini Mutants Make Moronic Mistakes
But what about the children? Yeah, what about them. This is the point that truly destroys the movie. It is the single biggest let down and the part that makes the least sense.
Up until we meet them in Eden, we are led to believe that they are to be super soldiers. Born in captivity, inhumanely experimented upon, bred as weapons to be used for nefarious reasons, possessing devastating powers curated from the best of mutant kind. The movie forges ahead with explanations of how they are virtually unstoppable. It goes out of its way to explain how powerful they are.
And what do they do with these awesome powers when faced with a malevolent organization hell-bent on returning them to their cages? Nothing at all. They just run, and run, and run using their abilities almost absentmindedly in defending themselves. They barely use their powers. They barely defend themselves. Who is chasing them? Men with guns. Whoopty doo.
If it wasn’t for our near powerless Logan offering himself up as a punching bag, those kids would have been carted off for sure.
Oh, wait – right. The kids do all use their powers at once to kill Donald Pierce. Yay! They killed a hapless nobody!
In Conclusion, Logan Sucked. Period.
Hey, hey there… don’t get me wrong. I can live with plot holes and poor decisions (I rewatch Armageddon every year). And I like gratuitous violence as much as the next testosterone producer (I heart The Raid). I can even appreciate a terrible superpowers movie (I’m looking at you Suicide Squad). Here’s the thing, though:
Armageddon has 6.6 on IMDB
The Raid scored a 7.6
And Suicide Squad is a 6.3
Logan is an 8.4!
That means Logan beats out these films:
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Return of the Jedi
- Good Will Hunting
- V For Vendetta
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- The Sixth Sense
- How to Train Your Dragon
- …and a thousand other way more fantastic movies.
No, it does not! It just doesn’t.
So please, if you care about movies at all, down vote Logan wherever you can. If we can bring that down to even a 7 then maybe, just maybe, there is hope for humanity.
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