At the behest of 20th Century Fox, we’ve removed what are deemed spoilers in this piece, fyi.
The single most undermining element in superhero movies has to be invulnerability. This fundamental flaw is something that filmmaker Duncan Jones recently commented and complained about, saying, “Mechanics & stakes of Green Lantern always bugged me. Ring that can do anything & you have a tough time winning fights? Hero, please!” What Jones was kvetching about was dramatic stakes and the lack thereof. If a superhero is all powerful, if he can do anything and everything and can’t really be hurt, what’s the point? What’s at stake exactly?
READ MORE: Hugh Jackman Fights For Mutant Lives In The Final, Brutal Trailer For ‘Logan’
The “X-Men” movies suffered the same problem with Wolverine. What were accelerated healing abilities in the comics — Wolverine could recover from bullet, knife and blunt trauma wounds eventually, but he could be killed — essentially became another form of imperviousness in the movies. Bullets to the head, multiple gun-shot wounds, swords through the body; any attack was easily rebuffed through healing powers that quickly rendered any offensive moot. Wolverine could get kicked around a lot, he would wince in pain and get angrier until he lathered up into his berserker rage, but at the end of the day you knew nothing would actually harm the hero. Wolverine had essentially become a comic book movie cartoon and not the flesh and blood, perpetually angry human (mutant) seen and beloved in the comics.
But with “Logan,” James Mangold and Hugh Jackman appear to be tackling this problem head on and attempting to course correct. In this third Wolverine film set in the “near future,” which is vaguely post-apocalyptic in tenor, mutants are on the fringes and seemingly all but extinct. In fact, there’s a “Children Of Men”-like narrative: no new mutant has been born in over 15 years and the rest of the remaining species (there’s an implication that many have died) seem to have scattered and splintered off. And Logan (Hugh Jackman), is finally old enough that his powers seem to have weakened – he can’t mend all various cuts, gashes and injuries, of which he seems to have plenty of. And the lacerations seem to go beyond the physical, as he also wakes up from trauma-induced nightmares.
With his advanced age, this Wolverine is feeling pain in his bones. His powers are no longer what they used to be, the scars don’t fully heal, his eyesight is going, and Logan drinks to take the pain away.
Mangold’s “Logan,” at least the first forty minutes screened for critics late last year, is bleak and far, far darker than any preceding “X-Men” film. And truthfully, those forty minutes alone were better than most superhero movies in full, but let’s see if Mangold can stick the landing.