Its the year 2029 and mutants seem to be slowly dying out as none have been born for the last 25 years. Logan is now an aging, grey haired, broken man whose special healing ability has weakened over time. He now spends his time working as a limo driver whilst caring for Professor X. The professor is now also very old and weak, suffering from a brain disease that causes violent seizures which has resulted in many X-Men being killed.
Logan reluctantly accepts a job to escort a woman and young girl to a refuge in North Dakota. Alas it seems the young girl (Laura) has the same powers as Logan and a shady outfit are after her. The shady outfit in question being Transigen, a company that uses children with mutant DNA to create weapons. Transigen created Laura and want her back. And so Logan must now help Laura reach the refuge in North Dakota.
So the main hook with this movie seemed to be the fact it was an R/18 rating. This would be the first time we would see Wolverine really getting stuck into his enemies, swear and showcase a lot of claret. In all honesty that pretty much seemed like the entire reason for the hype to me. This time there would be no cuts, we'd see Wolverine stick his claws through someones head...and there would be blood, awesome. But was it? Was it really? I mean sure twas cool 'n' all but Jesus Christ I didn't cum in my pants or anything. I guess for a teenager this might have been epic but for me I saw nothing special.
But that aside lets look at the story and acting. The plot isn't anything amazing, its essentially a standard chase formula. Bad guys are trying to catch the good guys as both parties tear across the countryside. Wolverine is the typical reluctant hero, he doesn't really wanna have to deal with it, he has his own problems, but he now finds himself in the thick of it. The girl he's stumbled across was more of a pain at first, uncontrollable, a burden; but as time passes he becomes attached to her, he becomes her guardian. Its all relatively bog standard stuff we've all seen before.
Obviously the movie revolves around Jackman and his gritty performance as Logan. As I just said, at first he doesn't really wanna get involved with Laura, he has his hands full with Xavier. So naturally he's grumpy, rude, kinda selfish in a way, but ultimately tired and weary of his existence. He's aging and slowing down, he's not as agile or fit as he once was and his claws hurt him as they extend and retract. He doesn't wanna get into any fisticuffs but still finds himself raging out and killing people, mostly scummy criminal types of course. But is this really anything new? I mean lets be honest here we've seen Jackman do this grumpy, gritty, no-nonsense persona before with Wolverine, its not really that new. Is he good at it? Yes, very much so, but this wasn't an outright Oscar performance or anything, he didn't blow me away whilst watching.
I feel the same way about Patrick Stewart's performance as Xavier. Was this a good performance? Yes very much so, Stewart like Jackman have both perfected their performances as these characters and it would be hard to see another person in the roles. But did I see anything that blew me away or was any different to what he's done before in previous movies with this character? No not really, it was a solid performance but nothing more than what I've come to expect from this franchise. There is a shit-tonne of emotion radiating throughout this movie and at times, namely the ending, its quite poignant. But at the end of the day I didn't really see anything that I haven't seen before in previous movies, it was just more heightened this time.
As for the kid actor, Dafne Keen (Laura), yes again she was good in her role, but she hardly had any dialog and merely acts like a feral child when the action kicks in (which always looked kinda cringeworthy in my opinion). Yes I understand she's just a child actor and yes she did put in a solid performance for her age, but again it didn't blow me away, it really didn't. Seeing her growl and bounce around (mostly by a stunt double) like a lethal Gollum just didn't wow me I'm afraid. Its only towards the end when she starts trusting and caring about Logan that she actually comes into her own.
I did also notice that all the other child characters in this movie were mostly minority actors. Because clearly director James Mangold and co needed to hammer home the political narrative of minorities/refugees and borders, striving for freedom, and the evil white man chasing and trying to enslave/kill them. Its kinda sad that almost every movie these days has these little, not so hidden, political angles to appease certain demographics and groups.
For me I really couldn't get past the fact it was just another samey superhero flick. Despite all the grit and emotion packed into it, at the end of the day it was the same old thing. The villains were the same corny bunch of faceless kill fodder they always are. There only seems to be a dozen or so hencemen throughout the movie, then come the finale there's loads of them! Loads of bad guys for all the hero characters to merrily kill. I didn't really understand the point of the bad guys either. They wanted this mutant kids back because they created them, OK sure. But they only wanted to exterminate them, so why go to all that trouble to try and capture them? And with all this future tech on display, you're telling me that no one could have added some kind of device in these mutant test subjects that would shut them down, or kill them with the flick of a switch, if needs be? Surely by now these evil companies would have thought to do that because they all seem incapable of keeping their creations under lock and key.
I also really disliked the entire clone of Logan aspect, I realise that's a major part of his characters backstory but seeing two Jackman's (one looking kinda goofy with those muttonchops) fighting each other just looks stupid. The effects were handled well (inevitable CGI superhero stuff aside) but that kind of thing always looks daft to me. Also the clone of Logan (X-24) could have easily killed him at any point, just taken his head off, but no we gotta do the usual throwing thing. That's the other thing about these X-Men.superhero movies, the action is very repetitive. In other words what else do you expect a bloke with claws to do all the time, exactly. Seeing Logan slice 'n' dice people isn't awesome anymore folks, we've been there and done it. Simply adding blood and gore doesn't really make it any more exciting or better.
I just get the impression this movie seems to have been blown way way outta proportion simply because it was Huge Jackaman's last outing as Wolverine and everybody likes him in the role. Oh and of course it was an R rating so that makes it instantly cooler, apparently. Was this a bad movie? No. Was it a good X-Men movie? One of the best ones? Yes. Was it a stunning movie? No, it was a solid but completely unoriginal chase movie in a superhero wrapping. Don't get me wrong I didn't not like it, its certainly one of the better comicbook superhero (based) flicks, I just didn't see what all the fuss was about. In no way does this movie deserve the hype it got, in my opinion.
7/10
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