Let me start this review with my opinion of a different movie. "X-Men Apocalypse" was a truly awful movie by all standards. It expressed no reverence for the characters in the story it was communicating, it treated the plot like an inconvenience to be worked around until the next special effects presentation and its great sin was the absolute disregard for values such as family, tolerance, and sacrifice that the X-Men Movies began with, replacing them with bigger battles.
Now, I am an incredibly easy to please movie goer. Build a decently imaginative world, make some characters I can get behind, have a conflict that is understandable and I am in. I enjoy the Mario Brothers movie; for crying out loud, I am very tolerant of flaws. But to botch a franchise so easy to get right as the X-Men? I'll get angry very quickly.
But that is the way that the X-Men movies had been going lately, and with the series set to be rebooted within the next few years, it became clearly obvious that studio executives were just looking for a few more films to cash out on before pulling the plug and starting over. I mean, who cares about quality when you already know there will be a next time to fall back on?
Well, two actors did- two actors with a lot of power and clout in the Hollywood world. Huge Jackman and Sir Patrick Stewart sat down at the proverbial negotiating table and made some basic demands. They wanted a Wolverine movie. It was going to be R-rated, it was going to be realistic in its depiction of the world and it was going to take seriously the themes of family, tolerance, and sacrifice.
No one wanted to make the thing. After all, they said, "R-rated superhero movies don't make money." And then Deadpool came out.
The movie would be made, but under one condition: all the actors would take a significant pay cut to protect the studio financially if the film was a bust, and that went double for Jackman. The Actors agreed so long as it was R-rated, realistic, and took the themes seriously. The result? We see the Wolverine bleed.
Logan is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. It depicts pain, love, and loss with an honesty that is not found in many movies today. There are no massive battles taking place around famous landmarks, and the world is not in danger. Instead, there is a little girl looking for a family, an old immortal who doesn't find meaning in life and a crippled epileptic who just wants the people around him to be happy.
Logan is not a movie for thrill seekers; there are few explosions, and a distinct lack of special effects when compared to other superhero movies. But if you want to watch a movie that means something, I have to recommend it.
