Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather head from Mexico to the promised land of Canada as they discuss Logan: Its excellent acting and filmmaking, its status as an “X-Men Movie,” its artistic project on both a personal and a political level.
Spoilers for Logan. You should see the movie first.
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This is the first superhero movie in a little while that managed to be good on the screenplay/developed theme axis and still got me a little tingly about the subliminal aspects. I somehow missed that it was R not PG13 going in, but it was insanely violent and used the F word quite a bit. The Shane stuff was amazing (the evocative use of the word “brand” gave me chills – if I could change one thing it would be to give the kids ID tattoos). I liked this a lot.
Basic analysis is that it was Age of Ultron inverted. It is a generational anxiety movie by someone with a different set of issues about the transition between Gen X and what’s next. In AoA, Tony, in order to keep the next generation safe from making his mistakes, brings on a catastrophe, the way out of which is to learn to let go and create a system with more input and step aside. Logan abandons the next generation to be raised by the corporate hellscape, which causes dystopia, and must step up to demonstrate masculinity and reclaim his suppressed righteous rage, then “f*ing die, already.” They both have a farmhouse in the middle to learn an important lesson. In AoA they learn what they need from real America and set out to correct their mistakes. In Logan, everyone in real real America dies except the predators – the black family struggling as farmers, the racist corporatist bullies, even the Haliburtonesque corporate/federal paycheckers. Tony lives on to forget everything for the next outing, while (not Moses) Logan, having led his charges out of Egypt Inc. and through the desert, dies in sight of the promised land, never reaching it.
The best scene is the one in the Bronco where Laura talks for the first time (where she keeps repeating the names of her fellow escapees and holds the map upside down – the psychogeography of this movie is enough for a big effort post where Lacan will be mentioned – America as the desert of the real, Mexico as the unreal, Canada as the imaginary). The southern-boy representative of the new lethal masculine will in thrall to the globalist ambiguously-national oligarch dies really funny with the multicultural kids using their weirdness to kill him. The discussion of the foot claws was super intriguing for its talking around the idea of rape, which is central to the comic X23′s origin. I couldn’t hear very well but I think Logan’s second to last sentence was something like “Ves como madre tu” (Look like your mother?)) and the actress look distractingly like Famke Jansen. The drones were a nice touch.
Borders and immigration will no doubt be a robust read (those limousine passengers… Jeez). I’m more interested in Mexico as the subconscious where Logan must go to retrieve the memory of the past, who now has Alzheimers, and the borders as something of a metaphor. Then there’s Canada as a destination he knows is a lie and must learn to believe in anyway. Additionally, I feel like they changed New Orleans to Oklahoma City in post, but both make no sense since they could easily claim Vegas was on the way and run with that. It would provide the same function.
Like John Wick, they do a thing with the cars between the quadrants of the movie to reinforce the progression of Logan’s state. Here, quad one has a futuristic limo where he is a servant in “heaven,” then a 2nd quad has modern practical pickup as he is simply “managing” his agency in their environment. Post farm massacre midpoint, he’s in an old Bronco fully on the run, and in the third act (4th quad) he walks. It’s like the “shedding garments to prepare for transcendence” rituals of going into the primitive state. The movie has a lot of clever stuff in it. The corn syrup discussion. The “that which we gave you to make you strong causes an autoimmune disease.” The fake comic.
Nice. No post credit scene.
on X-23’s origin, it depends on which one you’re talking about, much like Logan this new Wolverine has multiple. Her origin lies in the X-Men Evolution animated series created right after the Singer movies and it being a kid’s show never insinuates that, it does imply that she has murdered innocents in berserker rages.
When she was left alone that the American Family’s home I was constantly in fear of her killing them because what I knew about her character.
Personally I think this is the best portrayal of the character since X-Men Evolution, the comic tried adapting her…. well her being in a Quesada penned comic wasn’t a great start.
One interesting thing about the film is how the Future (2029) isn’t that futurey. This article explores the films looks and mood: https://www.inverse.com/article/28554-logan-wolverine-movie-sets-water-tower-limo-casino
As a Canadian, I was amused that 2029 Canada still has an mostly unprotected boarder. But Logan was born a Canadian, so I suppose he could have crossed over with the children had he lived. Was anyone besides me reminded of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome?
The only part of this film I didn’t like was the inevitable slaughter of the Nice Family who gave Laura/Logan/Laura a good meal and a place to stay the night. That never ends well.
So Charles is dead. He’s been dead before, but a suppose this time he is really dead, as Patrick Stewert has stated this is his last outing in this franchise as well.
Opps, I meant Charles/Logan/Laura. How about letting us edit our comments?
Haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but I wanted to say that the nice farm family that is slaughtered for having the bad luck to meet Logan is a very obvious echo of something that happens in the first Wolverine movie. In that film he escapes from the lab where they injected him with the adamantium and he takes refuge in a barn, shivering and naked. An old farmer finds him, takes him in, gives him food and clothing, etc. The guy and his wife is then brutally killed by men sent to take Logan down. It’s the same scene.
I think it’s really interesting that they took elements from that X-Men Origins movie, which nobody loves. I’m pretty sure the thing that’s supposed to be slowly killing Logan is the adamantium bullet he was shot with in X-Men Origins (it goes into his brain, causing his amnesia, and presumably it stays there for 50 years).
And I think the gut-punch of having that whole farm family killed is worth it for Xavier’s amazing final monologue, right before he’s attacked. Such a great, tragic scene. I don’t think it’ll ever happen but Patrick Stewart should really get nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He was mesmerizing.
Oh right, there was that Orgins movie. I forgot about that one.
Agreed about Patrick Stewart. He is one of our great actors, and his chemistry with Hugh Jackman is amazing.
I thought it was the general presence of adamantium in his skeleton that was killing him, rather than a specific bullet from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Hasn’t that movie been more or less officially excised from canon? Especially given that awful epilogue scene where a poorly green-screened standing Professor X shows up? And, you know, the Deadpool movie?
Anyway, those are details to quibble over. Perhaps a more interesting question is, how rare are adamantium bullets? Adamantium metal in general? Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the X-Men movie universe, we see only 4 people with adamantium skeletons: Wolverine, his clone, Lady Deathstrike, and X-23. The Silver Samurai stockpiled a bunch of adamantium, but I don’t recall the details around how difficult it was for him to do so.
The X-Men movies seem particularly invested and dismissive of the idea of continuity, don’t they? DoFP is about continuity yet every film disregards the previous film after X3. I think Logan plays with it in interesting ways, the past films all exist in a hazy fever dream much like Logan’s memories. It’s probably best not to watch them before seeing Logan so they’re hazy messes.
Logan is so final yet they’re going to keep making more and the director has expressed interest in exploring Laura’s next movie. And how could they be all interconnected? These movies started before the idea of “Cinematic Universes” where everything is hinged on each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K03CU-208FI
Heck the producer for Logan said that all of the films are in continuity and “fit organically” which is at odds with the movie saying that it doesn’t matter. Funny, huh?
100% agree on the Thunderdome connection, especially given the scene where the children give Logan/Max a haircut to make them more closely resemble the hero they look up to.
One of the things I loved about Logan was how the story is sort of built around the idea of Logan shedding layers of his identity until there’s nothing left. He starts out as limo driver James Howlett. He’s actually using his birth name (if I remember Origins correctly) as a cover to throw people off from the fact that Logan and Charles Xavier are living in exile South of the Border. He sheds the Howlett identity around Xavier, who has always known him as X-Man Logan. Logan is who Laura and the nurse seek out for help. Over the course of his journey, he loses a little more of the Logan identity bit by bit. First the kids cut his beard back into those iconic mutton chops, then he injects himself with alllllll of that green serum, which finally turns him back into the primal rage monster known as The Wolverine. The price Logan pays for being a hero is the complete loss of his own identity.
In the podcast I mentioned that Logan wanted to have its comic book cake and eat it too. In other words, both subvert certain aspects of the genre while still taking advantage of its strengths. One key aspect that we didn’t have time to discuss was the whole business with Eden. Yes, it’s a fantasy made up in a comic book, and yet, it inspires the kids to meet at that rallying point and create the utopia for themselves.
It kind of reminds me of how Space Shuttle Enterprise: it started out as a fictional starship, but real life spacefarers created an actual Enterprise, inspired by the fictional story.
Do you think it would’ve had the same effect if it was called Genosha? Magneto’s Mutant Nation, or is Eden for general audiences to understand?
I think so, the movie i think is a better adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns than Batman v Superman was, in the sense that it explores superheroes as aspirational beings rather than realistic goals. Logan is always at odds with the idealization of himself thru the movie. This is the idea that Frank Miller seized upon in TDKR and Daredevil who didn’t care for them as opposed to Alan Moore who began loving superheroes and soured on them as disgusting fantasies.
This is not a defense of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but there was something in there that I really liked, that I think has bearing on this. Now bear with me as my Christian-ness comes out.
Right after Kayla (his wife/girlfriend … whatever) gets murdered he goes to Striker and says that he needs help to hunt down Victor (Sabertooth). Striker says that I can help you but it will cause you more pain than anyone has ever suffered. This to me sounds like God talking to Jesus.
God says, “Well everyone is going to hell because of that pesky business with the fruit.”
So Jesus says, “I want to help, I can save them.”
God says, “OK, you can save them, but it will cause you more pain than anything. No thing will ever be able to comprehend how much pain you will suffer. It will be all the pain and sorrow and sadness and guilt and shame and sickness and everything that every person has ever suffered.”
Jesus says, “OK, I can handle that.”
And then he did.
I am not claiming that Jesus is real or Christianity is right. I just think it is an interesting parallel. And that Mangold and crew would make it his adamantium skeleton (@Mark_Lee is right) that is killing him, which means that the suffering and pain of the procedure to put the adamantium on his bones was not the end of the pain that would be more than anyone could bear.
One could almost read Logan’s life of suffering like the fever dream that Jesus has on the cross in the Last Temptation of Christ. Like the pain of the atonement was not a finite moment in the last day of his life, but was actually an extended and prolonged experience to him.
I just like Wolverine as the guy who can suffer, and Jesus is another one of those guys who can suffer. So I see a parallel.
Very interesting! Wolverine’s core power is really his ability to endure pain, which is just as often emotional as physical. In Days of Futures Past, he’s the guy sent back in time to save the world because he’s the only one who’s strong enough to survive the pain. When he has Xavier look into his mind, Charles exclaims, “You poor, poor man.” Logan tells him, “Look past me.” And Charles shies away, saying, “No, I don’t want your suffering.” There is something religious about that, right? To touch Wolverine’s soul is to understand bottomless sorrow, but time and time again it’s that capacity for pain that gives us a second chance.
And wow, the symbolism of changing the cross to the X is intense. It’s almost like X-23 is deifing him right there.
I have to keep reminding myself that Logan is older than Xavier.
Sort of. Wolverine had his memories erased in 1979, so he doesn’t have the life experience that Xavier does.
Thank you for that! Did that happen when he got Adamantisized?
The end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has him getting shot in the head with 2 adamantium bullets that are lodged in his frontal lobe, then his skin grows around them. This is the in-universe explanation for his memory loss. I have no idea if that would work IRL.
Every X-Men movie pretty much contradicts the previous one, often in egregious ways. Origins just flat out ignores the flashbacks to X2 so like Logan we can’t take the past as sacrosanct. Much like our own memories.
Think about Mystique, in the first three films she was Magneto’s loyal attack dog and never mentions Xavier, but in First Class, which i hate, she has a special connection to Xavier. They also meet later in life, directly contradicting X-Men 1 or 2 when they say they met as teenagers. It’s always been a mess.
We have been discussing the acting of Jackman and Stewart. But no discussion of this film is complete without mentioning Dafne Keen, who is amazing.
Hell yeah she was amazing. I was almost worried that her saying anything would ruin the performance but having her speak Spanish really won me over. She hid her accent fairly well and it was very well done.
Well actually, a very pedantic one, but Wolverine’s real or I guess birth name is James Howlett and the name he took on after the amnesia is Logan. Small nitpick but he does use his birth name as his faux-Uber account.
I think another reason it’s called Logan is because it’s the end of Logan and not the Wolverine. Laura/X-23 is set up to be the next Wolverine just as she is in the comics. If the movie was Called Wolverine I think we would’ve continued to follow Laura. Part of me wishes, if this were a different movie, that we could’ve seen Alpha Flight at the edge of the screen in their colorful costumes like angels welcoming the kids.
Anyway great podcast it’s just the kind of analysis I wanted to hear after watching the movie. I just wish y’all would’ve talked more about X-23 and her place in the movies. Personally the most shocking thing in the movie was when she finally spoke and spoke almost exclusively in Spanish. I’d never considered or even imagined her as a Spanish speaking character. I was so engrossed by her at that point I almost forgot that not everyone in the theater knows Spanish. She did have a bit of an accent and I guess I can’t be surprised Hollywood wouldn’t cast a Mexican as Wolverine’s daughter, I guess Spanish Brits are better. Still I can never not hear her name pronounced in Spanish as Laura.
On Logan as a western I have to say that it was a little too close to a western in the most disturbing of ways, there are so many dead Mexican bodies, very indigenous looking Mexicans, in the film. The opening where he eviscerates cholos is a little too Gran Torino for me, I dunno at what point do you look at a guy with knives for hands chopping down your pals and say eff it? Also I’ve never seen Shane but I have seen other westerns and knowing history I can’t help but say that There are no guns in the valley is a historical lie, the guns stayed as natives were exterminated for centuries. I can’t really watch movies like Casablanca and root for the good guys knowing history XD or any western for that matter. I dunno I still liked the movie.
What do y’all think the movie ultimately says about violence and the victims of violence? I can’t help but recall Saga, Vaughan & Staples, and that one scene at the hospital where the survivors of Marko’s Wolverine like berserker rage are being treated, like can John Wick 3 be about that? XD