Logan

[Eggchaser]

How the (slices off an arm) fuck did that (decapitation) only amount to (child murderer in several senses of the word) a fucking 15 certificate?

Am I just getting old? Is it the "Game of Thrones" effect?

I assume that it's the lack of sexual content which avoids the 18 certificate as the violence and swearing are up there with the best of them.

[Ray de Galles]

Logan

Er, isn't there a risk of spoilers above?

I haven't seen 'Logan' yet but thought the same about the 15 certificate for 'Deadpool' last year.

[Hot Pepsi]

Logan

It's rated R in the US.

It is violent, but it's also really good.

I haven't read the X-Men comics in about 30 years and wasn't really that into them, but I always liked Wolverine and this is by far the best of the Wolverine movies. It's more of a western than a superhero movie. The performances are strong, including from the little girl whose name I forget. She hardly says anything, but does it well

[spoiler]
There are a number of violent action scenes, although not as much blood splatter as there probably would be given the weapons involved. It's mostly about Xavier and Logan coming to grips with their own impending mortality.

I have seen all of the X-Men films, but I can't recall how Professor Xavier's death at the end of the third Bryan Singer film was undone by the events in the later movies. I do recall that they changed the time-line, but can't recall the details.

Anyway, Xavier seems to be dead for good in this one and Logan finally dies too, but it's in the future, so they could bring back Patrick Stewart if they need to work him into any sequels on the New Class timeline. Not sure. He's said he might be willing.

Hugh Jackman, however says he's done, but Logan introduces the new female Wolverine, X-23/Laura and a bunch of new kid mutants. So there's room for more sequels. It also introduces X-24, but since X-24 was also played by Jackman, they'll have to go in a different direction there.

It's cool that Logan establishes that, in the Marvel universe, the mutant proliferation that began in the 60s was not really "the next step in human evolution" but just a temporary aberration, and now the forces of the military-industrial complex led by that Xander guy managed to contain and control them. The only new mutants in the 2020s are the ones he allowed to be born in a lab. That's more interesting than just cranking out increasingly implausible-but-useful mutations.

Not clear how Marvel will incorporate the X-Men stories into the Avengers/Spider-Man stuff they're doing. X-Men is licensed to Fox and I guess they can keep them as long as they keep making stuff.

It would be cool if they could tie it into Legion. David in Legion is Xavier's son, so there could be a tie-in.[/spoiler]

[Bored Of Education]

Logan

Oddly, even though - after Spider-Man - Wolverine is my favourite superhero and I really like Hugh Jackman, I first saw a Wolverine film on Saturday. I thought that, 'The Wolverine', was disjointed, lacking even an internal logic and full of the choreographed balletic fight scenes which I am not a fan of, not least because I can't keep up with them. We decided to see 'Logan' on Sunday and this had less of those sorts of fight scenes and is more gritty but is still too clunky - especially at 139 minutes. It seemed to borrow a lot from Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, Terminator 2, Mad Max and Fawlty Towers (seriously!). I thought that this film was a good story welded onto the existing Wolverine backstory and I would have preferred to see the story played as a straight mortal assassin/hitman/whatever film without all the immortal mutant malarkey.

My wife loved The Wolverine but wasn't as impressed with this but, I reckon, if you are a big fan of Wolverine/x-men films, you will probably enjoy this. I still think I will catch up on the Wolverine Origin movie just to put these two in perspective but am not sure I can be bothered with all the Xmen ones. I was only really bothered about Wolverine.

I have to say that I can't believe it made a 15 rating either. The violence is both graphic and, at times, highly psychologically affecting (specifically where it involves children). I also thought the swearing was inappropriate for a 15 and, sometimes, for any age. Extensive swearing in films has to be written well, it can't just be put into every other sentence anywhere without thinking. In any great script, the swearing, like any word or phrase, has to really earn its place. It has to be used as punctuation and with a certain amount of reserve and judiciousness. Even in a film like Goodfellas, which is up there with the sweariest films, uses swearing really well and it doesn't interrupt the rhythm of the dialogue and, indeed, enhances the flow. In this film, it often jars in lines and sounds forced. Patrick Stewart was actually quite good at it though. Talking about jarring dialogue, Stephen Merchant is terrible, certainly at the beginning. It wasn't his accent - which he didn't change - as much, it was his terrible delivery. It didn't even seem to be a sort of faltering delivery that may have fit his character, more a "I don't know how to say this line" manner.

[Bored Of Education]

Logan

[spoiler]I agree that Laura and even the rest of the kids probably look like the future of the franchise. I will not be bothered to see X-24 again. There wasn't really any point in him being an evil Wolverine and not much was made of it aside from the initial appearance. Anyway, as mentioned, Jackman isn't up for it again so no worries there.[/spoiler]

[Wouter D]

Logan

Bordeaux Education wrote: How does one do the "hidden spoilers" thing, by the way?

[spoiler]You can inspect the BB code by quoting my post. It's basically , but with straight brackets instead of pointy ones.[/spoiler]

[RobW]

Logan

Watched this last night, and having heard really good stuff about it from friends and critics, I was left completely nonplussed. Nice to see Stephen Merchant and Richard E Grant though.

[Ray de Galles]

Logan

Saw it tonight and thought it was fantastic. Strangely it was somehow the first X-Men movie I've ever seen* despite being a fan of the comics when I was a child.

The violence is graphic, unrelenting and unsettling but not gratuitous. The language is fine, in fact the swearing seemed on an everyday level to me.

I thought all the main cast were impressive, including Merchant and Boyd Holbrook as Donald Pierce as well as the more obvious examples of Jackman, Stewart and Dafne Keen as Laura. The one disappointment was not using more of Richard E Grant's Xander Rice - his best role in ages and a compelling villain.

Strangely, it really brought to mind the excellent 'The Girl With All The Gifts' for me in both themes and delivery. I didn't really think the well-signposted subtext that it was a modern Western movie really clicked, mind. It felt heavy-handedly shoehorned in.

* unless you count 'Deadpool' as an X-Men movie which I don't really, though by that logic I shouldn't really count 'Logan' as one either.

[Guy Profumo]

Logan

Went to see it this avo.

Enjoyed it, but surprised it got a 15 as it's a bit of a gore-fest.