X-MEN - A Retro Review

The success of 'Logan' has made me want to go back and check out some of the older X-films to see how well they hold up. So let's dive right in to their cinematic introduction, shall we?

Spoiler Warning - Dudes, this movie is seventeen years old. If you haven't seen it yet, that's your own damn fault, so don't come at me with your accusations about spoiling the movie!

Watching 'X-Men' recently, I was struck by the sort of feeling one gets after re-watching the pilot episode of a beloved TV series. It mostly holds up, but you can't help but be struck by the shakiness of the whole thing when compared to the confidence exhibited by later seasons - or in this case, films. 'X2', 'Days of Future Past' and 'Logan' are all really great films that wouldn't have been possible without 'X-Men' to lay the groundwork, but it's still a bit rough around the edges.

Director Bryan Singer, for the most part, does a pretty good job introducing Marvel's mutants to the big screen. The story, basic though it is, holds up relatively well. But there are some pretty noticeable flaws in the execution, too. Some of the dialogue is pretty bad - especially Xavier's introduction of the team; it's awkward and sounds...stupid. Logan is right to make fun of it, but calling attention to it to poke fun doesn't make it any less silly. Some of the character designs, costumes and special effects haven't aged very well. But the backbone of the movie is strong, and it's elevated by several really good scenes and solid performances.

All the supporting characters do a solid enough job (except Halle Berry who was just kinda...there) but really, the movie hinges on the performances of Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin and Ian McKellan. No superhero movie is going to be all that great without a good villain and McKellan's performance as Magneto is top notch. The opening of the film still ranks as one of the best sequences in all of the X-Films and the utter anguish of that scene permeates McKellan's whole performance. He's as sympathetic as a genocidal lunatic can be, and the fact that it's possible for the viewer to relate to his fear and anger and the unspoken motto of "never again" makes it a little too easy for us to see where he's coming from, even if his destination is terrifying.

After 'The Usual Suspects' (awesome) and 'Apt Pupil (sucked) I was cautiously optimistic about the job Singer would do in making a live-action X-Men. So when I finally saw it, I was mostly just relieved that it wasn't bad. And that's still kinda how I feel now. It's good - not nearly as good as X2 or DOFP - but it's a pretty solid jumping off point, and it has lead to a franchise that has had more highs than lows, and with 'Logan', one of the coolest movie superheroes ever.

FINAL SCORE - 7/10

'X-Men' has been available on DVD for about 22 years. So if you don't have it, just buy the blu-ray. I'm sure it's only like eight bucks.

LOGAN - A Movie Review

It's been a while since I've written, mostly due to an increasingly busy schedule, but also due to there not being many movies that have blown my skirt up of late. 'Logan' has ended this drought.

Spoiler Warning - be advised that I won't be skirting around any explicit plot points here. 

Simply put, 'Logan' is the best film to come from the superhero genre since 'The Dark Knight'. Director James Mangold has crafted a perfect swan song for the role Hugh Jackman has held for almost 17 years. The film is expertly crafted, wonderfully acted, powerful and thought-provoking. If Chris Nolan gave us a morality tale posing as a superhero movie by way of a crime drama, Mangold has given us poignant rumination on death, legacy, and heroism posing as a road trip.

Anchored by a career performance from Jackman, 'Logan' very much feels like the culmination of everything the various writers and directors have done with the Wolverine over the years. Thematically, if there's one thread that has been woven throughout Hugh Jackman's entire time as Logan, it's the question of identity. Bryan Singer first brought Wolverine to the big-screen asking literally "who is this man? where did he come from?" And while we tend to gloss over the failure of his first solo outing, the second, also directed by Mangold, gave us a Logan who knew exactly who he was, and was determined to change. While 'The Wolverine' gave us our first look at a depressed and reclusive hero struggling to emerge from a self-imposed exile, 'Logan' takes the character's depression to a much more consuming and damaged depth.

Dipping back into the fertile ground of a weakened Wolverine, Mangold shows us a Logan whose healing factor is failing, his bones are creaking and poisoning him, and his claws are barely functional. With pus leaking from his knuckles, they're almost more pain than they're worth. In addition to his physical weaknesses, Logan is a full blown alcoholic now, and carries with him an adamantium bullet, just in case he ever works up the nerve to blow his own head off. Through his interactions with Laura, we know he's deeply ashamed of the deaths he's caused. But less obvious is the survivor's guilt he is clearly feeling in the wake of the death of the X-Men.

We've had other superhero films deal with the themes of death and loss before, but never like this. No superhero has ever had to worry about simply dying of old age. For a genre that often struggles to be relatable  to us mere mortals, 'Logan' is almost painfully too relatable. Not only is Logan himself falling apart, but he is also saddled with taking care of an ailing Charles Xavier. Crippled by dementia, Xavier's brain is more dangerous than ever simply because he can no longer control it. For someone who has had to care for an elder family member, it may hit too close to home. The heartbreak of his senility is only made worse by his moments of lucidity. That is a testament to Patrick Stewart's performance, and if there's some justice in the world, he'll at least be in the conversation for an oscar nomination.

And yet, thrust into this story of death and decay is a tiny little girl who sports adamantium claws of her own and a familiar tendency to whip them out at the slightest provocation. Dafne Keen does a wonderful job as Laura Kinney, aka X-23, the young clone of Wolverine. Silent for two-thirds of the film (except for some intimidating growls and, for want of a better term, roars) Keen does a great job conveying wonder, confusion, anger, rage, love and pain just with her very expressive face. By the time she actually does speak, you're almost surprised she can find even more depths to plum.

While Laura's arrival into Logan and Xavier's world sets the plot in motion, it also provides a relevant tale about the interaction of age and youth, the future with the past, and leaving behind more than just a legacy of regret. For much of the film, Logan is a reluctant participant, only popping his claws to protect Charles or his limo. Even the arrival of The Reavers, a group of cybernetically enhanced mercenaries, and a full-blown clone of himself, dubbed X-24, aren't enough to fully snap Logan out of his funk. Oh sure, he fights and he fights hard against them. But when the fights are over, he's more than happy to slink away again and crawl back into a bottle. It's not until he realizes that he can save Laura from going down the same path of violence and rage that he took, that Logan wakes up his real desire to fight again.

"Don't be what they made you" Logan tells her. While his own clone is completely devoid of any sort of rational capabilities, Logan recognizes that Laura has the potential to be good, and to find the sort of peaceful* life Logan himself was unable to find. That he is willing to die just for that potential shows that he is indeed what he insisted he never was: a hero.

*the mirrored scenes of Charles being buried near water, and then Logan's final resting place echo that elusive desire for peace. Logan barely being able to say anything at Xavier's graveside illustrates how important it was for him to find some sort of beauty for Charles to be near for eternity. 

Thematically, 'Logan' is obviously a very rich film. But technically, it's very much unlike any other comic book film I can think of, save maybe Dredd. The opening few minutes feel very much like an indie movie eschewing the need for some massive action set-piece in favor of sparse titles and Logan beating up some car thieves. It's a pretty far cry from the Nightcrawler sequence that opened 'X2' or the powerful Nagasaki scene that opened 'The Wolverine'. Mangold has moved almost completely away from the feeling of the last Wolverine movie and has created something that looks more like the westerns that were clearly an influence. Even scenes that play on a midwest farm and North Dakota still have that arid, hot, lifeless feeling of the western desert. The vastly different look of 'The Wolverine' and 'Logan' almost make it hard to believe it's the same film crew behind both movies.

As a director, Mangold is fully confident in nearly every single scene. Everything services the mostly original story, written by Mangold, Scott Frank and Michael Green, and while it obviously takes a few cues from Old Man Logan (especially with regards to the fate of the X-Men) it never feels like an adaptation. It unfolds in a way that somehow feels both surprising and inevitable - much like death itself. The action pieces are some of the best in recent memory, getting away from the wanton destruction of CGI monsters and focusing on the fragility of the human body when it comes face to face with adamantium claws. Swearing and violence aside, this movie simply had to be rated R. It would and could not be the same film if made within the confines of something meant for younger, more sensitive audiences.

I've failed to mention several things in this review that ought to be mentioned; Stephen Merchant, Boyd Holbrook, and Eriq LaSalle all bring their A-game to the movie. Composer Marco Beltrami eschews the typical loud superhero themes for mostly sedate melodies that amplify the drama. The few times that the score does move toward something more rousing, it does so in a way that ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels (the casino scene, especially). Basically, everyone who worked on this movie did a fucking amazing job.

I haven't walked out of a movie this emotionally drained in a long time. That is saying something. Mangold and Jackman have done something wondrous and rare. 'Logan' is a perfect film. Not a perfect comic book, or superhero film. There are no qualifiers here. It's simply perfect from beginning to end.

FINAL SCORE - 10/10

OLD MAN LOGAN - A Comic Review

I'm on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean I'm not all business! SO...the rumor came down a while back that Hugh Jackman's final outing as the Wolverine would be based on Mark Millar's 2008 story arc "Old Man Logan". And then I decided to read it. And review it, because it really is quite good!

Spoilers up in hurr - they're not really big spoilers, but they're still spoilers nonetheless.

I'm not the world's biggest Mark Millar fan. He's quite talented, for sure, but fairly inconsistent, too. I dug his run on "Ultimate X-men" and I enjoyed "Kick-Ass" (and "Kick-Ass 2", though not so much "Hit-Girl" and "Kick-Ass 3") "Wanted" was weird and not really my cup of tea, and "Secret Service" was just plain awful. But he also wrote "Civil War", which is a truly amazing mini-series. Inconsistencies aside, when Millar is on, damn...he is on. So when I realized Millar had re-teamed with Steve McNiven, the artist on "Civil War", to bring us the story of a dystopian future starring a nearly unrecognizable Wolverine, I was on-freakin'-board.

To start, Millar creates a truly desperate image of the world. Imagine a future where the supervillains teamed up to finally, completely destroy almost every superhero in the world, and seize control. America is cut into quadrants, each with a tyrannical villain ruling over it. Imagine fifty years later, an old farmer lives in extreme poverty, desperately struggling to make rent or face the wrath of a bunch of redneck, violent, sociopathic Hulk descendants threatening the farmer's wife and children. They promise his family terrible violence, yet this farmer could easily kill them all, if he weren't a pacifist, sworn to avoid violence at all costs. Now imagine that old farmer is Wolverine, who hasn't picked a fight, killed a man, or even popped his claws in half a century.

That is the backbone of "Old Man Logan". Wolverine has essentially been de-fanged, and is trying to lead a normal, if difficult, life in peace and quiet with his young family. When he finds himself a month behind on rent, he must take a job with an old friend (spoiler alert - it's HAWKEYE!) to travel across the wasteland that America has become, or risk the lives of his entire family.

There are really two stories wrapped in one here. The first really begins when Logan and a now-blind Hawkeye ride across the country, they come across various towns and people in need of a hero, yet Logan refuses to fight, refuses to get involved, almost to the point of absurdity. The second story is the mystery of why that is. First of all, what exactly happened to all the heroes? And how was Wolverine defeated so badly that he swore to never fight again?

Both stories are good and interesting in their own right, but finding out the truth of what really happened fifty years ago is far more brutal and devastating than I can describe without ruining the story. But rest assured, "Old Man Logan is Mark Millar at the height of his talent. He is ON in this book.

Millar brings sympathy when it's due, anger when it's deserved, and an insane amount of excitement when the action breaks out. Though Logan may have sworn himself to peace, that doesn't mean everyone around him has, and the sight of a glaucoma-ridden Hawkeye still having plenty of tricks up his sleeve is certainly a ton of fun. There are plenty of twists, turns, and unexpected surprises along the way. What happened to the cities that just seemed to disappear overnight? Who's is the President? Where is Mjolnir? Why is that Ultron clone wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khakis? And just how did those redneck Hulks even come about? There's a ton of story to explore, and Millar handles it all with aplomb.

Art-wise, Steve McNiven brings a similar art to his previous work on "Civil War" to this book, creating both a cinematic and realistic feeling to the serenity of Logan's peaceful life, and the chaos that results when that serenity is broken, either by violence, or by the emergence of an unexpected villain. Logan spends nearly the entire book refusing to show his claws, and when he finally breaks his oath, McNiven spends three pages giving you an ear-to-ear grin at the unbridled badassness of it.

Millar and McNiven craft a wonderful complete story, create a horribly dystopian future, and expertly weave in awesome action, humor, and even some heart-wrenching poignancy, too. If 'Wolverine 3' decides to go this route and adapt the "Old Man Logan" story arc for their movie, it's going to have a tough time living up to the quality of this book. I really, really hope they succeed.

FINAL SCORE - 8.5/10