Five years ago, the story of the most popular Marvel mutant ended on the big screen with the release of Logan. This finale to the Fox X-Men movies was a painfully poignant piece, with director James Mangold delivering a tour de force that subverted all manner of audience expectations. But while it was hailed as the best of the uneven Fox X-Men films, the film is actually much more than that.
Logan might not have been what most would consider comic book accurate, but it worked best because of that fact. Transcending genre and emulating a Western classic, the muted and brutal Logan throws away any concern for being a good “superhero” movie and instead focuses on being an excellent movie as a whole. Here’s why the movie to this day remains unbeaten in superhero cinema.
Why Logan Worked So Well as an X-Men Send-Off
Logan succeeds as an X-Men movie and at portraying its particular themes because of how much of a dour full circle scenario it is. The now aged Wolverine, whose healing factor has begun failing him, is, along with the decrepit and geriatric Professor X, the last of the long-gone X-Men. This point, as well as his fierce protection of the mentally declining Charles Xavier, is a reverse of how he was in the 2000 X-Men movie. There, he was standoffish and utterly contemptuous of the X-Men, particularly butting heads with Cyclops. Now, with everyone else gone, he cleaves hopelessly to the man who’s become a sort of surrogate father to him.
Likewise, he takes on fatherly duties with his own daughter/clone Laura. Their rocky relationship is both evocative and the opposite of Logan’s paternal nature with Rogue in the first three movies. While they weren’t related, Logan clearly cared more about protecting and doing right by Rogue than he did about anything else to do with the X-Men. On the other hand, he’s much more apprehensive and aggravated with Laura, and it’s only in his death that the two truly establish a familial bond.
This plays with the concepts of a surrogate family present in all X-Men stories, and how mutants, through being outcasts from different backgrounds forced to stick together, are the ultimate expressions of this premise. In losing his healing factor/life, seeing Professor X die a death far too unworthy of a former civil rights freedom fighter and meeting his daughter, Logan is also forced to understand his own mortality. The idea of X-Men comic books is also introduced, and as mean-spirited as it may seem, the film’s chastising of the more otherworldly X-Men mythology elements that most of the franchise evaded to begin with is a sort of ultimate celebration of what the first film started.
Why Logan Is Better Than Any Other Superhero Film
For as great as Logan is, many might contest that it’s the best superhero movie, simply because of how uninterested it is in superheroics. While this is a valid point, it’s again the movie’s greater focus on its themes and quality as a whole that elevate it beyond simply being good in its genre and into another stratosphere of cinematic quality as a whole. Some of the biggest potential contenders for the cinematic superhero crown might be recent hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. But while these were certainly fun romps, they are as beloved as they are due to nostalgia and acting as a culmination of an epic story.
Perhaps the only real competition would be Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight, which, similar to Logan, deal more with themes of the burdens of superheroics and how they can ruin a hero’s life. Even in these cases, however, Logan still comes out on top due to how present its themes were, as well as how strongly it portrayed them. Logan was in many ways not only a send-off to Wolverine and the X-Men but also the final fruition of what superhero narratives can achieve. Once the costumes are stripped away and the heroes are at their most bare, what’s left are great stories that, behind the tights and flights, reveal characters that are almost excruciatingly human.