STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM “Logan”

Picture a superhero in his or her heyday, in their prime, looking awesome when they’re saving people. But they’re still living on Earth, so they have to deal with aging and money troubles. Kind of a bummer, huh?

Directed by James Mangold, screenplay by Scott Frank & Mangold and Michael Green, story by Mangold, Logan is the story of James “Logan” Howlett, formerly the X-Man known as Wolverine. Now, he’s working as a driver saving up money to buy a boat for himself and his mentor/father figure, Charles Xavier, suffering through slight dementia. They are both haunted by their pasts, and the boat will be a fresh start.

Logan is presented a financial opportunity, finally able to buy the boat: a job that involves taking a former nurse and a little girl on the run from a powerful corporation.

When Logan finds the nurse dead in the motel they were hiding at, he is now forced to still take on the job, bringing along Xavier to their planned destination to North Dakota, protecting them from the corporation’s chief of security and his men.

Luckily, Logan isn’t be the only fighter in their group able to protect them.

If Christopher Nolan was able to redefine the comic book/superhero genre with DC’s Batman, Mangold did the same with this Marvel property. The film took an established superhero that was widely popular and well-known in pop culture, and made a neo-western journey film. Mangold made it personal to Wolverine.

Personally, anytime an action movie has any kind of hand-to-hand combat where we can see the action, those are the best parts. Since Wolverine is one of those characters who prefer that, the film delivers in its fight scenes. There aren’t many because the film is very much focused on its characters, deep diving into their problems and finally saying them out loud.

Again, it’s not dissimilar to a western, from the landscapes (despite being set in the “near” future) to its themes; the film even showing the classic western film Shane, which shares the same theme of an old fighter in a new world, and they’re existence is slowly fading because the new world has no place for such violent people.

Because the film is focusing on its characters, you have to have good actors selling it. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s roles as Logan and Xavier reach their peak of perfection in this last outing, not just their arcs, but just delivering a powerful, dramatic performance.

And of course, in her first film role, Dafne Keen gives an amazing performance, acting and stunt-wise as Laura, the little girl.

Logan was a film that everyone was waiting for, but when the trailer dropped, no one was expecting the smaller scale, or the personal stakes the characters would go through.

It’s a film that educated and reminded audiences that characters are characters are characters; superheroes are still considered characters. Put them in relatable, serious situation, the audiences will willingly connect with them. They’re even more engaging.

It’s goes toe-to-toe with the best of cinema.