[REVIEW] Logan... or "Bloody Beautiful"

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More like "17 years of Grade-A beef," amright?

We bid farewell to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine after a fantastic 17 years. Not all of the X-men films were great, but that fault never fell on Jackman’s performance as Logan. It’s going to be near impossible to fill Jackman’s claws, as most moviegoers see him as THE Wolverine. “Logan” looks to give Jackman a proper send-off, so how did it do?

Logan picks up the X-men franchise in the year 2029. At this point, all of the other X-men are (assumed) dead, Professor X is slipping into senility, and Logan, as Xavier’s caretaker, is trying to keep a low profile as a limo driver in El Paso. All the while, he’s trying to save us money so he and Professor X can buy a boat and retire to the ocean. The initial banter between Logan and Xavier is hysterical. I almost cried laughing when Professor X said, “Fuck off, Logan.” Ahhh, the R-rating… to no longer be constrained by the family-friendly PG-13. This is where you’ve always belonged, Wolverine.

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She will seriously mess your shit up.

One day, Logan is approached by a woman named Gabriela, who claims to be a nurse from Transigen, a science research company that has been cloning mutant children using real mutant DNA. After seeing the horrific tests that the Transigen staff put the children through, Gabriela decided to break them out. She was separated from all of the other children except one… Enter: the murderous spider monkey in an 11-year-old girl’s body, X-23 (aka Laura).

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Enter: Turd Sandwich

Gabriela pleads with Logan to take Laura to a place in North Dakota called “Eden,” where the children are supposed to meet to gain asylum into Canada. Because Logan is Logan, he only accepts the quest when offered a butt load of money. He is the approached by Donald Pierce, Transigen head of security and leader of the Reavers, a cyborg mercenary team. Pierce is a cocky, yet intense, character, who has been charged with bringing Laura back to Transigen. Imagine Jax from Sons of Anarchy, but with a robot arm.

On the day Logan is to pick up Gabriela and Laura, he finds Gabriela murdered in her motel room (seemingly by Pierce and his team). He quickly heads back to get Professor X and skip town, but Pierce and his squad have already found them. We quickly find out that Laura has rage that could put Logan’s Berserker to shame.  Laura like if Eleven from Stranger Things had adamantium claws (in her hands AND feet, you guys) and really enjoyed turning people into Swiss cheese.

I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll just say the rest of the film is a high-octane (and soul-crushing) game of cat-and-mouse between Logan’s crew and the Transigen goon squad.

Final Consensus: “Logan” is the Wolverine movie we always wanted. Hell, it’s the X-men movie we always wanted. No offense to X2 or Days of Future Past, but this film strips away some of the big-budget super hero shtick to give us a thought-provoking, tear-jerking, gritty realism. I’ve always thought of Marvel as the more “human” side of super heroes versus DC’s “God-like” heroes. “Logan” really drives that home. These are broken characters trying to get by in a world that not only rejects them, but also hunts them down and kills them. People in this world don’t glorify meta-humans jumping around in spandex and capes. This world doesn’t see mutant ability as a gift; they see it as a weapon. It’s not likely that our characters were ever going to have a happy ending.

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The FEELS, you guyssss

Rating: 5 out of 5 X-23 spider-monkey murders

Highlights:

· I want to give special props to Dafne Keen, the actress who plays Laura (X-23). She was fantastic, and utterly savage. I would pay an ungodly amount of money to see her and Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Thing’s Eleven) go on an Matrix-style ass-kicking spree.

· The oft-strained yet beautiful father-son relationship between the aging Logan and Professor X, who is only a shell of his former self, will tug at your heartstrings.

· There is a Wolverine v. Wolverine fight scene that will go down in history as one of the most badass superhero fights ever

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YES. YESSSS

· GET TO THE MOVIE EARLY! There's a teaser from your favorite Merc with a Mouth!

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Bonus points if you can spot the Cable reference!