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Logan Review (no spoilers)
8 years ago
Because I know you all follow me for my deep insight on popular media, I figured I'd write a little bit about Logan.
Short version: It's a well-made movie that I would not recommend watching. I thought about giving it an "Eh, when it's on Netflix," but even then, nah. Emotional heartstring pulling is diffused too quickly by dumb action sequences.
Long version: There's really not much for me to spoil about the movie - there are some twists and stuff, but it basically plays out exactly as I expected it to by the time I was introduced to X-23. But I'll still write assuming you've only seen the trailer. Everyone who's saying it's "not a superhero movie" has been duped. It's just an R-rated superhero movie in the drama genre rather than the comedy one. I will say that, if you enjoyed Dr. Strange, you'll probably enjoy Logan even more, because it is a better movie. Conceptually, very similar films. Redemption quest for an asshole superhero. Logan just takes its time more with the concept and doesn't shy away from showing the audience the pain of its hero. That, it does well enough, mainly because it's following a proven formula.
My main problem with it is that - it's just as unoriginal as practically every other Marvel-character movie that's had a lukewarm critical reception. It drew on a different influence pool for its structure, but it was still very predictably structured. Now, that can be fine; I don't need to have a movie have a big twist that totally throws me out of the loop to like it. If the acting's good, the direction's good, and it feels consistent and methodical, I can get into it. In Logan, the acting was all-around pretty great; nobody really expects bad acting from something with the Marvel stamp on it anymore. (No, I haven't seen the recent Spiderman films; why do you ask?) The direction was good; the shots were gorgeous, the visuals fit the aesthetic, and the choreography actually led to some enjoyable fight scenes.
The sad fact is that Fox probably fucked up the third one. Or maybe the director did. Someone fucked it up. The movie is constantly taking you out of the genre it tried to put itself in with these longass action sequences with no real stakes, which has always been my biggest problem with superhero movies that try to innovate. I mean, it's just getting annoying at this point; they've had years to learn that we know you're not going to kill characters until they're ready to die. Who is entertained by what feels like a fifteen minute chase sequence a half-hour into the movie? It works in something like Alien, where there are several minor characters who you hope will live but know are liable to die at any moment. In superhero movies, you have a few major characters and the action is generally entirely centered on them.
Slight digression - that's why Nolan's Batman movies were good. You still felt the stakes, even when you knew Batman was not going to die because he's fucking Batman. There were innocents, and the easiest way for Batman to protect them was usually to break his moral code and kill people. There was tension - the movies were dark; you knew that Batman *could* snap and turn into a murderer and that the plot could shift to revolve around that, and you knew that the innocents *could* die. Marvel chose not to learn a lesson there. Marvel kills people, but they don't pull any Red Weddings and kill people before the viewers (and, in the MCU's case, executive board members) are either really ready for them to die or don't care whether they live or die at all.
So that's my biggest problem. You've got these long, careful, painful, late-Johnny Cash-esque sequences, and then you've got an "oh, time for this, is this still going on, oh okay it's over" fight scene to make the producers feel justified in letting the plot advance. You've also got an unbelievable douche of a villain and a poorly-justified army of unsympathetic mooks, whose only lines of dialogue are grunts, to fight. That works, sometimes, but not for a movie like this. They're getting warmer, but until they stop pandering to the Transformers crowd in every film, the makers of these superhero movies are just not ready to make a movie like Logan. If you're a huge fan of the X-Men, you haven't made it this far into the review because you've already seen it, loved it, and disagreed with my negativity. To those people who *really* like X-Men, yeah, I'd recommend this movie. If you're someone who started on the Marvel world with the barrage of films in the last decade, I think you'd be better off watching a dramatic film themed around addiction, weakness, and redemption that doesn't tie itself down to the top of the superhero money train.
Short version: It's a well-made movie that I would not recommend watching. I thought about giving it an "Eh, when it's on Netflix," but even then, nah. Emotional heartstring pulling is diffused too quickly by dumb action sequences.
Long version: There's really not much for me to spoil about the movie - there are some twists and stuff, but it basically plays out exactly as I expected it to by the time I was introduced to X-23. But I'll still write assuming you've only seen the trailer. Everyone who's saying it's "not a superhero movie" has been duped. It's just an R-rated superhero movie in the drama genre rather than the comedy one. I will say that, if you enjoyed Dr. Strange, you'll probably enjoy Logan even more, because it is a better movie. Conceptually, very similar films. Redemption quest for an asshole superhero. Logan just takes its time more with the concept and doesn't shy away from showing the audience the pain of its hero. That, it does well enough, mainly because it's following a proven formula.
My main problem with it is that - it's just as unoriginal as practically every other Marvel-character movie that's had a lukewarm critical reception. It drew on a different influence pool for its structure, but it was still very predictably structured. Now, that can be fine; I don't need to have a movie have a big twist that totally throws me out of the loop to like it. If the acting's good, the direction's good, and it feels consistent and methodical, I can get into it. In Logan, the acting was all-around pretty great; nobody really expects bad acting from something with the Marvel stamp on it anymore. (No, I haven't seen the recent Spiderman films; why do you ask?) The direction was good; the shots were gorgeous, the visuals fit the aesthetic, and the choreography actually led to some enjoyable fight scenes.
The sad fact is that Fox probably fucked up the third one. Or maybe the director did. Someone fucked it up. The movie is constantly taking you out of the genre it tried to put itself in with these longass action sequences with no real stakes, which has always been my biggest problem with superhero movies that try to innovate. I mean, it's just getting annoying at this point; they've had years to learn that we know you're not going to kill characters until they're ready to die. Who is entertained by what feels like a fifteen minute chase sequence a half-hour into the movie? It works in something like Alien, where there are several minor characters who you hope will live but know are liable to die at any moment. In superhero movies, you have a few major characters and the action is generally entirely centered on them.
Slight digression - that's why Nolan's Batman movies were good. You still felt the stakes, even when you knew Batman was not going to die because he's fucking Batman. There were innocents, and the easiest way for Batman to protect them was usually to break his moral code and kill people. There was tension - the movies were dark; you knew that Batman *could* snap and turn into a murderer and that the plot could shift to revolve around that, and you knew that the innocents *could* die. Marvel chose not to learn a lesson there. Marvel kills people, but they don't pull any Red Weddings and kill people before the viewers (and, in the MCU's case, executive board members) are either really ready for them to die or don't care whether they live or die at all.
So that's my biggest problem. You've got these long, careful, painful, late-Johnny Cash-esque sequences, and then you've got an "oh, time for this, is this still going on, oh okay it's over" fight scene to make the producers feel justified in letting the plot advance. You've also got an unbelievable douche of a villain and a poorly-justified army of unsympathetic mooks, whose only lines of dialogue are grunts, to fight. That works, sometimes, but not for a movie like this. They're getting warmer, but until they stop pandering to the Transformers crowd in every film, the makers of these superhero movies are just not ready to make a movie like Logan. If you're a huge fan of the X-Men, you haven't made it this far into the review because you've already seen it, loved it, and disagreed with my negativity. To those people who *really* like X-Men, yeah, I'd recommend this movie. If you're someone who started on the Marvel world with the barrage of films in the last decade, I think you'd be better off watching a dramatic film themed around addiction, weakness, and redemption that doesn't tie itself down to the top of the superhero money train.
