"logan"

20th Century Fox

If there were ever a film franchise in need of a good decapitation, it would be 20th Century Fox's Marvel opus, "The X-Men." Launching in 2000, and continuing through until 2017 (a whopping 17 years), there has never been a more successful line-up of films bending time and space in the pursuit of such chronological hyper-absurdity. Yet it is affable Aussie actor Hugh Jackman who wheedles us into forgetting these trademark flaws, a skilled vaudevillian whose very presence makes every Wolverine film semi-worthwhile (including 2009's dreadful "Origins"). Clawing his way to the top of the U.S. and global box office charts for nearly two decades now, the cardinal patriarch of the long-running series has also traded in most of his esteemed career to help bring Logan to life — appearing in over nine "X-Men" comic book adaptations to date. And much like a devout sports star refusing to relocate to a new city, Jackman has essentially become the 'Black Mamba' of genre action films; a staple of the series' lore (outlasting Sean Connery as James Bond and Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan), akin to Kobe Bryant's final 60-point scoring showcase in L.A., a farewell event so thrillingly rhapsodic, even the diehards who've been clamoring for a fresh take on "Logan" finally have a film worth celebrating. One that puts the masked vigilante down for GOOD.

Which isn't of course to say Logan won't appear in a subsequent FOX reboot, sequel, or spinoff anytime soon (there are already rumors he'll make a cameo in "Deadpool 2"), yet the nostalgia factor seems to have hit a rough patch for 20th Century Fox's creative team as of late. So much so that director James Mangold employed as few mutants and special effects as possible, which comes as a welcome respite from the previous chapters of the series which saw young and old versions of the X-Warriors swashbuckling alongside each other to increasingly diminished financial returns. Where "X-Men: Apocalypse" failed, "Logan" appears to have already succeeded; the retirement flick has brought in an impressive $85 million during its opening weekend, and already surpassed $500 million at the worldwide box office. Compare those numbers to "Apocalypse" (which barely cracked the half billion mark after a disappointing domestic and international run), and you can see why Mangold's vision of Logan is a leaner and slicker interpretation than the previous entries.

Improving upon timelines so contrived and convoluted they make the "The Terminator" sequels look sound by comparison, Fox's episodic restructuring of cinema in "First Class," "Apocalypse," and "Days of Future Past" is completely upended in "Logan," and for good reason — without a sense of impending jeopardy, cinephiles began to catch on to the studio's con, unleashing a vacuum that allowed ultra-violent, hyper-gritty crowd-pleasers like "Deadpool" and "Kick Ass" to dominate. It appears we've also entered a dark new chapter in comic book fables, one which champions homicide, carnage and brutality as a means to an end rather than a catalyst for narrative transformation. "Logan" may appear to be a novel change of pace (especially for an aging superhero pic), but by spilling buckets of blood at every conceivable turn, Mangold's finale tries way too hard to cover up the fact that underneath the film's shocking death blows, there just isn't a very compelling story inside "Logan." Watching one of our favorite characters slice and dice opponents like cheap deli meat is about as uncomfortable to observe as Anakin Skywalker slaughtering a room full of Jedi younglings. This just isn't the Logan we grew up with and came to love.

For a trailer promising rich character studies of three vagabonds-turned-surrogate family members, "Logan" falls more in line with Wes Craven and John Carpenter-style horror tropes than your average shoot-em-up action flicks — trading in character arcs for gruesome knifings and one-liners for long, drawn out bloodbaths. What we are left with is instead is an apotheosis of violence, at the hands of three separate Wolverines; a young girl ("Loganette"), an intransigent clone ("Wolverine 2.0"), and Logan himself (a sloppy souse who resolves every conflict with Adamantium-laden rancor). Whether he's chopping up a gaggle of cholos like al pastor, or ripping apart the temporal lobes of trigger-happy federal agents, Logan's epic journey never fails to knock the teeth and air out of us — simultaneously bamboozling viewers into believing it is also the kind of picture that will put a literal sock in the franchise for good. What's worse is the film treats "Deadpool's" recent box office success as canon; serving up a conveyor belt of action, gore, and repartee, the likes of which Stan Lee could never and would never dream up. R-rated superhero films, evidently, are here to stay, and the revered X-Men series may have no choice but to shed a few more hundred gallons of blood before it can recoup another hundred million dollars in ticket sales. 

"LOGAN" Rated R. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes.