Reply to Nesrie They taught them how to do tons of things to be weapons. It’s not a big stretch that driving would be one of the things taught. Would be important skill for that role.
btw - on my query on the bad men and their metal arms, during lunch I finally figured out the right way to address this: (thanks soooo much to @BrianRubin)
Occupational Hazard
Thinking back, there is one scene where they show a boy telepathically hitting a few dummies and taking out one of the trainers - I wonder if there might have been more of these left on the cutting room floor?
So basically Magneto was right all along? I’m going to get a t-shirt that says that.
I learned to drive in an empty parking lot. That didn’t prepare me to drive through mountainous roads and to the city clinic. It’s just a inconstancy complaint though. I’m not here to change your mind.
I’m on Team Senator Robert Kelly. That’s the guy that was right all through the first movie.
Just got home from seeing this with the wife btw. Good movie, glad I didn’t know anything at all about the plot or characters (besides Chuck and Logan, of course) going in.
One question though.
This big shameful thing Prof X needed to forget, and the eradication of the other mutants; is all that from a particular movie, or just background for this one? I may rent it if its from an actual movie. I’ve only seen X1 & X2 back in the 90s/00s.
I think this movie is pretty much self contained, they just do not doll out a ton of exposition and instead let you make inferences. So, we have Professor X accidentally killing most of the X-Men, and the doctor modifying food to suppress mutations (likely through Canewood). But, that’s all just in this film. From everything I’ve read from the director it’s intended to be a standalone story
Okay cool, thanks.
Avoiding spoilers so sorry if the last few dozen posts covered this already. My gf and I saw the original X-Men trilogy and (I think) both standalone Wolverine movies years ago, as they released. We haven’t touched First Class, Days of Future Past, or Apocalypse at all. Should we try to watch any of those in preparation for this? Or rewatch the standalones, at least?
I’d not seen any of the standalone Wolverine movies, only First Class and the original trilogy, and I had no problem following along. Just go and enjoy.
No prep needed. You already know who these characters are, and that’s enough.
Right on; thanks y’all
They swapped storylines from the comics a bit. In Old Man Logan comic series, there is a flashback where you find out Logan was jedi mind tricked into killing the entire X School and most of the members. This of course just breaks him mentally and sets up the storyline for him to be totally uncaring and lost.
Wonderful movie and bittersweet send-off for two actors who made two popular comic characters their own for almost two decades. Damn. I’m a big western fan, so this was right up my alley. Hard to believe that many of these people (including the director) where also involved in the previous, utterly forgettable Wolverine movie.
Good performances all around. Jackman brought the weariness to the movie that was necessary, and it was heartbreaking to see Stewart’s Xavier meander between moments of clearness, dementia and being under the influence of medication. The bickering between the two was really hard to see given the background of the two and the affection they actually feel for each other, and it had this memorable moments such as Xavier swearing or sticking his tongue out towards Logan to prove that he has swallowed his pills. Such great chemistry.
Dafne Keen - great casting. If that character hadn’t worked, the movie would have suffered for it. But the delivery was spot on. Boyd Holbrook? I’ve only seen him in Narcos, and he isn’t exactly the best part of the show. (That voice-over narration…) I really enjoyed his performance here. Same for Richard E. Grant. Grant has played villains before in movies where he really chewed the scenery. This time - not so much, and it was a good fit.
I thought the movie made good use of the R rating. It’s simply grim, and had they pulled punches on the violence, it would have been a misfit. Hilariously, enough, it also made clear how different we can respond to what basically is the same act of violence depending on how it goes down. I think everyone was ‘fine’ with being being stabbed in the guts and heads and arms getting chopped off. Claws through the armpit though? I swear the whole audience went “YOUCH!”.
Some parts went exactly as I expected them to go, others pleasantly surprised me.
[spoiler]You knew that the family that invited them to their farm was doomed. You’re hoping they’ll be spared, but it’s the kind of grim movie where almost everyone who crosses their path is cursed. I also figured that Xavier would bite the dust, but you kinda guess it’ll be the kind of heroic moment of self-sacrifice or something (like Logan at the end). Nope, it follows an utter moment of peace and I didn’t expect it to happen right then. And then he simply gets stabbed and dies. That Logan wins the day by using a gun was also a clever move to do.
I was glad that there was no post-credits scene. It would have been a disservice to Stewart and Jackman. This fully enables this movie to feel like closure. We all know that Fox will keep on producing X-Men movies, but “Come back for more!” not being rubbed in at the end of it was nice.[/spoiler]
So many moments I really enjoyed.
[spoiler]
Logan finds out that Laura can talk. Three second later he’s screaming at her to “shut the fuck up”.
Whenever Laura unleashes the fucking fury. Too bad I already knew what her powers are already before I went into the movie, but when it happens it delivers. I think you could best compare it to Hitgirl from Kick-Ass. I like Kick-Ass, but Hitgirl’s “I’m super-brutal AND swear like a sailor” persona also feels like something is really trying hard to be edgy. Laura? Just savage violence.
Logan making his way up after Xavier has one of his seizures and killing off the solider one after another. The blurry/shaky effect and the sound design really made that scene.[/spoiler]
I’m just so glad that Stewart and Jackman get to ride into the X-Men sunset with such a good movie - unlike Nolan’s Batman trilogy, which ended with the weakest of the 3.
Haha, I like that take.
Just got back from seeing this and while I enjoyed it, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I feel like I should have–especially since I definitely prefer movies that are darker in tone. I haven’t yet figured out what didn’t quite click for me so I’ll have to think on it for a bit.
So, I wound up seeing this with the grillfriend, but also wound up mainlining what I’m now calling the “prequel trilogy” of First Class/Days of Future Past/Apocalypse in the leadup to seeing it. So, before too much commentary, a spoilerriffic thought/question:
[spoiler]So, this movie purports to take place in 2029, and according to some upthread dueling news stories between Jackman and the director, it is in the same “corrected” timeline as X1+2+prequels+TheWolverine. So I guess what I’m trying to figure out is how things went so wrong between the 2024 pictured in the final scene of Days of Future Past and the 2029 pictured in Logan.
Specifically, it looks like Logan and Xavier have both aged 20 years in the intervening span. I get that Wolvie’s got that nice adamantium blood poisoning deal going on, but for the effects to go from 0 to 60 (age pun semi-intended) after being in him for decades is pretty fuckin’ odd.
But not just that. The closing scenes of DoFP showed young mutants being taught at the school in 2024, but in Logan, we’re told that no new mutants have been born in a quarter-decade!
Look, I get it, I’m tryna apply strict timeline coherence to a rambling, shambling film property that’s been passed around directors and writers for almost 20 years now; some shit just ain’t gonna make sense, but. . . [/spoiler]
. . . I guess I’m mostly looking to justify an alternate-universe explanation to myself, because holy goddamn, I can’t really deal with the idea of the X-Men movie-verse “ending” on the note that Logan ends on. It’s so fucking tragic and shitty and relentlessly uncaring. Decades of work and camaraderie and passion poured into the idea of their great mission, and it just gets ground into dust by the unfeeling, hateful capitalist machine. It’s the Trump victory, writ large in a superhero movie universe.
Don’t get me wrong. The bonds developed between the three leads are amazing. Everyone in the top billing turns in amazing performances. The music was great. The cinematography was great. The action scenes were glorious. The ending was genuinely moving to me in away that was almost uncomfortable to experience (I don’t go to the movies to Feel Feels, guys).
But to know that’s where it all winds up, according to the director? That’s the end-point of the movieverse?
Jesus, that sucks ass.
I thought it ended on a hopeful note. That no matter how bad things had gotten, a moment of love and self sacrifice gave hope for the future.
Oh, sure, you know
the kids more or less live, and will someday be strong enough to invade over the CA-US barrier and take down Big Farma to restart the X-Gene in the human populace
but still,
the whole team is dead, the dream is dead, and we’ve got 20 mutant kids getting adopted by Canadians while the world spirals out of control in the death-grip of Late State Capitalism.
So, sure, some handful of characters get something like a happy ending, but the world-state itself is basically horrid and says, more or less, “it was all for nothing” to most of the heroes of the franchise.
You fought against mutant extinction and basically lost, and you all died in a tragic, mysterious friendly fire accident at Xavier’s hands. But hey, someday, mentally scared half-clones of you might kinda rebuild, I guess.
It leaves things on a pretty dark note, especially for anyone that had come before in the verse’s timeline. I’d call that ending a Pyrrhic victory at best. . .
edit: Screenrant says it pretty well. This isn’t a movie about happy endings. I don’t generally care for movies that lack one! http://screenrant.com/logan-mutant-birth-zander-rice/?view=all
The way they continued the 2000 movie series was pretty awful. I’d much rather it end the way Logan ends than whatever screwed up plan they had with those last two. Everyone claims it’s a stand-alone but… you have to know something about those two characters on some level, whether it’s the comics or the movies.
Treat First Class like a different timeline entirely, because it is. Although I thought Apocalypse was a horrible movie, especially considering the source material, I remain somewhat hopeful for that series.
Well, theoretically, First Class et. all leads directly into the Logan timeline, according to the director. So the events of X3 got wiped–which I’m pretty okay with, btw–but still, the ending of DoFP and events of Apocalypse make it clear that this is a verse where Charles and Mystique are buds and Magneto gets a shot at redemption and Jean and Scott actually make it as a couple.
And this is how that verse ends.
Dunno. Just makes me sad.
edit, to pull-quote from another Screenrant article on the topic that puts it better than I can:
[details=This is a movie about disappointment]
But Charles Xavier being responsible? That’s a dagger through the heart of the entire moral compass of the X-Men concept – especially since he didn’t “turn evil” or get hijacked by one of the villains in order to make this happen. Much like the Harry Potter series, X-Men draws a lot of it’s appeal to younger audiences from the fantasy of benevolent refuge: Xavier’s School For The Gifted as the ultimate “safe space” school environment for misfit kids with Professor X himself as the ideal of the protective, nurturing teacher/counselor. Thanks in no small part to Stewart’s unique voice and thoughtful performance of the character, it’s no exaggeration to say that the X-Men movies’ version of Xavier has become a memetic shorthand for reassuring, benevolent authority… a surrogate father figure for a whole generation. The idea of that “father” not only accidentally blowing up everything we’ve seen him build up over a lifetime with no rhyme or reason beyond random human frailty?
There’s no poetry in that – that’s just cold; tonally-appropriate final slap in the face to anyone expecting Logan to morph back into an X-Men movie at some point. Whether it implies anything beyond that coldness remains to be seen (i.e. the question of whether or not this is an “official” future and/or if it will continue) but for now it stands alone as the darkest depth of a film with the guts to deliberately let its audience down.[/details]