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The Wolverine Trilogy: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), The Wolverine (2013), Logan (2017).
The origin movie re-told some of the backstory revealed in X2, but in a terribly convoluted way. It also brought in younger versions of several of the characters from the previous films, forcing us to wonder why, for example, Cyclops had no memory of the place he was kidnapped and taken to as a child. The timeline is a train wreck, which is one of the other things that made it easy to swallow later when Days of Future Past just wiped it all out. The movie was so poorly-received that plans for a Magneto origin movie were scrapped. As that story was later told briefly and very effectively in First Class, I maintain that this is a good thing.
The worst thing about the movie -- is must be said -- is the damnable Jean Grey relationship. At this point Wolverine had already killed Jean in The Last Stand, but this movie insists on bringing back Famke Janssen for a series of dream sequences and hallucinations that are intended to make Logan seem like a grieving lover. But as poorly as that relationship was handled in the original trilogy, tacking her into this movie just makes it seem more and more pathetic. I know, in the comics, that Jean and Wolverine both recently came back to life and Cyclops, the last time I checked, was currently dead. (It's been a while since I checked though, so I could be wrong.) I don’t care. If I never see a Jean and Wolverine love story again, if they never share a comic book panel or frame of film for the rest of my life, I will be perfectly content.
Set in a slightly-more-distant future, in a world where the X-Men are dead and mutantkind is on the brink of extinction, Logan is caring for an ailing Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart sitting in the chair one last time) and dealing with his own deteriorating healing factor and the fact that the adamantium bonded to his bones is slowly poisoning him. He also meets a young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen), who turns out to be his own genetically engineered daughter. The movie becomes a road trip story, with the older mutants trying to bring the young one to a safe haven. It has elements of a western, elements of a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, elements of a generational drama. It’s not an exaggeration to this movie belongs up there with The Dark Knight as a film that proves the real storytelling potential of superheroes as more than simple action films.
There’s no notable flaw in this movie. It’s perfectly-constructed, perfectly-acted, perfectly-directed. There is, however, one little nugget that tones it down ever-so-slightly. The movie is set in a future where the X-Men are all dead and no new mutants are being born. However, there are several other movies in the works with very alive X-Men characters. It is doubtful that Fox (or Disney) would ever make a movie where all the X-Men are killed by one of their own, and honestly, that’s not a movie I would want to see. So the thing about Logan is that the movie must be considered an “alternate” or “possible” future, rather than series canon. That makes it no less compelling or entertaining, but it does cast a very small shadow over the film.
And then there’s Deadpool.
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.
After years of pushing for the film, in 2016 Reynolds and director Tim Miller gave us the first Deadpool movie, an origin film adjacent to the X-Men universe without being slavishly devoted to it. With plenty of fourth wall-breaking meta humor and hyperviolence, the film still managed to tell a story with real heart -- Wade Wilson may have been a lunatic who was aware that he was in a movie, but he was also a man deeply in love (with Morena Baccarin, so who could blame him?) whose every action was about finding his way back to the woman who gave his life meaning. The movie also leaned heavily on its “R” rating, with the aforementioned gore, plenty of swearing, and a dash of nudity in proximity to the greatest Stan Lee cameo to date.
There was a bit of a stir surrounding the film’s rating, with some people arguing that a superhero movie rated R would make it unfairly inaccessible to children and others arguing that it would be impossible to do a faithful Deadpool movie without an R rating. Honestly, I think they’re both wrong. The vast majority of Deadpool’s appearances in comics have NOT carried a mature rating. Swear words are easily written around, and violence… well, it’s weird how the MPAA is more tolerant of heads being chopped off than they are of F-bombs and boobs, isn’t it? But the point is, I think it would be possible to do an entertaining Deadpool movie that doesn’t rely on the R-rating crutch.
That said, I also think that superheroes are a genre, not a medium. There’s no reason you can’t tell a superhero story that has mature themes and dark content. Logan is actually a better example of how it was used well, but Deadpool was a lot of fun in its own right.
The new cast is pretty good too. Josh Brolin, who seems to be spending 2018 doing great comic book character performances as atonement for Jonah Hex, really nails Cable. Zazie Beetz as Domino is playful and brings in great energy, and Julian Dennison’s Firefist is a character that bears virtually no resemblance to his comic book counterpart, but at the same time, is perfect for this movie. I’m very much hopeful that we'll see them all together again in the announced X-Force movie. But…
The Future of Xavier's Children.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can tell you what I would like to happen. I’d like to see Disney continue to allow Fox to develop their films, but in the future, do so in concert with the MCU, similar to how Sony is developing their Spider-Verse. Let the X-Men show up in Marvel movies, maybe do a flashback film starring Wolverine and the Winter Soldier, but treat these as “events” and allow the other films to develop on their own. Even though there have been some crappy X-Men movies, there have been plenty of good ones as well, too many for me to be happy about doing away with them entirely. The current cast of the main franchise is solid, and if the X-Men are folded into the MCU wholesale the odds of seeing oddball entries like the horror movie-styled New Mutants drops dramatically.
For a very long time, in the comics, the X-Men were treated as a separate entity from the rest of the Marvel Universe. They were part of that world, of course, but rarely took a large role in major events and crossovers, which touched on them briefly, if at all. They were a side-universe, except for Wolverine, who was simultaneously a member of two X-Men teams, X-Force, the Avengers, the New Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Power Pack, and the Babysitter’s Club. In the long run, I think this would be the best course for the movies as well.
But I’m just a guy in front of a keyboard. A guy who has been reading comics for over 30 years and watching movies even longer. What do I know?
Blake M. Petit, who would totally fund the Power Pack movie if only he had funds, has been pontificating about pop culture online for over a decade. You can follow him at BlakeMPetit.com and, if you're feeling generous, check out his books on Amazon.
