“I’ve hurt people.”
-Logan, from Logan
Julie and I went to see Logan tonight. I won’t spoil it, but it was a good film, easily the best non-Deadpool Marvel mutant film by a long shot. Other than a heavy-handed overuse of the Western Shane as a recurring metaphor (we get it; Logan’s DNA is a gun and the valley is safer without it) the film did for Wolverine what no film, no cartoon and precious few comics have managed: it made his character resonate. This Wolverine, in spite of being set in the future, finally feels real.
As a kid, I loved Wolverine, but I didn’t “get” him as much as I later would. I liked him because he looked cool. My favorite comic image was the cover of Incredible Hulk 340, and I have a poster of that image on my wall today. But Logan isn’t a PG hero who makes sense to a little kid. He’s a killing machine, and the narrative of the abused minority weponized then redeeming himself (though he relapses regularly) serves well in the lexicon of the anti-hero. Logan gives no fucks, only deep inside he does. He’s just too tormented and scared to admit it.
That heart shows through on the screen in Logan. At his worst, Logan is as he used to proclaim “the best at what I do,” but at other times he exhibits the love beneath the scars that turned James into the Wolverine. Logan is ultimately the fighter, the bloody knuckled hero we need in this day and age. He’s not the idealized hero in the cape or a guy in neon spandex; he’s a dangerous creature pushed too far. He’s the voice we can all hear inside ourselves given permission to exist, and he shows us the price we would pay for letting it out.