Logan

Is Logan the best X-Men movie?

Well no, largely because it’s not an X-Men movie. Logan is a grim, hard bitten western. The myth of the old gunslinger’s last hurrah dragged out of storage, dusted off and run one last time. It's a movie whose shape I knew from the moment I saw the very first trailer, but that is executed with conviction, craftsmanship and enough small moments of inspiration that it never feels cliched.

In many ways treading a well worn story makes sense. Old man defends young girl is a tired story, but tired is where Logan lives. It’s not a movie about breaking new ground, about showing a shining possibility for the future. It lives and exists within the pain and desperation of it’s characters.

The Western is a perfect setting for this kind of story. It has over the course of American cinematic history existed as a celebration and reflection of the construction of American masculinity. Early Westerns lionised the American man as the civilising force taming the west and moved on to the Sheriff creating law and order where none existed, to the self conceived man, owned by nobody, grasping freedom in the space between civilisation and civility.

Eventually though westerns consumed themselves. The old myths started to break down and crack, and through those cracks sprouted the hidden histories, Navajo, Apache, African American, new truths that took the lustre off the sheriff's badge, that showed the Cowboy as a thug with a red sash and a gun.

There came a point where the Western had to look at it’s past and accept that the conquest of the American man over the untamed wilderness had been at the expense of the cultures already there, of the people dragged with them in chains. Over time there became a schism between what American men believed of their pioneering forebears and the reality of their actions.

A crack divided what they wanted to believe about them past and the truth of it.

This is Logan’s central theme. Damaged white men brought low by the schism between what they wanted to believe of themselves and the results their actions actually wrought. Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Xavier (Patrick Stewart) sit out on the Mexican border in a state of decay, each heavily sedated, eking out the last few years without a hope of redemption.

Of course that’s not really a movie, or at least not much of one.

So along comes Laura (Dafne Keen), perhaps the one great hope for the future of mutants. Xavier wants to embrace this opportunity for redemption, Logan refuses in typical style, until both are compelled by the arrival of Evil Corporation du Jour to go on the run through pastoral America towards Eden, a mythic colony for new mutants where Laura will be safe.

Laura is the bright spark of both the story and the movie. She is no normal action-movie kid sidekick getting significantly more to do in terms of both action and acting, and she excels at both. Every character in this movie is battered and bloody and Laura is no exception, but unlike Logan and Xavier and even Evilcorp (a subsidiary of Bastard Enterprises) who all feel fatalistically drawn into this long downward spiral, Laura feels like she has a purpose and a plan to work to.

This is helped by the fact that Keen is genuinely a great young actor who never feels lost when paired with Stewart and Jackman and has great screen presence and I am definitely excited to see more of her in the future.

What can GM’s take away from Logan?

Be warned traveller this section contains spoilers.

The central plot of Logan is not so different from any other western, so if you’ve seen westerns you roughly know how to construct a plot of this kind. What elevates it are the small vignettes of pastoral life that inform the world. The automated trucks, the enhanced protections at the border, the great spider-like corn pickers working through the night on the farms, half hidden by darkness.

Vignettes are powerful ways to hint at a larger world and Logan uses them wonderfully to give flavour to the story without ever drawing us away from the narrative.

Otherwise the scene I am most tempted to steal from takes place in the casino when Professor Xavier has an ‘attack’. Partly because the scene sees characters enduring to perform their actions, oppressed by a force beyond their control. It’s the kind of touch I like as a GM because I like hurting my characters or changing the way they have to take actions, and the image of Logan having to walk down a hallway as if he’s jumping from wall to wall to get purchase is simple but very evocative.

Xavier’s attacks and Logan’s claws no longer extending properly are small touches but really cool to consider. The idea of mutants losing full control of their abilities with age is a fascinating one (see also: Metal Gear Solid 4’s FOXDIE problem) and when a mutant is as powerful as Charles Xavier the effects can (and were) catastrophic.

It’s definitely something I intend to use the next time my party fights a high level wizard or ancient lich. The idea of their magical ability seeping out or flaring unexpectedly could be fun, or, as it is here, tragic.

Hopefully there are some ideas here that you can make use of, but if you’ve seen Logan feel free to chip in your own takeaways, and if you’ve not seen it give it a go, I guarantee it’s a great watch.

Until next time, good hunting GM’s!