What does Logan mean for the future of com­ic-book movies?

A fit­ting end to a incred­i­ble 17-year run, Logan, Hugh Jackman’s sen­sa­tion­al cur­tain call as Wolver­ine, looks set to rein­vig­o­rate the X‑Men film fran­chise and make a final, defin­i­tive state­ment on the actor’s most icon­ic role. In more ways than one, Logan marks the end of an era, the final word on a char­ac­ter that has been allowed to grow and devel­op on screen over the best part of two decades. Indeed, the mature, char­ac­ter-led approach that Logan takes is not only a major depar­ture for the series, but a poten­tial turn­ing point for the com­ic-book movie genre as a whole.

With 2016’s damp squib, X‑Men: Apoc­a­lypse, and out­right stinkers like X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine, the series as a whole has suf­fered from a lack of con­sis­ten­cy, but Logan shows there’s plen­ty of life left in the old mutant dog yet. One thing you can say about the X‑Men films is they’ve always been will­ing to exper­i­ment, for bet­ter and for worse. Fol­low­ing Ori­gins, for exam­ple, the ​’60s-set soft reboot First Class sound­ed ter­ri­ble on paper but remains a series high­light. And for all its low-brow larks, Dead­pool broke new ground as an ultra-vio­lent super­hero film that mock­ing­ly breaks the fourth wall. Hell, even the oth­er­wise ris­i­ble The Last Stand killed off three of its main play­ers, a trick we’ve yet to see the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse pull.

And now, James Mangold’s fol­low-up to his sol­id but stan­dard-issue 2013 spin-off The Wolver­ine fur­ther sub­verts expec­ta­tions. Patrick Stewart’s Pro­fes­sor X – the pater­nal cen­tre of the series – is suf­fer­ing from a degen­er­a­tive brain con­di­tion that caus­es hor­ri­ble psy­chic seizures, Logan’s adaman­tium skele­ton is slow­ly killing him, and mutants are in world­wide decline. The hap­py future promised at the end of Days of Future Past is appar­ent­ly all but for­got­ten amid a soci­ety on the brink of col­lapse, bring­ing into ques­tion whether the events of pre­vi­ous films ever happened.

The series’ sense of exper­i­men­ta­tion is some­thing that the mono­lith­ic Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse could cer­tain­ly learn from. Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man were pitched as risky propo­si­tions, but in truth they were the hard­ly the enve­lope push­ers tout­ed by Marvel’s acolytes. Although the studio’s risk-averse approach has result­ed in a con­sis­tent lev­el of qual­i­ty, Marvel’s mod­el is unlike­ly to pro­duce some­thing as authen­ti­cal­ly dra­mat­ic and grit­ty as Logan. Indeed, the film’s suc­cess as an emo­tion­al­ly-cen­tred char­ac­ter study opens the door to future super­hero films not behold­en to the for­mu­la that has blight­ed Marvel’s mid­dling efforts.

In terms of tonal and struc­tur­al vari­ety, no oth­er series can touch the X‑Men films – Logan is as dif­fer­ent to Dead­pool as Dead­pool is to First Class. Com­pared to Marvel’s metic­u­lous release sched­ule, how­ev­er, Fox’s approach is more see-what-sticks; we still don’t know for sure what the next X‑Men film will be. Con­ti­nu­ity has nev­er been much of a con­cern for the stu­dio – it’s dif­fi­cult enough find­ing two entries in the series whose plots don’t con­tra­dict each oth­er, let alone mak­ing sense of all 10 of them.

Fans of the X‑Men comics might baulk at these con­ti­nu­ity gaps, but movies aren’t always log­ic puz­zles with neat solu­tions. Good film­mak­ing requires emo­tion­al con­text, dra­mat­ic con­flict, ten­sion and cathar­sis. It’s not a case of sim­ply slot­ting jig­saw pieces togeth­er. The X‑Men films have long under­stood the func­tion­al messi­ness of sto­ry­telling, and Logan breaks the series’ loose rules in ser­vice of its own sto­ry. The film acknowl­edges this with its ref­er­ence to the X‑Men comics, a more ele­gant ver­sion of Deadpool’s arch meta-humour. More than just an east­er egg, the comics in Logan rep­re­sent a con­scious unbur­den­ing of in-uni­verse log­ic in favour of emo­tion­al and the­mat­ic integrity.

For years, com­men­ta­tors have her­ald­ed the death of com­ic-book adap­ta­tions. Even Steven Spiel­berg pre­dict­ed in 2015 that super­hero films would even­tu­al­ly go ​“the way of the west­ern”. Of course, this ignores the fact that west­erns are far from extinct – the so-called ​“post-west­ern” era has pro­duced some of the great­est exam­ples of the genre, from revi­sion­ist mas­ter­pieces such as Unfor­giv­en, to 2015’s haunt­ing Slow West and 2016’s Hell or High Water. With its fre­quent hat-tips to clas­sic psy­cho­log­i­cal west­ern Shane, Logan sym­bol­i­cal­ly acknowl­edges the inevitable future decline of its own breed, while also point­ing to a rich­er and more mature future for the genre.

Logan might be the best X‑Men film to date, but much like 2008’s The Dark Knight, it also rais­es the bar in terms of qual­i­ty and matu­ri­ty in super­hero cin­e­ma. Much has been made of Deadpool’s R‑rating, which seem­ing­ly cleared the way for Logan’s bloody ret­ri­bu­tion and fre­quent F‑bomb drop­ping. No doubt, Fox’s aver­sion to graph­ic vio­lence and exces­sive cussing will have been allayed by Deadpool’s com­mer­cial suc­cess, but Logan isn’t made for snig­ger­ing ado­les­cents – it earns its R‑rating by employ­ing a mature sto­ry­telling style.

It’s now up to Hol­ly­wood to learn from Logan. Not to mere­ly ape its tone, but to realise that risk – real risk – can reap rewards at the box office, and that an entire gen­er­a­tion which has grown up with com­ic-book adap­ta­tions is now ready for real dra­ma and emo­tion­al complexity.