Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Logan

The early reviews of Logan are in and the vast majority of the internet is in agreement:

Logan is a masterpiece.

It's difficult to find any reviews that give it less than 8 out of 10, a lot of reviews giving it the top marks. The first 100,069 people to rate it on IMDB give it an average score of 8.7.

All of this can only lead me to one conclusion: Everything I'm about to say must be wrong, because I didn't like it.

It's not that I disagree with all the things the rest of the internet has said about the film, but I can't help feeling most of the reviews are missing one crucial point: there is nothing in this movie to "like".

There is no humour, there is nothing light hearted, there is no hope, no joy, no happy ending, nothing to produce any positive feelings in the viewer at all. It is a depressing film from start to finish, and it feels like that's entirely intentional. It feels like the only goal of this film was "to be sad".

I'm not against sad films, but the beauty of a sad film is how, despite everything, that ray of hope shines through. Logan is over two hours of just misery from start to finish.

It starts in the not too distant future of 2029. The X-Men have failed, and are presumably all dead given that no one is around to help an aging Xavier die with dignity. Instead Xavier has been left in the completely incapable hands of a suicidal alcoholic Logan.

How low has Logan sunk? So low that on several occasions throughout the film he tries to abandon a small girl to almost certain death, even when Xavier is begging him to protect her.

After that, things steadily get more depressing as the film goes on. Seriously.

I'm sure you'll go see it anyway, but at least now you've been warned.

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