Film Just returned from seeing Logan. I don't quite have a coherent opinion about it yet, although my suspicion is less impressed than some, but it'll be interesting to know how that changes after a second viewing when I'm more prepared for the tone and the surprises are anything but.
With everything which happens, it's probably worth returning to the X-Men chronology questions which this blog has been wrestling with in recent years and exactly which order in which the Fox MARVEL films are supposed to be viewed.
As such this will necessitate spoilers, so here's the Deadpool mini-feature, which oddly enough didn't appear in front of the screening I attended. Perhaps it was just a US thing. Anyway ... enjoy this gap for glancing away ...
Brutal. Not as brutal as Logan though.
Anyway, previously we discussed although it seems like the best way to watch the films is by following Logan's consciousness as it bounces around time:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men
X-Men 2
X-Men 3 (or whatever it's called in your end of the world)
The Wolverine
First Class
X-Men: Days of Future Past
X-Men: Apocalypse
Fan4stic
Deadpool
Although as I later discovered after actually watching the films in this order parts of the rebooted films negate Origins even though it's set before them. Shrug.
Incidentally, this guy at Cinefix pretty much follows this template then makes the mistake of assuming the Logan who turns up at the end of DoFP has lived through all the years again, when in fact its some other version of him, the one who's a berserker in Apocalypse, who then has his brain wiped over by the original Logan when his consciousness returns from the past into the altered future.
So where does this leave the film Logan?
[Brief sidebar. In the original timeline, Logan was perfectly healthy right into the future whereas here he's noticeably older and dying of adamantium poisoning. Is it possible that because he was freed in Apocalypse in a different way and possibly earlier to that established in the other films it was before the end of his treatment and not given the necessary ability to counteract the cumulative effects of having the metal in his body?]
As the Cinefix guy notices if the end of DoFP is set in 2023 and Logan is set in 2029, that means that within six years everything goes to shit for the mutants, Richard E Grant's doctor has done for them through the food supply in a way which the sentinels didn't quite manage in the original. Plus there's a suspicion that Xavier's accidentally destroyed the school and killed the X-Men through his mental earthquake shock thingy.
Oh fuck is this a depressing film.
But there's nothing in here to say that any rewatch of the series shouldn't end on Logan. Various bits of film mythology are mentioned but interestingly everything is suggested. Nothing is specific. None of the other X-Men are named. Not even Jean. Or the events which led this Logan to being in this body with Xavier aware of the change.
Oh fuck this is a depressing film.
Because that means that whatever happens in the next X-film and anything else in this 'verse, we know that none of it matters. However much Brian Singer or whoever wants to guide the story towards the epilogue of DoFP, six years after that Xavier's going to be murdered by X-24 and Logan will die defending his daughter. I did warn you.
Some have suggested that it's set in the original timeline which doesn't make much sense given that everyone was going to die anyway until Wolverine succeeded. Plus the information in here doesn't tally with what's in there.
The other possibility is that it's a What If? type story or that its set in a kind of "real" timeline in which the other films have the same veracity as the comic books which are mentioned. But that's not really satisfactory either.
Fox has effectively murdered one of its major franchises just as it was getting going again.
Which isn't to say I wouldn't be interested in seeing another film set afterwards with all of these genetically engineered mutants on the run in Canada.
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