Walking into the theater to see Logan, the last X-men movie that will show Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart playing their iconic characters, I knew what to expect. Or, at least I thought I did. I knew that I was bound to get emotional, but this was a completely new feeling that I felt during this movie. This wasn’t just a “yeah that ending was sad” typical movie cry I found myself having at the end, it was a complete 15 minute cry session that reminded me of what children do after they are told to go to bed or fall and get hurt on the playground. The kind of cry that leaves you gasping to catch your breath and once you think you are finally done, it just starts all over again. I realized very soon afterwards why I was so emotional over this movie and this character’s goodbye – I couldn’t remember a time when I had never known of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.
It was impossible to think that someone else could ever fill the shoes of this actor and how he delivered this character. It may sound a little odd, but this was the Marvel movie world that I had grown up in. While other X-men characters were re-casted for the newer films, Wolverine, Logan, had always remained the same, as if there was never a question to do so otherwise. I don’t take this as a bad thing, but more as something that is rather interesting, this Wolverine had always been there, and now he was gone. While this may have marked the end of Wolverine in a sense (and the end of my childhood as it would appear), this film is so much more than an ending.
Logan gave me what I didn’t know I needed. It was beautiful and heartbreaking. It exceeded my expectations, and while this film brought one era to a close, it leads to another era’s beginning. Instead of thinking of this film as being the last with Hugh Jackman’s portrayal, it can be thought of as the beginning of a new age of the superhero, one that gives him more than just his origin story, but a deepness and a darkness that builds upon more of these beloved characters we have known since our childhood. They are so much more than what the comics and the first few superhero movies had to offer us originally.
They have gone from being our heroes, to also being someone we see ourselves in. Rather than wishing to have their super strength or their ability to turn invisible, to wipe away their enemies with a single blow, we have come to realize that we are more like our heroes than we think. They fight their own daily demons and struggles like the rest of us, and it’s this era of the superhero film that is a refreshing taste to its fans. While Logan may have been advertised as Wolverine’s “swan song”, it delivered so much more than that, leaving this fan, and many others I can imagine, exiting the theater with a sense of contentment.