This Is What Makes Logan One Of The Greatest Superhero Movies Ever Made

Boldness Pays Off

When Deadpool was a mega-hit last year, many articles told us that studios would learn from its success and start making more bloody, sweary, adult-oriented superhero movies. While Logan is bloody as hell, that wasn't the main lesson it took from Deadpool. What Ryan Reynolds "merc with a mouth" really showed Wolvie was that boldness pays. Make a movie that fits the character, rather than trying to make the character fit a standard movie mould. After two movies that dumped Wolverine in a standard comic book movie narrative, Logan put the loner character in a stripped-back story that suited him. It’s made $300 million in a week. The second (rubbish) Wolverine movie made just over $400 million in its entire run. Audiences aren’t stupid.

What Logan's Success Can Teach Other Superhero Films

It's a strange world we live in when a sequel (or should that be a threequel?) turns out to be better than the first film. But the final chapter in the Wolverine movie trilogy is absolutely the best. Logan has been a box office smash and a critical hit, giving Hugh Jackman – and the fans – the one great Wolverine movie they’ve always wanted.

In fact, when it comes to superhero films, there's a lot Logan can teach the others. Over the past decade or so, cinema has been awash with movies from the likes of Marvel and DC, and not all of uniformly brilliant quality. Logan achieved greatness by stripping the character back to his adamantium bones and rebuilding him, bucking a lot of comic book movie rules in the process. Here are a few lessons other superhero films can learn, so we can avoid another Batman v Superman disaster...

Smaller Cast, Bigger Impact

There are, at most, five major characters in Logan. Compare that to around fifteen in X-Men: Apocalypse and about the same in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Justice League will have about ten. It’s very hard to give more than a handful of characters time to come to life in two hours, but the superhero movies of late have stuffed in as many fan favourites as possible, to the detriment of all. Logan’s sparse cast means even smaller roles, like Stephen Merchant’s Caliban, can be properly fleshed out and have impact. It shouldn’t be enough to just see a character on-screen, like this is some expensive game of I Spy. If they’re going to be included they should matter. 

Bigger Isn’t Always Better

We all enjoy a bit of spectacle. The sequence in Avengers Assemble when all the team are fighting space monsters across New York is a big show-off and it’s glorious. The mind-bending, physics-defying action in Doctor Strange was its best asset. Yet scale is not always the most important thing in action. Logan’s fight sequences are relatively small – just Wolverine and/or Laura duking it out with some guys who will shortly be missing some limbs – and low on explosions, but they’re thrilling, in a way the bigger fights in Wolverine's last movie weren’t. Filmmakers don’t need to dwarf everything we’ve seen before; they just need to make sure the action fits the character.

Welcome The Newbies

Perhaps you have read absolutely every Wolverine comic there is, so you can fill in the backstories of any character who appears. The vast majority of us have not. Yet watching Logan, I was never once confused by who anyone was or why they were appearing in the story. This is not true of most superhero movies, many of which should come with a glossary for the less comic-book-literate. Requiring your audience to know something about a character before they see your movie is bad storytelling. Logan welcomes everyone.

Make Your Story Clear

Honestly, I still don’t really know what an Infinity Stone is but have watched more than ten Marvel movies telling me they’re a very big deal. I’ve no clue what Lex Luthor was mucking about with on that spaceship in Batman vs. Superman. It is entirely possible I’m very stupid (please don’t write in), but I would say it’s also the case that comic book movie plots are needlessly complicated. Logan is a clear story of a man who has always run from intimacy, facing up to the fact he both needs and wants a family. There’s nothing more to understand. No magic doohickies or highly complex wafty ancient mythologies.

It Ends

Endings have ceased to exist in comic book movies. About 80% of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are great fun, but they are chapters in one long story that may never conclude. Each film sets up the next. What’s the thing that gets talked about most on opening weekend? The post-credits scene and what it teases. That means none of the films, by their nature, have a wholly satisfying ending. Logan has a definite end. It is a complete story. There’s certainly scope for some of the characters to continue, but the next chapter is not the point. There is no post-credits sting. There is only time to reflect on a great end to a great character.