History is obscured so there's a degree of mystery to core motivations. Holding off on why Prof. X was hidden away, why Logan was helping him, and for some reason begrudgingly, was a mistake. When we do find out, it's farted out of a radio and incoherently at that. This is a bad idea. For one it's just not very good writing to explain why characters have been acting a certain way
until now. It's better to know that something happened at the outset, and then events from that point on have a certain weight (see my exchange with
@Caveat about how
20th Century Women gets this right; there's a great
Finding Nemo anecdote about this as well).
Laura/Logan doesn't really kick in until she speaks. I know it's a cool moment and all but delaying it prevents the conflict between her and Logan from being set in motion, so that his inevitable sacrifice doesn't feel out of left field. It thus takes a good while for Logan to "answer the call". The turnaround jarred a little, to the point where I think the film's themes are being
discussed more than felt, and this is more or less the opposite of how a classic becomes one.
The message of the film is that the past doesn't matter. Logan is right that the kids are hung-up on unrealistic comic books. What he doesn't get is that living meaningfully is about recognising that those stories are important to someone like Laura. And it takes real-life, adult sacrifices for those stories to evolve in a child's mind from fantasy to inspiration to action. The emotional through-line for Laura/Logan needed to be
Rain Man/
Leon-like. Instead there's a lot of, sort-of, hanging around? Driving, sleeping, waking up (SO MUCH sleeping and waking up, because it feels like real life, I guess - more tonal witchcraft). And moments of bonding are sold by two things, really - perspective through an external agent (Prof. X and the family/its fate) and Hugh Jackman's insane ability to act with his face.
The action is great as individual set-pieces. I'm not so sure about overall. A common sentiment is that the movie was smart to show you it was going to be brutal through its first scene. But that's an era-specific reaction, and means nothing for function. It renders every single head impalement from that point on tepid, and is why the ending, despite its brutality, left me a little cold, and needed superb performances (Laura and the X on the grave, Logan's enigmatic line - one really shouldn't be debating what the hell he means by that!) to sell the muddied thematics of the action (Logan fighting himself, the manner of his alter-ego's fate). The hotel scene is good, but Laura's unveiling works best, because it doesn't waste time getting there. It's similar to the Rainmaker reveal in
Looper, which is one of the best modern film scenes, period. Think of the build-up, and the cause-and-effect similarity to how the reveal occurs in
Logan.
It's really nothing like that, but I'm going to call that you will hate it.
@Caveat - Imma get to you soon. Nice one seeing all those movies. You got some that stood out more than others?