Logan

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EnterpriseSovereign
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Re: Logan

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Black Widow would never make it in a solo film, what you'd end up with is a superhero film... without a superhero. If she must have a solo film, it should be as a shield agent since she'd stand out. As an Avenger she's at the bottom of the power scale.

Family Guy sums it up.

As for Logan, it struck me that perhaps the reason the clone's head exploded when hit was because his skull hadn't been adamantium-infused at that point, though if that were the case he would have been flattened when the truck was dropped on him.
One of the things that differs between the comics and movies is, well, actors age. Eventually the current crop of actors will need replacing, and Marvel movies have tried fairly hard to build an identity between character and actor, so we might be seeing some changes in the characters if things go on long enough.
Case in point being this film, since Jackman is getting too old to play an ageless character. I would have suggested that it would remove the need to recast him, except that not many superheroes are Killed Off For Real. Unusually for Marvel films there was no post-credits stinger this time.
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The Romulan Republic
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Re: Logan

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Crazedwraith wrote:Apologies. I realised after posting that you didn't bring it up. I meant to post a retraction but didn't get round to it.
Fair enough. Its all too rare these days that someone will admit they made a mistake in a debate, rather than dig their heels in, and its appreciated.
Yes and no. I disagree that they weren't consequences. It's clear though Rhodey is recovering. It's not quick or easy. Just like real Physical Therapy. Steve's team breaking out of the vault doesn't mean they're not hunting fugitives unable to live their live they're all basically Banner in his wandering days now.
Weren't Steve's people given sanctuary by Black Panther (who conveniently runs a sovereign nation) at the end?

In any case, it still feels like nothing that isn't either being patched over by the end of the film, or likely to be resolved off-screen before the next big team-up.
The needs of the film franchise really preclude really dragging out the reconciliation. But we'll just have to see how Infinity Wars actually handles Steve's rogue team and the reconciliation with the government Avengers.
True. Infinity Wars could somewhat salvage it, but given that it has, as I recall, the same directors (and will already have to balance a lot of different elements), I'm not terribly hopeful.

Which is another reason why their should have been more lasting consequences in Civil War.
To be fair saying if they weren't willing to follow through they shouldn't have done the Civil War is fair enough. But it's not criticism of the film itself, because its the following films that need to show the consequences. Not CW itself.
Its not that they shouldn't have done it. Just that they needed to take the subject, and its consequences, more seriously if they were going to.

Now, yes, you could argue that that would make it harder to reconcile the team for the next film, but I don't know how hard it is to say "Thanos is coming, we need to put our personal issues aside against a common enemy." History is full of that kind of thing.

Or, hell, look at how quickly (mainstream white) America forgave the South after the US Civil War.
To be fair, I think Logan has the opposite problem. It's all grim darkness and 'consequences' and compromised morality but it's all really just 'because' it doesn't follow well from the upbeat hopeful ending of DoFP.
Its always difficult to maintain a consistency in a long-running franchise.
No I agree. Doctor Strange really suffered for this from me. Ant-Man felt different with Scott Lang as a hero. But Strange was just a really well polished, well performed, version of a story we've already seen.

GoftG failed for me in that its not nearly progressive or radical as people we saying before it came out. White guy surrounded by CGI. Again, it's not bad but... hype backlash.

It's basically indefensible that DCEU is getting Wonder Woman out before MCU does a heroine film. Black Widow should have had a phase 3 film if nothing else. Assuming they'd planned phase 2 before Avengers showed she was successful. They should have given Captain Marvel a solo film before Infinity Wars at all.

I think she does have a record number of mcu appearences with being a back up character in IM2 and the Cap sequels.
Agreed. Especially reg. Strange. It was the Marvel formula done about as well as I've ever seen it done. If you like the formula, and haven't gotten tired of it, its a good film. But beneath the different coat of paint, it is derivative as hell.
X-Men has starred straight white males exclusively as well. And mostly the same straight white male: Hugh Jackman. The fact they are team films rather than Solo character films does give them the opportunity to have more strong female characters. Just like the Avengers films do.
Yeah.
Crazedwraith wrote:Star Wars has a massive inbuilt fanbase though. They can take that risk.Other films aren't so lucky.
True, and TFA is sort of an outlier in that, as the first new (live action) Star Wars film in a decade and the long-awaited sequel to the OT, it was pretty much guaranteed to be a massive hit no matter what.

Still, Marvel has quite the large established fanbase now, too. X-Men too, to a lesser extent. Its not like they can't afford to take a few risks that shouldn't even be risks now.
I do worry about that the MCU Bubble will burst just as they do Captain Marvel or Black Widow or something. Then the female stars will get the blame. It's like Catwoman and Elektra. A bad film with a male star is just a bad film. A bad film with a female star is suddenly proof you can't make stars with female leads. To studios I mean. Not in actual fact.
That's a very real concern, yes. Wait until the franchise starts to collapse, try to do something new too little too late, and then blame that for the failure.

Let's just hope the Wonder Woman movie does well (although the track record for the DCCU thus far is very mixed).
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Re: Logan

Post by The Romulan Republic »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote:Black Widow would never make it in a solo film, what you'd end up with is a superhero film... without a superhero. If she must have a solo film, it should be as a shield agent since she'd stand out. As an Avenger she's at the bottom of the power scale.

Family Guy sums it up.

As for Logan, it struck me that perhaps the reason the clone's head exploded when hit was because his skull hadn't been adamantium-infused at that point, though if that were the case he would have been flattened when the truck was dropped on him.
One of the things that differs between the comics and movies is, well, actors age. Eventually the current crop of actors will need replacing, and Marvel movies have tried fairly hard to build an identity between character and actor, so we might be seeing some changes in the characters if things go on long enough.
Case in point being this film, since Jackman is getting too old to play an ageless character. I would have suggested that it would remove the need to recast him, except that not many superheroes are Killed Off For Real. Unusually for Marvel films there was no post-credits stinger this time.
Eh, it would be kind of cool seeing Widow as the underdog who has to take on super-powered threats without superpowers; using tech., training, and wits.

Works for Batman. :D

I wouldn't mind a SHIELD film at all, though, and it would be a great way to bring some of the Agents of SHIELD characters to the big screen (not that I expect to see it happen- they mostly keep the films and tv shows separate, after all). And it would probably star Samuel L. Jackson if it did.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
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Re: Logan

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The Romulan Republic wrote:I wouldn't mind a SHIELD film at all, though, and it would be a great way to bring some of the Agents of SHIELD characters to the big screen (not that I expect to see it happen- they mostly keep the films and tv shows separate, after all). And it would probably star Samuel L. Jackson if it did.
I'd be interested in a SHIELD film so long as they didn't fuck it up the way they did with Winter Soldier. Give us a real story about the interplay between freedom and security, and how much of one is worth the other. Then don't fuck it up by declaring that everyone on one side of the argument is from a secret Nazi cult, and that's why they question the Heroes.

Also, maybe acknowledge that some of the Avengers should be in prison, and that perhaps SHIELD keeps buying off/intimidating people to keep people like Stark available and making weapons that perhaps don't cause apocalyptic events.
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Re: Logan

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Gandalf wrote:
The Romulan Republic wrote:I wouldn't mind a SHIELD film at all, though, and it would be a great way to bring some of the Agents of SHIELD characters to the big screen (not that I expect to see it happen- they mostly keep the films and tv shows separate, after all). And it would probably star Samuel L. Jackson if it did.
I'd be interested in a SHIELD film so long as they didn't fuck it up the way they did with Winter Soldier. Give us a real story about the interplay between freedom and security, and how much of one is worth the other. Then don't fuck it up by declaring that everyone on one side of the argument is from a secret Nazi cult, and that's why they question the Heroes.

Also, maybe acknowledge that some of the Avengers should be in prison, and that perhaps SHIELD keeps buying off/intimidating people to keep people like Stark available and making weapons that perhaps don't cause apocalyptic events.
Hopefully that will be touched on in Spiderman Homecoming- based on the injuries still present on Tony Stark's face it's supposedly set not long after CW. This would naturally explain why none of the other MCU heroes are present since the only one available besides Iron Man himself is Vision.

A shield film would be awesome indeed, and if Widow is there then they should use Hawkeye as well. Having May and Widow fight, even as a sparring match would be badass indeed :mrgreen:
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Re: Logan

Post by momochan »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote: As I recall Wolverine himself said it was 'poison'- ironically if they'd had Magneto around he'd have been able to rid him of that pesky metal no problem. :wink:
I took the reference to poison as more metaphor -- the thing that is poisoning him is the darkness of his soul. The violence had to be over-the-top so that we could be utterly convinced he was unredeemable.

Speaking of the violence, was it just me, or did the damage Logan inflicted change somewhat over the course of the movie? The fight at the beginning seemed to be about limb amputation. Then we moved to torso skewering. Then, particularly in the hotel, he's stabbing the guys in the head. So the direction goes from outer to inner and upper. I wonder if there is some significance to the head obliteration, because X24 dies of a head wound, whereas Logan dies more of a heart wound.

Also I'm wondering about the vehicle theme. Obviously Laura is associated with horses, Logan with old cars, and Xavier with boats. I loved the scene with the horses entangled with the driverless bigrigs -- the transportation of the past vs the transportation of the future, both somewhat dumb in their own way. I got the feeling that although Logan worked as a driver, it seemed more like he was the one being taken for a ride, that he was not captain of his fate, at least in the beginning. And how about when he drives into the razor-wire fence and transforms the car into an extension of himself, with 'claws' out front formed by the now-stuck-on razor wire?

The end made me think of Logan as a Moses figure, leading his people to the edge of the promised land but never being able to arrive there himself. Canada is the land of his birth but it's his fate to not be able to go home.

Yet, in contrast to this religious allusion, Laura turns the cross into an X -- was this an anti-religious statement?
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Re: Logan

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I think he head-stabbed people in the beginning brawl...

I think the hotel scene had him do body stabs because those were stationary targets... they weren't swinging their limbs attacking Logan, they were frozen in place, so instead of wild slash attacks Logan just stuck them in their heads... and Logan couldn't make wild swings anyway since he was also having movement problems...

The end fight had lots of dismemberments too.

I think the X isn't anti-religious. It IS X-Men. That's what the X is... and heck, in ancient days Christians did use the letter X. Like almost a thousand years ago they were doing that. So it's not necessarily HHHNNGGG BAH RELIGION!
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Re: Logan

Post by Coop D'etat »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I think he head-stabbed people in the beginning brawl...

I think the hotel scene had him do body stabs because those were stationary targets... they weren't swinging their limbs attacking Logan, they were frozen in place, so instead of wild slash attacks Logan just stuck them in their heads... and Logan couldn't make wild swings anyway since he was also having movement problems...

The end fight had lots of dismemberments too.

I think the X isn't anti-religious. It IS X-Men. That's what the X is... and heck, in ancient days Christians did use the letter X. Like almost a thousand years ago they were doing that. So it's not necessarily HHHNNGGG BAH RELIGION!
A key theme for the mutant kids is how they turned the stories about the X-men into a mythology, one with deep personal and collective meaning for them. A cross would be just something you put on a grave to them, Christianity being a pretty sterile mythology to most moderns and not particularly significant to them, while the X means something bone deep to those kids.


This literalizes a metaphor about superhero fiction in general and the X-men in particular. On one hand they are on the surface silly, childish stories. On the other hand they can provide that mythological urge for meaning to people and the X-men in particular are great for doing that to socially marginalised folks. Logan had something of a meaningful death, but what was more meaningful in the long run was how he lived as The Wolverine because that life became a symbol to those who came after him.
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Re: Logan

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Hmmm fair enough. The girl probably wasn't taught religion, so for her the salvation myth was the comic book she had... which turned out to be true!
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Re: Logan

Post by momochan »

Coop D'etat wrote: A key theme for the mutant kids is how they turned the stories about the X-men into a mythology, one with deep personal and collective meaning for them. A cross would be just something you put on a grave to them, Christianity being a pretty sterile mythology to most moderns and not particularly significant to them, while the X means something bone deep to those kids.


This literalizes a metaphor about superhero fiction in general and the X-men in particular. On one hand they are on the surface silly, childish stories. On the other hand they can provide that mythological urge for meaning to people and the X-men in particular are great for doing that to socially marginalised folks. Logan had something of a meaningful death, but what was more meaningful in the long run was how he lived as The Wolverine because that life became a symbol to those who came after him.
Loved that insight :!:

According to this movie it seems that it's better to bow out of life before old age robs us of every last shred of dignity and we drag down the loved ones around us. Bleak. :(
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-said the swashbuckling Anne Bonney to her pirate lover "Calico" Jack Rackham, as he was awaiting the gallows in a Nassau jail. Only Bonney and one other crew member were left on deck fighting during a sea battle with authorities in which Rackham surrendered.
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