Movie Review: Logan

My husband and I went on a rare movie theater date last weekend, because the newest (and last) Wolverine movie was out, and we love us some Wolverine. Logan does not disappoint. Much has been made of its grittier tone and R rating – which, as my husband enjoyed pointing out, makes things far more realistic. When you have adamantium-grafted bone claws that come out of your knuckles when you get angry, along with crazy strength, you’re probably going to end up killing someone at some point. So, this Wolverine movie is more appropriately gory. We’re talking decapitations, fountains of blood, the works.

But, along with the gore, there are a lot more feelings in this Wolverine outing, versus previous movies. The anguish of Logan’s life is closer to the surface. Instead of brooding quietly, this Wolverine is more clearly about to break. To pay the bills, he works as a chauffeur while hiding out over the border in Mexico and caring for a senile Charles Xavier. The year is 2029. Logan is, himself, an old man. Hugh Jackman makes it clear from the first frame that  Wolverine is tired. Something – presumably the adamantium fused to his skeleton – is slowly poisoning him. He’s had enough bullsh*t from young punks, like the thugs who try to steal the tires off his limo. His patience is shot, and anyone who tries to damage his livelihood will see his adamantium-bound claws up close.

Enter the girl who bring backs his will to fight. A Latina woman, a former nurse at a medical research facility that is purportedly doing a childhood cancer study, but is in fact working on something far more sinister, dogs Wolverine and begs him to help her. He is the only one who can. He won’t hear her out, until she waves money in his face – enough to buy the Sunseeker he’s promised Charles, so they can live out their remaining days at sea. There is a girl, Laura. She is like you, she tells him, and Wolverine doesn’t really believe her, but money talks, and Laura needs to go to Canada, where she’ll be safe from the bad guys who want to kill her. They make arrangements. He comes to pick up her up, but the bad guys shove a wrench in their plans, as bad guys do, and Wolverine sees sweet little Laura backed into a corner and forced to fight. Laura is exactly as advertised.

At its heart, Logan is a Western road movie, with mutants. This is no great secret or revelation; the filmmakers obviously had fun playing with common Western tropes. At one point, the characters watch the movie Shane, which makes it almost too clear where the movie is going. During the *road* part of the road movie, the characters encounter a horse trailer that has been run off the interstate, leading the to the escape of the horses. Charles urges Logan to stop and help. “Someone will come along,” Logan assures him. “Someone has,” Charles reiterates. So, they help, and, as happens in most Western movies, the indebted family – innocent, hard-working types – invite the road-weary trio to their home for  a bite of dinner and a rest.

It thrilled me more than a little bit that these innocent, hard-working types were a wholesome, African American family by the name of Munson: a handsome father, a lovely, intelligent mother (who seems to have a much better read on the travelers than her trusting husband), and a disciplined, if slightly rebellious, teenage son. Black cowboys were absolutely a thing in the Old West, but we don’t expect to see them in a movie that takes place in 2029, so kudos for the subversion of stereotypes. Anyway, Logan is quick to turn down their offer, but Charles insists that they accept.

*SPOILER ALERT* I’m going to talk about what happens next in the movie, and the end, and everything else, so if you haven’t seen it yet, seriously, stop reading.

*I’m not kidding*

*Okay, you were warned*

I was a little upset with Charles at this point. Clearly, he knows by now, having been in all the X-Men movies in one timeline or another, played by one actor (or computer graphic) or another, that innocent bystanders who help Wolverine are rarely safe. He has already seen the types of people who are after Laura. But it has been years since Charles slept in a real house with a real family, and his yearning for that feeling overrules his better judgment. So, in the end, they accept the invitation. I felt even more nervous for the survival of this beautiful family, given their race. And, if you’ve seen the movie, you know

*Seriously, people, last warning*

I was right to be nervous. Charles wakes up in a bed, in a house, to Logan’s form standing over him and explains that this feeling – of being in a family – this is why he insisted they spend the night with the Munson family. The form lays a hand on Charles’ shoulder – and then the claws come out and slice through ailing Professor X. Here’s an interesting surprise (but only if you haven’t followed Logan’s story in the comic books). Laura, known as X-23 in the lab, is not the only mutant created using Logan’s DNA. There is also X-24, a younger, ragy-er clone of Logan.

Even in the everybody-comes-back-to-life world of comic books (and Professor X has, in both the comics and the movies), already-frail 90-year-olds in the middle of a cornfield with zero medical supplies do not come back from adamantium claws through the chest. We know Professor X is doomed the minute we hear that *snikt* ring through the attic. Naturally, Wolverine battles his younger, meaner (“soulless,” as described by the rep from the medical research company, I believe) self – and this part of the epic battle, I can get behind. Logan is battling his own rage, his own bad intentions, his own past misdeeds, in favor of defending Laura, his (lab-created) offspring – a more innocent version of himself. This is his shot at redemption. Comic book characters battling their own evil twins has been done to death, but Wolverine has such a rich blend of violence and redemption in his past – mixed with the promise of living on through Laura, if he can save her from the evil version of himself –  that rarely has it been more fitting.

However fitting the Wolverine-on-Wolverine action is, I am wrecked with the rest of the farmhouse battle. Why does the Munson family have to die? One review (warning, obviously: spoilers) I read said that this part felt “manufactured.” I think that’s the best way to put it. Wouldn’t it have been sufficient to leave the Munsons bloodied and beaten, and pissed that these strangers led the devil to their doorstep? I would have been delighted if the film had proven me wrong, but I knew as soon as Charles talked Logan in to going to their house, that this family was as good as dead. X-24 and the Reavers make their way through the Munson family like a hot knife through butter, and for what? They’re just more innocent bystanders who die because they were being nice.

Charles Xavier, reduced to a shell of his former self and dying, helplessly, in bed, seems more fitting for this movie. He remembers, just before X-24 slices and dices him, what happened to make Logan smuggle him over the border to live in a junkyard. Charles has been suffering from seizures, and with a brain like his, a seizure is practically a miniature Hiroshima. Dozens of lives were lost in a mysterious incident in Westchester – which is the canonical location of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. This may explain why we don’t see Storm, Rogue, Cyclops, Beast, or any of the other original X-Men (though the newer X-Men movies have retconned the timeline so much that I can’t keep track of who’s supposed to have been around anyway). Charles knows he didn’t deserve to have one more night of peace, or a comfortable bed, and he remembers why Logan’s rage is so close to the surface these days. And then he dies, thinking that Logan has killed him because he could not forgive him. Oh, the feels. This scene was so overwhelming with emotion that I have to say the filmmakers did excellent work. Charles Xavier was such a powerful man in his prime, but having him die, and ultimately cause the death of some innocent bystanders because he was too selfish to put their safety above his comfort – this shows that old age and infirmity have mostly reduced him to being a regular old human, instead of practically a god. In Westerns, the heroes are always flawed, so I suppose Charles had to be taken down a few pegs to fit the archetype.

With the Munsons and Xavier dead, all that’s left is for Logan to take Laura to the pre-arranged meeting place. The other children from the medical research facility are meeting up in North Dakota, where they will cross the border into Canada to a place called Eden, where the other remaining mutants are supposedly gathering. The coordinates for their meeting appeared in an X-Men comic – oh, yes, they have X-Men comics in the X-Men universe, which is a nice little bit of metatextuality – which leads Logan to doubt their reliability. Still, though, he drives. And when he becomes too weak, from his preexisting condition and his injuries from X-24, Laura takes over. Wonder of wonders, the other children have made it. They treat Logan’s injuries and give him a serum developed at the facility to help him heal faster and be stronger. While he is sleeping, they trim his beard and hair so he looks like he does in the comic books (and earlier X-Men movies). They ask him to come with them to Eden, but he refuses. This is a Western; the hero always rides off into the sunset (or dies) at the end, because he is too impure from the necessary violence he used to rescue the townsfolk.

Naturally, the Reavers have picked up the trail and are on the way to intercept the children before they cross the border, and Wolverine, realizing this, downs the remaining serum and takes off after the bad guys. What a gift this is, in the last Wolverine movie: Wolverine, for a minute or two, is (to borrow from the MCU) hulked out and unstoppable – and even his haircut harkens to his glory days. Gone, for a moment, is the weight of all the harm he has caused in his life. For now, he is simply unleashed to fight for the lives of innocents. We are treated to another tag-team fight with X-23 (Laura), which also deserves a mention. In the beginning of the movie, about half a second after Logan learns that her Mexican nurse and Charles are both right – Laura really is just like him – Logan is forced to fight off the Reavers with her. No (or virtually no) words are exchanged between them – they work together seamlessly. She launches herself off his back at the bad guys. She throws him a pipe to take someone out. He knows she can take care of herself, so he’s fine with driving off with Laura clinging to the top of his limo. There’s more of that in the final fight, only now, briefly, Logan is fully Wolverine again. It’s great fun.

And then, just like that, it’s over. The serum wears off, and X-24 has dealt Logan a critical blow that we know he won’t be coming back from. Laura finishes X-24 off with the adamantium bullet Logan was saving to kill himself with – the symbolism here is so plain it’s almost painful. Logan and Laura share a final moment that  promises to squeeze any remaining tears out your eyes (which is just happened to me, simply from remembering it). The children hold a funeral for him before continuing to Canada, and, we hope, safety. I have to say, the political timeliness of this journey is overwhelming. The children’s very existence is illegal – as messed up as the world is in 2029, creating human clones with mutant powers is still very much illegal. And so, these literally illegal children journey from their birthplace in MEXICO, into the United States, where they face endless persecution and constant threat of death. Therefore, they continue on their way to Canada, where actual freedom beckons. For the United States, for them anyway, is no longer the land of the free. That mantle now belongs to Canada – as we are now seeing in the real world, where illegal immigrants now cross from the US into Canada to escape imprisonment and deportation. The X-Men have always been an allegory for marginalized groups, and that is no less true in Logan.

Part of me really wanted to see some adamantium claws punching up through the ground where the kids laid Logan to rest in a post-credits scene, but this is not that kind of X-Men movie, for all its parallels to X-Men (2000). (Logan finds young female mutant in need of help, reluctantly assists her in reaching safety, then ups the hero ante in the third act, mortality be damned – the story arc is virtually identical). The campiness and middle-claw jokes belong in a younger mutant’s story. Hopefully, we will see those again with a movie featuring Laura. But, for now, Wolverine as we know him can rest in peace.

 

On Bad Moms and Kristen Bell’s Hair

The most realistic Hollywood hairstyle ever.

Unlike most of the moms I know, I just watched Bad Moms for the first time today. I have wanted to see it since it came out, but the thing about marketing movies to moms is that moms often have a hard time getting out to go see them in the theater. So, as part of our extremely low-key New Year’s celebration, my husband and I dropped our boys off with my parents (thanks, Mom and Dad), went to go see Rogue One in the theater (which should be a separate post, after I fully process my feelings about it), and stopped to pick up snacks and Bad Moms on the way home because we went to the cheap theater for our Star Wars fix and we wanted to kick 2017 off with some humor because God only knows we needed it. Bad Moms did not disappoint.

Now, I love me some Kristen Bell. I loved her in Veronica Mars, which I only discovered years after the show stopped airing when I mainlined the dvds while my firstborn was still young enough that I could sit around and watch “grown-up” television while he played on the floor (when I wasn’t working). I loved her in Frozen. I love that she’s real about her marriage and the struggles of motherhood, and I freaking adored her in Bad Moms. Her character is basically me, but with a really shitty husband. Kiki is neurotic. She loves her kids, but they are driving her nuts. She’s reserved. Until she bonds with someone who gets her, however, and maybe gets a couple drinks in her – then she jumps into excited squirrel mode. I have been compared to squirrels since I was in second grade. Squirrels are my spirit animal, and they are Kiki’s as well.

The most random but refreshing thing I picked up on in Bad Moms, from the first frame Kristen Bell appears in, is that her hair was not styled. Or, rather, it was styled to look like she had simply stepped out of the shower and maybe run a comb through to part it. She also wore makeup to make it look like she wasn’t wearing makeup. She’s Kristen Bell, so she still looks gorgeous, obviously, but the fact that her hair hung in limp, slightly wavy clumps spoke to me in ways no actress’s hairstyle has ever spoken to me before. This was REAL. Kiki, her character in Bad Moms, has four young children. The youngest two are twins who still ride in a double stroller. Moms with small children do not blow out their hair every day, unless they have stay-at-home spouses, nannies, or are characters in Hollywood movies or television shows. This is a reality I have understood since my first week home from the hospital with my first child. Five years later, I’ve had a total of maybe ten haircuts since then and have worn my hair in a ponytail approximately 70% of the time. “Styling” my hair mostly consists of washing it (which happens twice a week in a good week) and allowing it to dry completely before putting it in a ponytail so I don’t have a rubber band indentation around the back of it until I wash it again. If I’m feeling fancy, I blow dry it in between answering questions and pouring milk and try to see how many days I can leave it down while doing nothing to it before it starts to look like hell. I think my record is four days. However, my definition of “looking like hell” has probably shifted in the last five years, too.

(*******spoiler*******)

What impressed me even more than this realistic hairstyle on Bell is the fact that it remained consistent. I think she styled her hair the night that she and her posse (consisting of Mila Kunis as Amy and Kathryn Hahn as Karla) set out to get the recently-separated Amy laid. Aside from that, Kiki’s hair is only styled again at the very end of the movie when Kiki’s husband has become aware that, yes, he needs to pull his weight as a parent. Clearly, he has helped her get the older kids off to school this morning, so *surprise* Kiki has blow-dryed her hair, and it looks even more fabulous.

I know this is a silly thing, but it’s incredible how such a small gesture in a movie about taking the pressure off of moms to be perfect can go so far to driving the point home. I feel better about myself when my hair is at least a little styled, but I also know better than to put too much importance on such a trivial thing. Many days, the ten minutes I would spend with a blow dryer can be spent on more important things, so that’s that. And this is the first Hollywood movie I’ve seen that actually gets that and practices what it’s (hilariously) preaching.

Thank You, Carrie Fisher

I  remember catching scenes from A New Hope at an early age, even if I didn’t see the entire movie or the rest of the Star Wars trilogy until years later. The images of a defiant Leia in her prison cell, impervious to threats from the scary, asthmatic man in the black helmet, and then a bold Leia taking over her own bungled rescue, are among my earliest cinematic memories that don’t involve Disney animation or Care Bears.

There weren’t that many female badasses (or females, period) for little girls to look up to in the 1980s. She-Ra was great in theory, but compared to He-Man, she was downright lame. The Bionic Woman aired in syndication, but not half as much as The Six Million Dollar Man. There were only token female characters in the shows I really liked, such as Thundercats and Voltron. Knight Rider aired in syndication after school, and I was a devoted fan, but the only women on the show appeared intermittently as love interests for David Hasselhoff. As a budding eight-year-old feminist, this was not the kind of female character with whom I identified.But that image of Leia grabbing Luke’s blaster and taking charge stayed in the back of my mind.

My boys are five and three, and there are female characters in all of their favorite shows. The playing field still isn’t level (“Dinotrux” has just a token female in Skya; the female characters in “Octonauts” are a photojournalist and an engineer, but Dashi and Tweak are rarely directly involved in rescues; Sky from “PAW Patrol” was the lone female until Everest was thrown in as a second string pup), and I have had to correct some ideas about gender roles that my oldest brought home from preschool (“girls can’t drive trucks”). However, the fact that a show about an African American girl whose mom is a doctor and whose dad makes her lunch (a) exists and (b) is something they enjoy watching is something that gives me a great deal of hope for their generation. And that’s just one example that hits me right in the intersectional feels; preschoolers also have “Sheriff Cali” and “Dora the Explorer” that feature female lead characters in roles that would have been considered “masculine” a couple of generations ago. “Peg + Cat” and “Sarah & Duck” also feature female title characters, and these four, plus the obvious “Doc McStuffins” are just shows my kids have watched in the past week.

As my boys grow up, I look forward to introducing them to series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games that feature strong female characters that I embraced so enthusiastically as an adult. However, their first encounter with Hermione and Katniss is likely to be far less surprising and life-altering for them – not because they are boys, but because they have grown up in a different world where kickass female characters are an expected part of the media they are exposed to – not an exception. Frozen is one of our favorite movies, and it features two princesses who don’t wait around for princes to save them. Big Hero Six is another favorite, and that features not one but two female engineering students-turned-superheroes. My boys can recognize the theme song from Star Trek: Voyager because I’m working my way through the series, and they know who the captain is on the ship, even if they don’t know her name is Janeway.

They have only recently started to get into Star Wars, thanks to a shared interest in robots and the heavy marketing of BB-8 and R2-D2 last year with the release of The Force Awakens. They watched the beginning of the aforementioned movie with their father and saw Rey fight off Storm Troopers and pilot a decrepit Millennium Falcon to safety. We watched A New Hope together for the first time last night, in honor of Carrie Fisher, and I was struck not only by the fresh perspective of seeing a movie I have seen well over a dozen times through their eyes, but also by the fact that Princess Leia, while undeniably awesome, is not a novel character to them. They have already seen Elsa, Anna, Merida, Honey Lemon, Go Go, Officer Hopps, and Astrid. Leia will never be the revelation for this generation that she was for my generation. She’s an outdated Rey who (unfortunately) never really got to handle a lightsaber on-screen. And while the idea that my boys won’t ever appreciate her as an original badass the way I do makes me a little sad, the idea that she will be just one of a pantheon of Hermiones and Janeways also makes me really excited about the conversations we will have regarding these characters and the ones we haven’t yet encountered because my boys’ generation will invent them.

And yet, Carrie Fisher wasn’t just Princess Leia. She had other roles in Hollywood movies, but she was also an extremely talented writer of not just novels and memoirs (most of which, last I checked, were sold out on Amazon). She was also a well-known script doctor. We have her to thank for Hook and Sister Act being as good as they were, among others. And her wit was razor sharp – largely because she wasn’t afraid to talk about hard things, like bipolar disorder, which she suffered from for most of her life, and drug abuse, which came about in an attempt to self-medicate. She talked about her difficulties so that others wouldn’t feel they had to suffer in silence. One of the best soundbites from her that’s been playing on NPR  in the last 36 hours is this:

“I think I do overshare,” Fisher says. “It’s my way of trying to understand myself. … It creates community when you talk about private things.”

So thank you, Carrie Fisher, for playing (and being) the smart, powerful princess who captured the imagination of a generation. Thank you for wearing the metal bikini and then speaking out against objectification and body-shaming. Thank you for playing your pivotal character again, nearly forty years later, in the body and with the attitude that came from living an eventful life in the spotlight. Thank you for being open and honest about mental illness so that others who suffer from it can feel a little less stigmatized and so that those of us who don’t can understand some of our friends a little bit better. Rest in peace, and may the force be with you.