LOGAN, the third of the Wolverine trilogy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is haunting, heartbreaking and head-scratching. Why this kind of movie?
There are no spandex and special effects, but instead we have Logan old and dying from the adamantium poisoning his body, protecting an aging Professor X stricken with seizures that could kill people. They are more secluded as mutants are near extinct, but they stumbled to a secret where children are being mutated to become soldiers, and this begins their last journey.
To understand this movie, one has to see that X-Men as a metaphor. The comics were created at a time of the civil rights movement in the early 60s. Hence, the X stands for the minority, and the struggles for race, gender, youth and identity.
In this movie, these references get twisted around.
There is no ideological debate between Xavier's dreams of co-existence against Magneto's superior-race supremacy. Instead we have a dystopia; the old generation of heroes like Logan becomes a wanderer. Think Rorounin Kenshin with feral hair, booze and a death wish and this is the Logan we see.
But who are the movie's villains? We see a cool guy with a mechanized hand tracking Logan and Xavier. We learn he's part of a mechanized army called Reavers under the Transigen, which genetically created children with mutant powers to become soldiers but these children have escaped.
This leads Logan and Xavier to one last quest, to help one girl, Laura, to reunite with other children for their freedom across the border. The catch is, Laura, or X-23, has the genes, claws and rage of Logan.
This story still carries the core of the X-Men story of family looking out for each other. Thus, the movie's moments shine with the father-son relationship of Logan and Xavier, and the father-daughter tension between Logan and Laura.
The story is still driven by the conflict between mutants and humans, but this time the humans want to be gods by manipulating mutant genes for their own goal.
This reign of technology and genetics is reminiscent of the first Terminator movie, and there are references in the movie from the mechanized hand-villain. Laura wears sunglasses like the Terminator and barely speaks like the machine and the long ride on barren highways. This movie though twists it by having mutants running away from humans. It is the humans that are evil.
This plot can be metaphorical of the present. We have America isolated now with a loud-mouth president ordering travel bans and building walls out of irrational fear. We have corporate America applying genetically-modified crops that are hazardous to people's health and food sustainability.
And I also remember a tale in my college days that indigenous peoples are being tested for their genes to create immunization for diseases, without clear disclosure and consent. There is a name for that: biocolonialism.
In such a world of fear and dystopia, those who are hunted either hide like what Logan did at first, or fight to survive like the mutant children. Logan finally helps the children escape by facing his own demons, literally a clone of himself, and dies in the process.
Logan's death is redemption from a life as a killing weapon to a sacrificial hero. His last words were telling for the young generation to shun the violence created by the empire.
“Don't be what they made you.”
Finally, Logan’s burial scene symbolizes a lot of things. The cross marks the Christianity of White America that preaches supremacy, fear and hate. But when Laura turns the cross to form the “X,” the movie brings across the message of embracing diversity, humanity, individuality, the fight of Malcolm X for a nation of equality, and the sacrifice of the likes of Logan as the anti-hero who will fight for a better world even if the world hates and fears the unique.
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