“DON'T BE WHAT THEY'VE MADE YOU...”

Logan (Logan).

Isn't this how most Gillette adverts start?

I mentioned I had a few gripes with Logan as well as feeling it had a few plot problems. Don't read if you're sensitive to spoilers....

SPOLIERS! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!

1. Laura is one of many mutants grown in a laboratory and designed as weapons, this being an extension of the Weapon-X Program that first created Wolverine. Laura and some of the other children were smuggled out of this lab by a sympathetic nurse, after Dr Rice decided to have the children murdered (choosing instead to work on the mysterious 'third villain')... With that in mind, why do the villains during the climax of the film only try to apprehend the remaining mutant children instead of killing them? Worst of all, it's a needless mishap! If the script had simply stated that Dr Rice still intended to weaponize the children you could argue they'd want to take them alive. You can still show how ruthless the villains are by having them exterminating any children who refuse to act subserviently.

2. In fact, come to mention it, the battle in the climax lacks the intensity and much of the explicitness of the earlier skirmishes (in particular the stand-out opening car-jack), instead opting for the fast editing of more traditional superhero films- save for a few notably gory moments. After all the prior “realism” it feels like the film finally backs down in the final moments because, well, you know, you can't go round gunning-down children (although we are treated to security footage of Pierce dragging around a dead child). Consider what you're witnessing- Logan running through the forest slashing his way through the Reapers, all the while under heavy gunfire, yet when he pauses to catch his breath his injuries are pretty insubstantial; a few cuts and a bloodied vest. Then Logan finally confronts his clone and the two go hammer-and-nail at each other with razor sharp claws for several minutes. Both Wolverines should have been criss-crossed in gaping splits, but both were still in pretty good shape come the ending (before the impaling, that is).

3. During the close of Act 1 Pierce confronts Logan at is desert hideaway, making a final demand that he hands over Laura. Low and behold, Laura strikes from the shadows and clubs Pierce round the back of the head with a lead pipe. This never struck me as odd at the time (although Logan's decision to have Caliban dump his body in the desert did seem bizarre when you consider he was bound to wake up again at some point), but it soon becomes clear this little mutant thinks nothing of slicing and dicing trough her enemies, including innocent shop keepers, so why the Hell did she not gut Pierce given this chance? After all, this was the man responsible for killing many of her friends back in the labs, as well as the nurse who helped get them to safety! And, given just how dangerous the girl is, a near indestructible killing machine in the Wolverine-mould of clawed mutants, why did he think it such a wise idea to confront Logan alone in the first place?

4. Final issue. So the film takes great pains to stress that mutants simply aren't being born anymore. That's fine, I was happy to accept that, I wasn't sitting there in the audience thinking “well, I better get a damn good explanation for this!”. I was aware Logan wasn't a story about world-changing events, the lens was much more intimate, the scale smaller... So imagine my surprise when during the climax Dr Rice casually drops the explanation; he'd perfected a formula to suppress the mutant gene during pregnancy and had secretly administered this to the world at large through foods and drinks. I have 2 issues with this. First- what the Hell happened to my small-scale story? The ramifications of this are huge! It barely gets any explanation at all, just a passing comparison to the Polio vaccine. Why even bother, the story didn't demand it? Secondly, how does an illegal and comparatively small operation on the Mexican border manage to somehow go about secretly administrating this 'mutant antidote' to the world's entire population? Even America alone would defy any belief. How- somebody tell me!?!? A blunt and self-defeating blunder...

Nag over.