(FEE Op-Ed) When we first see Hugh Jackman in the new film Logan, his character is hungover and hobbling: a shambolic shadow of his former self, the slashing super-hero Jackman has played in seven films over seventeen years. The Wolverine we have come to know is vigorous and invincible. Now he is worn out and wracked with chronic pain, which he self-medicates with booze. His claws are malfunctioning, his healing powers are fading, and the toxicity of his metal-laced skeleton is slowly killing him.
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Old man Logan has retired from the hero business. Instead, he is working as a limo driver, shuttling frat bros and basic party girls to and fro, trying to scrounge up enough money to buy meds for his ailing mentor Charles Xavier, played by Patrick Stewart.
Xavier is also a fallen figure. He was once “Professor X,” the charismatic founder of the X-men. Though long a paraplegic, he was once the moral leader of the mutant rights movement and a world-class genius with god-like mental powers. Now he is a frail, senile nonagenarian afflicted with a degenerative brain disease that causes lethal seizures: lethal, that is, to anyone else within a ten-mile radius.
The year is 2029, and the world is beyond saving. The bigots have won, mutants have all but died out, and Logan’s only ambition is to buy a boat so he and his adopted father figure can drift out to sea and both die in peace.
Warning: Spoilers below.