The third and final addition to Marvel’s Wolverine franchise is James Mangold’s 2017 film Logan, which features Hugh Jackman as one of the only mutants left. He is an angry old man with an alcohol dependency, who is gradually losing his ability to heal and regenerate. The plot was developed from the story of Old Man Logan, set in a post-apocalyptic future, which was based on Marvel Comics’ Wolverine. Aside from the explicit story of Logan being torn between his desire to hide away from the world and saving a young girl who reminds him of himself, there are many implicit meanings that are incredibly relevant to the current political climate. This is not the first instance of political propaganda in the X-Men franchise; the comic book series
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Logan’s home is a hideout in Texas near the border between the U.S. and Mexico, where he and a mutant tracker named Caliban are protecting Professor Charles Xavier. Logan is a mutant whose powers include enhanced senses, physical capabilities, regeneration, and claws made of a deadly, indestructible material called adamantium. When a woman begs Logan for help protecting a young girl named Laura, he turns her away, until he learns that she is one of several new mutants born into a terrible experiment run by a company called Transigen. The researchers were using the DNA of various mutants, including Logan, to impregnate young Mexican women and ultimately create an army of brainwashed mutant children. When the researchers discovered that “you can’t nurture rage” in children, but you can genetically instill a murderous rage in adults, they decided that the best course of action would be to euthanize all of the failed experiments that were born into the research (IMDb, 2017). Laura is one of the genetically engineered mutant children, but she escapes with some of the other children in the hopes of finding refuge in a place called Eden. Donald Pierce and his workers called the Reavers, are after Laura and the other children who escaped from the experiment. It is a surprise for Logan to find out that not only is Laura a mutant, but she also shares Logan’s …show more content…
border into Canada. This firstly reflects the Prime Minister of Canada’s decision to allow refugees to enter their country from Middle Eastern nations (Gonzalez, 2017). The new mutants born in Mexico were clearly not welcome in the U.S., and it is their last hope to find a safe “Eden” in Canada. This also reflects the difficulty of actually crossing the border into the U.S. for immigrants. Laura and her friends are desperate to escape the Reavers and find the Northern sanctuary for mutants, where the Reavers cannot follow them. Despite their attempts at escape, the Reavers have been following their every move, and the children are intercepted by the Transigen workers once more. Luckily for the mutants, Logan is able to temporarily boost his regeneration powers long enough to help them fight off and kill most of the Reavers, including Pierce. The final message of the film is from Logan to Laura, before she can finally find refuge. He tells her, “Take your friends and run… They’ll keep coming, and coming… You don’t have to fight anymore. Go… Don’t be what they made you.” (IMDb, 2017). These final moments tie the explicit and implicit meanings together for Logan. Because this is Wolverine’s final movie, it is as if he is passing the torch to Laura, except he does not want her to become what he is; he does not want her to be a
Logan’s home is a hideout in Texas near the border between the U.S. and Mexico, where he and a mutant tracker named Caliban are protecting Professor Charles Xavier. Logan is a mutant whose powers include enhanced senses, physical capabilities, regeneration, and claws made of a deadly, indestructible material called adamantium. When a woman begs Logan for help protecting a young girl named Laura, he turns her away, until he learns that she is one of several new mutants born into a terrible experiment run by a company called Transigen. The researchers were using the DNA of various mutants, including Logan, to impregnate young Mexican women and ultimately create an army of brainwashed mutant children. When the researchers discovered that “you can’t nurture rage” in children, but you can genetically instill a murderous rage in adults, they decided that the best course of action would be to euthanize all of the failed experiments that were born into the research (IMDb, 2017). Laura is one of the genetically engineered mutant children, but she escapes with some of the other children in the hopes of finding refuge in a place called Eden. Donald Pierce and his workers called the Reavers, are after Laura and the other children who escaped from the experiment. It is a surprise for Logan to find out that not only is Laura a mutant, but she also shares Logan’s …show more content…
border into Canada. This firstly reflects the Prime Minister of Canada’s decision to allow refugees to enter their country from Middle Eastern nations (Gonzalez, 2017). The new mutants born in Mexico were clearly not welcome in the U.S., and it is their last hope to find a safe “Eden” in Canada. This also reflects the difficulty of actually crossing the border into the U.S. for immigrants. Laura and her friends are desperate to escape the Reavers and find the Northern sanctuary for mutants, where the Reavers cannot follow them. Despite their attempts at escape, the Reavers have been following their every move, and the children are intercepted by the Transigen workers once more. Luckily for the mutants, Logan is able to temporarily boost his regeneration powers long enough to help them fight off and kill most of the Reavers, including Pierce. The final message of the film is from Logan to Laura, before she can finally find refuge. He tells her, “Take your friends and run… They’ll keep coming, and coming… You don’t have to fight anymore. Go… Don’t be what they made you.” (IMDb, 2017). These final moments tie the explicit and implicit meanings together for Logan. Because this is Wolverine’s final movie, it is as if he is passing the torch to Laura, except he does not want her to become what he is; he does not want her to be a