Movie

Logan

2017 · 137 min

In 2029 no mutant has been born in twenty five years, Logan drives a limousine under an assumed name and his healing factor is failing as the adamantium poisons him. He keeps a nonagenarian Charles…

Fox X-MenDisney+94%Released
Logan poster art

The story

In 2029 no mutant has been born in twenty five years, Logan drives a limousine under an assumed name and his healing factor is failing as the adamantium poisons him. He keeps a nonagenarian Charles Xavier sedated in a collapsed water tower across the Mexican border, because Xavier's seizures are a weapon of mass destruction.

A nurse pays him to drive an eleven-year-old girl to North Dakota. She is his biological daughter, grown in a lab from his genetic material, and the film is a Western about a dying man discovering he can still be useful. It is the only X-Men film that ends with a grave.

Key facts

Release date
3 Mar 2017
Status
Released
Phase
Non-MCU
Saga
Fox X-Men
Runtime
137 min
Certificate
R
Director
James Mangold
Writers
James Mangold, Scott Frank, Michael Green
Streaming
Disney+
Timeline placement
2029 on Earth-TRN414, the divergent future of the Fox X-Men timeline

Cast

ActorRole
Hugh JackmanLogan / Wolverine
Patrick StewartCharles Xavier
Dafne KeenLaura / X-23
Boyd HolbrookDonald Pierce
Stephen MerchantCaliban
Richard E. GrantZander Rice

Characters

Easter eggs

  • Laura carries a stack of real 1960s and 1970s X-Men comics, which the film treats as in-universe fiction — 'maybe a quarter of it happened, and not like this'.
  • Shane (1953) plays in the Oklahoma hotel room, and Laura quotes its closing speech over Logan's grave.
  • Donald Pierce and the Reavers are the cybernetic mutant-hunters from Chris Claremont's 1980s Uncanny X-Men run.
  • Zander Rice tells Logan that Wolverine killed his father during the Weapon X programme, folding X-Men Origins: Wolverine's institution into the story without endorsing that film.
  • X-24 is a cloned, feral Wolverine played by Jackman with a shaved head, the film's answer to fighting an ageing hero with his own past.
  • Logan keeps a single adamantium bullet, planted in The Wolverine as the thing that could kill him, and Laura eventually uses it.
  • The final shot has Laura turn the wooden grave cross on its side to form an X.

Trivia

  • Hugh Jackman took a pay cut to secure the R rating, following Deadpool's success the previous year.
  • The story draws its mood, though not its plot, from Mark Millar's Old Man Logan.
  • Dafne Keen was eleven when cast and was chosen from hundreds of auditions; she had almost no screen credits.
  • The 'Hurt' teaser, cut to Johnny Cash's cover, is widely regarded as one of the best trailers of the decade.
  • James Mangold's preferred version is the black-and-white Logan Noir cut, which received a limited theatrical run.
  • It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, the first ever for a superhero film.
  • Patrick Stewart said at the time that it would be his final performance as Charles Xavier; he returned in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2022.

Box office

Budget
$97 million
Worldwide
$619.2 million
Domestic
$226.3 million

Reviews

Critics

94%

Hugh Jackman makes the most of his final outing as Wolverine with a gritty, nuanced performance in a raw, resonant film that stands as a fitting capstone to the character's long cinematic run.

The MarvelGossips verdict

The best film ever made from a Marvel character, and it works precisely because it treats seventeen years of franchise mess as unreliable memory. Jackman and Stewart play two men embarrassed by their own legends. The X-24 doppelgänger is the one concession to convention in a film that otherwise refuses all of them.

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Frequently asked

Is Logan connected to the MCU?
Not originally — it is a Fox X-Men film set on Earth-TRN414. Deadpool & Wolverine explicitly treats Logan's death as canonical and sacred, using his grave in its opening scene and casting a variant rather than reviving him.
Who is Laura in Logan?
X-23, cloned from Logan's genetic material at the Transigen facility in Mexico. She is Wolverine's biological daughter in the comics too, created in 2004 for X-Men: Evolution before crossing into print.
Why is Logan dying?
The adamantium bonded to his skeleton has been poisoning him for decades, and his healing factor has degraded to the point where it can no longer keep pace. The film never over-explains it, which is part of why it lands.
Did Logan get an Oscar nomination?
Yes, for Best Adapted Screenplay — the first Academy Award screenplay nomination for a superhero film. It lost to Call Me by Your Name.
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