Just saw Logan yesterday. Very enjoyable movie. Makes me wonder what The Wolverine (the second movie) would have looked like if James Mangold was just left to do whatever he wanted.
No spoilers
The Good:
X-23 is great. I liked the actor and the basic portrayal, and I liked how they manipulated comic fans' expectations in the third act. They did a really good job of making her into a lethal presence. No real complaints here.
Old Man Logan and Old Man Chuck. I also liked the old man - even older man dynamic going on with Logan and Charles. There was a bit of a father son dynamic that I think resonates with one of the few long-standing consistent characterizations in the X-Men movies of Logan's love for Charles as a father figure. Seeing them interact as people and not as X-Men was something I liked a lot about the movie, in a way similar to how one of the few high points of the rebooted X-Men were the interactions between Charles and Erik.
Westchester. I liked that the movie didn't shove explanations into my face about how every little thing in this future time happened. I can figure that out for myself, but more importantly I think its the act of trying to figure out what has happened (and its not hard) gives more gravitas to this future. Being told things happened is one thing. But *realizing* that they happened can be so much more powerful.
The ending. I liked how they decided to give everyone the ending they needed, and not the ending they wanted. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
The Bad:
The end of mutants. The idea that mutants don't exist anymore is a very, very rough echo to the Old Man Logan story but I felt it wasn't integrated enough into the Logan story. Its sort of just there. The fact that it adds atmosphere to the movie in the beginning is interesting, but the reveal was a bit of a let down to me. Maybe it is meant to be; one of those things that just isn't supposed to be resolved or even cared about, just dealt with. Like the wells gone dry and the silver's mined out and the town is now on the deep decline in a western movie, *and then* the bad stuff happens. Incidentally, no real spoilers, but Logan is a modern superpower laced western. If it wasn't obvious at the start, a mid-movie scene in a hotel should set you up for what this movie actually is.
No real villain. Yes, there's a villain. And there's another villain behind that villain. And then there's *that*. Logan's past literally tries to kill him in several different ways in this movie. But if Logan the movie is a western, and Logan the person is the Man With No Name, then he really should have either a villain to confront or a scourge to overcome. Logan *kinda* has that in the end, but the movie kind of abandons that for a different path. I think it is good in terms of character arc, but confusingly The Man With No Name normally doesn't have that kind of arc. It is difficult to explain without spoilers, but Logan is really two movies connected, and the ending while it makes sense for the characters isn't the payoff that works as well with the theme. The villains have to serve two different purposes in the movie, and I don't think they pull it off well.
The Ugly:
Actually, I don't think anything in this movie qualifies. As long as you're good with people getting spiked through the head, its all good.
Overall: 8 out of 10. This is dark and gritty without being boring and depressing. It is Wolverine told as an American Gothic story. And I think it is as good of a Last Wolverine Story as we're ever likely to get.
PS: Get there early. Don't stand in line too long waiting for your popcorn. I mean it.