It was clear from the first trailer that Logan wouldn’t be another run-of-the-mill X-Men movie. It’s an R-rated adult drama that looks and feels unlike anything else in the franchise’s history. But we just learned some new information about the movie that should be considered a HUGE spoiler if you want to go into the film completely fresh, so this is your last chance to turn back before we reveal it. You’ve been warned.
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Even with all of the other differences, there’s one that stands out as the most heartbreaking: Logan takes place in 2024, years after the events of Days of Future Past, meaning that Patrick Stewart’s Professor X is in his 90s - and is now suffering from some form of dementia.
Star Hugh Jackman spoke with Total Film for the magazine’s new feature on the movie, and he revealed the sad news about Charles Xavier’s state of mind. “One thing we explore is what happens when the most powerful brain on the planet falls victim to dementia of some kind. We don’t get into specifics. Is it Alzheimer’s? Is it dementia? But we know that he’s now dangerous because when his brain doesn’t work, things happen.”
What kind of things? Well, they certainly aren’t pretty. “He has seizures and people around him fall into comas,” Jackman says. “Cars crash… What I loved about what [writer/director] Jim [Mangold] wrote is that you see and feel the frustration of caring for someone like that… it’s very real life, in a way.”
That explains a few moments in the marketing that were previously a mystery to me. Take a look at this bit from the second Logan trailer:
Knowing what we know now, that’s almost certainly Xavier having one of his seizures. It also explains the shakiness that happens at the :23 mark in Logan’s Super Bowl trailer:
Professor X’s deterioration is going to be tough to watch for an audience who has spent more than fifteen years watching the stately Stewart hold court over the X-Mansion, but none may take it harder than Logan, who has long considered Xavier a father figure. Dealing with heavy realities like taking care of a loved one in a crumbling mental state proves director James Mangold is not shying away from hard truths with his R-rated drama, and I can’t wait to see how else Logan ends up bucking the conventions of modern superhero movies.
Directed by James Mangold and starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keene, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E. Grant, and Elizabeth Rodriguez, Logan will be released in cinemas on March 3, 2017.
Images: 20th Century Fox
