X-MEN (2000)
Admittedly, I’m a huge superhero fan. I’ve never truly gotten into reading the original source material, but I read summaries and watch every show, movie, and listen to any podcast or audiobook I can find relating to the topic. I wound down 2022 by relistening to Stitcher’s Wolverine podcasts and it reminded me of how I first came to love stories containing superheroes—the original X-MEN trilogy. I saw the first movie at four-years old and became fascinated with the powerful people I saw on screen. Since then, I’ve revisited them many times over the years in addition to falling for the video game series X-Men: Legends and watching every X-Men cartoon released. Combining my year-end nostalgia trip with recent excitement over events in Marvel projects pointing toward the introduction of the X-Men to the main MCU continuity, I know exactly where I want to point Reel To Reel–a recap of my favorite character development storyline within my favorite superhero movies.
Logan AKA Wolverine (played brilliantly by Hugh Jackman) clearly wants to be left alone from the start of the movie. He’s such a loner and shutoff from any interaction that his back is even to the audience watching the film in a meta-statement. Unfortunately for him, the world discriminates against people who exhibit mutant abilities and the man he beats in a bar fight wants to take things outside the ring to get his money back. Logan tries to lay low but breaks out his claws when the fighter reveals that he knows that he’s a mutant, leading to Logan releasing his claws onscreen for the first time and leaving the bar without spilling blood. Up to this point, we’ve only seen the icier side of Logan’s personality, but once he discovers a runaway mutant named Rogue (Anna Paquin) in his camper, he begrudgingly allows her to ride with him to her next destination. Still rough around the edges, he does try to help her warm up and has an earnest moment letting her know that his retractable claws hurt every time he lets them out.
Logan and Rogue suffer a surprise attack orchestrated by Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) on behalf of Magneto (Ian McKellen) that leaves Logan unconscious. They are saved by Storm (Halle Berry) and Cyclops (James Marsden) after they essentially scare Sabretooth away. After, we see that Logan may have post-traumatic stress disorder that is tied to medical trauma as we see him go into a fight or flight mode as Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) tries to run medical tests on him. As soon as he feels the prick of the needle, he wakes up and puts her in a chokehold, and goes on the run throughout the X-Mansion. He’s unknowingly led through the mansion by Professor Charles Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) telepathic directions.
Later, we see confirmation of Logan’s PTSD through a nightmare showing how he came to have his adamantium skeleton and claws with an invasive procedure. Unfortunately for those around him, Logan’s history of being alone sees him injure a second person with his natural reflex of defending himself. He’s mortified when he wakes up with his claws through Rogue’s abdomen in a fatal strike but is quickly incapacitated as Rogue uses her ability to temporarily absorb his healing ability.
Logan’s self-sacrifice and deeply buried selflessness are evident throughout the movie. One of the most shining examples comes in a scene shortly after his recovery from his incident with Rogue when he goes to try and convince her to come back to the X-Mansion after she runs away. Once he realizes Magneto has not been after him, but Rogue, he’s mortified and immediately wants to leap into action against him. He joins the X-Men in their fight against Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants in the final act at the Statue of Liberty without hesitation and armed with the knowledge that Magneto’s power can rip his skeleton apart. He makes what he believes to be the ultimate sacrifice when he touches Rogue to attempt to save her from Magneto’s machine, using her power to drain his healing ability to the point where he visibly doesn’t look like he can recover. Of course, this is only the first of many X-Men movies and they can’t kill a character as important as Logan off in the first movie, even for a grand finale. Logan lives but decides to use the knowledge that Professor Xavier has given him to try and find more information about his forgotten past, leading us into the plot for the second movie.
Upon rewatching this movie with the lens of only paying attention to Logan’s character, I really felt how integral he was to this storyline with a majority of the plot centered around him and the decisions he makes throughout. The film’s humor often came from his jeers towards his peers (mostly Cyclops) and Logan’s self-deprecation. Romantic subplots saw Rogue have a crush on Bobby AKA Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), but the main one was the love triangle and complication Logan presented to Dr. Jean Grey’s love life. Although not reciprocated, Logan appears to feel a level of care towards her and is willing to reach out if only to have a romantic fixation of his own. I absolutely enjoyed this movie and as much as it pains me to watch the second and third movies of this original trilogy, I’m excited to see Logan’s journey and how it compares to his appearances in the X-Men movies that followed in the following editions of Reel To Reel.
