photo credit: Wired
After watching the latest and likely final Hugh Jackman
portrayal of beloved yet equally feared fictional superhero slash antihero
character Wolverine I found myself in
an unexpected state of encouragement and optimism. The feeling was counterintuitive
to the film at first take so I pondered why I felt that way. At first glance Logan is gritty, cold, morally
ambiguous, and somewhat depressing to be honest. The movie is also slow. It
commands you to pay attention to the central character, the dialogue, and his
struggle without triggering you or manipulating you to do so via a formulaic
intro drama or action scene. As the movie begins, Logan (or Wolverine) is
in pain and he is old and the film invites you to join him in his pain. Not
only does this sound so awesome (sarcasm), the movie is also intentionally shot in less color. Shot in the West, somewhere between West Texas, Oklahoma, and the Mexican American boarder, the film is so monochromatic. The colors are not bright or beautiful. As the film went on I was beginning to gain a hunger and longing for light, for color, for hope. This longing for a reprieve is given in one scene where Logan, Charles Xavier, and a little girl that Logan is protecting named Laura stay the night in a mini Las Vegas
type place in Oklahoma. The colors, in this scene, as they walked the streets are
bombarding and beautiful. The girl, Laura,
is mesmerized by what she sees and so is the viewer. It is an intentional break
from the dulled color and also an intentional foretaste of the light and hope
to come in the movie. This light and hope, as we all can guess, will eventually
come by the main protagonist, the one holding all of the pain of the world in
his body and heart, who also invites us to share in his journey, Logan himself.
Logan is a western.
Westerns are my favorite movie genre. I love them because of the structure of
longing and desire for hope that they all portray. Westerns are also boundless
in style. There are Western superhero movies (obviously), Western science
fiction like Star Trek or Firefly, or contemporary Westerns like
the cult favorite Breaking Bad. Regardless
of the type of Western all of them leave us with a desire for hope and justice
in a world that seems to be sorely lacking it. When the classic Star Wars: A New Hope premiered in
theaters in 1977 we were prepped to believe in a new hope, implying that things
were not so hopeful. There was no coincidence that this film portrayed the
protagonist Luke Skywalker as an
innocent bright-eyed boy marooned on a desert planet full of shady creatures.
Hope in what seems hopeless, humans are drawn to this perils scenario. We want
to see not just dark times but that light can somehow come from them, even if
it is just through a faint crack or sliver in the distance. We all resonate
with the desire for justice and hope in a dark or desolate place that a western
presents, and not just us as Americans, even if we are not Americans. It is a
human phenomenon to hope.
Two years ago my wife and I took a vacation to Scotland. It
was amazing of course. In all the beautiful memories that I will forever
cherish from the trip I have one memory that stayed with me as much as all the
others. We were at a brewery in a little Scottish town called Avamore, I think.
While waiting in a room for the taste tour that was going to be given to us by
a very classy dressed and funny old Scottish man named Arthur we struck up a
conversation with a Scottish family that was also waiting. “Where are you guys
from?” the mother asked. I replied with, “We are from Houston, Texas.” The eyes
of the whole family of four got very bright as smiles came across their faces.
I was taken aback by the reaction. The mother then said, “Oh, we love Texas!” The
way she said Texas sounded more like “Tey-exis” and it was a reminder to me
that my wife and I were very far from home, or anything like it. Naturally I
then asked where they visited while in Texas, thinking their reaction actually meant
they had been there, but to my surprise the mother then replied, “Oh no, we’ve
never been to America but we love the movies, the Wild West, the cowboys. We
always have wanted to go visit.” Pretty much the whole ideal of America for
this Scottish family was of Western movies I gathered, and they loved it. The
amazing part is that Westerns resonated with them so profoundly; a distant
culture that is very un-American, yet because of their humanity they are able to connect to the genre just as much as we do in America. What is it about Westerns that get us
at the core of ourselves as humans? Why did the movie Logan,
as gritty and visceral as it was, get to me?
Westerns portray a certain type of world, a world where life
isn’t that great, people are bad, life is hard and relentlessly unforgiving,
and because of this we need help outside ourselves to make it through. Human
willpower breaks down because humans are crooked and all seeking their own best
interests usually in Westerns. Westerns say that there is something off about
the world and it shouldn’t be that way. They make us yearn for a light to shine
on us from unlikely places, any light at all.
Entire Logan.
Logan is a perfect hero in a Western genre superhero film.
He is a living metaphor for human will in a broken world. When he is beaten he
heals. He has as many emotional scars as he does physical ones yet he does not
let his heart go cooled when prompted to do what is good and just. He is unbreakable
and a force of unstoppable good in a world that has hurt him but yet still
needs him, a hero. Logan finds himself on an unexpected journey of by taking
children to Eden, literally. Eden is a secret safe haven that the
last mutants on Earth hope to find and therby find refuge, ironically placed
right across the Mexican boarder for contemporary political allure. Yet, it is
also a strong metaphor for, being named Eden,
a symbolic place of biblical paradise and protection in a fallen and decaying
world, a world that Logan has been
tasked (undesirably at first) to safe guard a group of young mutant children
that are desperately trying to make it to. Logan in this process finds himself
as a journeyman finding his calling, usually via the voice of Charles Xavier,
and submitting to this call knowing that it will be dangerous and that many
people and maybe children might get hurt or killed along the way. I could not
help but think of Israel journeying towards the Promised Land when seeing Logan
struggle through the calling to protect and guide children to safety. It was
the Bible re-envisioned.
The Bible is a Western.
The Biblical narrative is one that tells us that something
is not right with the world. There is a sickness that is in it and it is
unrelenting. The Genesis account says that this sickness entered into our world
and our very bodies and changed things forever. It is as obvious and unmerciful
as death and is as steady as the ageing process that we all go through before
we die. One of my favorite books of the Bible is the book of Judges. It is a
time where Israel is not very progressed as a society, they have no government
aside from the laws of Moses and they do not have a king to help guide or
protect them against enemies. Yet, in this era of Jewish history they are
constantly under attack by other nations on every side and that creates a need
for vindicators to rescue them, or more directly Judges. It is at time of
superheroes, literally. Ancient characters like Samson who freed Israel with
super human strength and fighting skill given by God are displayed in
literature that is beautifully told and timeless though it was written several
thousands of yeas ago. Judges is like reading a Marvel or DC comic book at
times and like the entire biblical account from Genesis to Revelation Judges is
a tail of trail and pain in a broken world and a need for someone to come and
rescue us. And someone did, several Judges to be exact. An excerpt from the
book of Romans encapsulates this desire for a rescuer to come into our or from or world to save us well. The Apostle Paul in the Letter to The Roman Church said:
“Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to
the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that
future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against
its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope,21 the
creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious
freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning
as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we
believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a
foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin
and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us
our full rights as his adopted children,[j] including the new bodies
he has promised us. 24 We were
given this hope when we were saved...” ~ Romans 8:18-24
Logan portrays a
powerful force of unstoppable love and justice in a world of unyielding darkness
in this movie. One scene in particular is an intentional portrayal of Christ.
In a brutal and bloody battle with X-24 (a
cloned version of Logan that is also played by Hugh Jackman but without the makeup
to make him look older) Logan is
fighting for the lives of a band of young mutant children to not be captured
and killed by mercenaries as they trek towards Eden. It is so metaphorical as the battle ensues noticing that the
clone is full of rage, never really talks other than just to yell and grunt,
and is dressed in all black while Logan is dressed in a blood stained white
tank top and blue jeans. It is truly good versus evil. It is a battle that
eventually finds Logan impaled on a tree. This is a strong intentional visual
to Christ on the cross for the viewer, and it brought me to tears. It is
obvious that Logan here is fighting the worst of himself that has taken form.
It is easy to see in this scene myself fighting my worst parts of myself as
well, a self that I wish would die and to be separated from forever. It is also
clear that Logan wants this also more than ever. He has been haunted by X-24
all his life in the terrible things he has done while brain washed by the
government and he wants nothing more than to have this evil incarnation dealt
with, forever. You want nothing more than that for him too, even if it kills
him. A verse that comes to mind when I saw this battle was from Colossians
2:14, which says, He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it
away by nailing it to the cross. 15 In this
way, he disarmed the
spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over
them on the cross. I wept tears
of pain and joy as I saw and rooted for the protagonist in this very bloody and
brutal fight. I was cheering for myself as well, for final victory over sin.
What is it
about Westerns that speak to the heart? It is that we know we live in a world
that needs saving and we long for a hero. This American genre of a Western is
quintessential to the human heart, a hoping and longing for good and God in a
marred world. What Logan did for me,
as an already professed Christian, is challenge me to love no matter what the
day brings and no matter how hard life gets. Logan is a man stricken by pain but yet when he is asked to help he
always answers the call, eventually. He may grumble and resist but he
eventually comes to save, and with razor sharp indestructible claws. Is that
the person I am? No. But I know through Christ I am able to be that person. A
force that is always choosing to love and seek justice in a broken world that
needs it. A force that is not going to let my mistakes haunt me and make me
afraid to love and stand up for truth, no matter how much wrong I have done in
my past. As the final credits rolled at the conclusion of the film a famous and
favorite song of mine called When The Man
Comes Around by the late Johnny Cash began to play. It was the film’s final
attempt to inculcate into my heart that Logan came around and took care of the
bad guys, that Jesus did the very same thing by preaching the coming Kingdom
and then willfully dying on a cross unjustly for me, taking my place, and that
one day Jesus will come again to give what this world longs for; rest from pain
and Eden recaptured.
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