The opening to a movie is always one that defines the tone and atmosphere of the experience. Joker’s “Heat”-inspired heist that set the crime drama of The Dark Knight, Dredd’s monologue and chase to show the cesspool of Mega City One, the fear that strikes as Unicron devoured an entire planet to show the original Transformers film wasn’t for kids anymore, any example whether comic inspired or not has this in mind.
An introduction to the world we are served is something special that has us remember what it stands for.
While a powerful film, Logan is certainly no exception to the rule. As it turns out director James Mangold had a much darker entrance to the already grim film. As we know, Wolverine, Caliban and Professor X are in a depressing situation as is: the titular waiting for his own end of the depressing reality of eradicated mutants, while he and Caliban care for the brain-diseased Charles. With such a sickness in his brain and the power of his telekinesis, Xavier makes for an unstable and very saddening presence of what is left of the X-Men.
But there was more emphasis placed on what actually happened to the rest of the X-Men than just simply mentioning it:
“I literally had written an opening which started with that sequence. And so it was quite literal, who was dead. But the reason we didn’t do it wasn’t to spare other films, it was that it redefined the movie. It made the movie about the X-Men, instead of being about Logan and Charles. And irrevocably, when you read the script opening that way, it became about this other tragedy, as opposed to that tragedy being something hovering like a shadow in the background for these characters.”
Understandably, the show-don’t-tell opening of the movie would have overshadowed the identity of the film being about Logan’s journey instead of centered on the death of the X-Men. The few mentions of it and the powerful last moments of Charles Xavier on that matter really do make it all the more effective when you realize what happened, so the plot line certainly wasn’t ignored.
While we don’t know exact details or even which of the X-Men were killed, perhaps the mystery is something that makes Logan unique in its open entry to the mainstream X-Men films, and a personal farewell with no sugar coating.
Logan is available for Digital HD now, and on Blu Ray May 23rd.
Source: IGN
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