But the X-Men franchise boasts one obvious hit (outside of the Deadpool<\/i>s) in the past few years. James Mangold\u2019s Logan<\/i><\/strong> was a gory \u2013 and eventually touching \u2013 coda for Canada\u2019s angriest X-Man, a bloody neo-Western that buried Wolverine. Logan\u2019s<\/i> been on my mind a lot lately \u2013 the film, not the character, although there\u2019s a unique cohesion here worth exploring. After all, the film takes place in a world where superheroes are as irrelevant as further X-Men sequels are in our own. It\u2019s not a post-apocalyptic setting per se, but it\u2019s certainly post-mutant. His costume abandoned, Logan has become a limo driver so he can afford to care for an aging Charles Xavier. <\/span><\/p>\n His fate is reminiscent of another famous pseudo-cowboy: Woody, the neurotic protagonist of all four Toy Story<\/i> movies. As sequels go, Toy Story 4<\/i> <\/strong>would appear to be the most redundant of them all, as the third entry in this explicitly existential series provided the near-perfect end for Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the rest of the toy chest. But Toy Story 3<\/i> envisioned the \u201cend\u201d as a passing of the baton, a perpetuation of these same toys playing the same roles. Without the fourth movie, one would imagine an infinite life cycle for Woody, passed from owner to owner, ad nauseam. <\/span><\/p>\n Yet when we catch up with Woody, it\u2019s clear things have changed. Bonnie doesn\u2019t treat our favorite plastic sheriff the same way Andy did. She\u2019s a great kid, but suddenly Woody\u2019s predicament looks a lot like Logan\u2019s \u2013 no longer the center of attention, his job is now to take care of others, internalizing their pain along the way. His healing factor not what it used to be, the scars that cover Logan\u2019s body resemble the stitches on Woody\u2019s back where his voice-box used to sit, a part of himself he sacrifices for the good of the toys around him. Woody spends most of Toy Story 4<\/i> trying to get the ditzy Forky back to Bonnie \u2013 or stopping Forky from throwing himself in the trash. Logan\u2019s lot is even more depressing: At his best, he\u2019s fighting to get his adopted daughter Laura to safety; at his worst, he\u2019s just waiting for Xavier to die. <\/span><\/p>\n But there\u2019s another subtle similarity between Woody and Logan: They\u2019re both essentially immortal. What\u2019s the lifespan of a toy? Woody\u2019s been a child\u2019s accessory since the \u201clate fifties,\u201d and as long as he avoids any more gigantic incinerators he\u2019ll be fine, probably forever. Meanwhile, Logan\u2019s healing has kept him going for about two centuries, so perhaps it\u2019s no surprise that he\u2019s ready to pass on by the 2029 of his self-titled movie. <\/span><\/p>\n Still, by the end of Logan<\/i> and Toy Story 4<\/i>, both protagonists pivot to prioritizing their own wants. Logan lets go, dying so that Laura can live. Woody becomes his own toy, embracing Bo Peep\u2019s liberated lifestyle. In fact, Woody\u2019s closer to being a \u201ctrue\u201d cowboy than ever before (rather than just the image of one), his partnership with Bo signaling a progressive update to the gunslinger fantasy. Logan<\/i> too owes an enormous debt to the Western, even citing the legendary Shane<\/i>. Mangold uses the latter to sum up the dramatic thesis of the former: \u201cThere\u2019s no going back.\u201d Or, as Toy Story 4<\/i> puts it (straight out of the mouth of Keanu Reeves\u2019 Duke Caboom), \u201cBe who you are, right now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Contrary to what studio executives might want, franchises can\u2019t run forever. If you deliver satisfying closure \u2013 as Toy Story 3<\/i> certainly did \u2013 your sequel must then acknowledge its own obsolescence. In a rapidly changing world, static fictional universes \u2013 in which the roles the characters play is fixed \u2013 simply ring false. In other words, even a few years ago we didn\u2019t need another X-Men movie. That\u2019s Logan<\/i>\u2019s whole point. <\/span><\/p>\n Plus, once a franchise has acknowledged its obsolescence, it\u2019s also taught its audience to reject a rehash. Say what you will about Toy Story 4<\/i>, but its anxieties are far removed from the \u201cwhat happens when kid grows up?\u201d worries that dominated the series\u2019 middle entries. The ultra-violence of Logan<\/i> was a bit much \u2013 but at least we didn\u2019t have to suffer through another scene of Magneto and Professor X mumbling \u201cold friend\u201d to each other across a chess board. <\/span><\/p>\n Sometime in the next few years we\u2019ll see a recasting of Wolverine so he can join the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Disney\u2019s marketing department will spin into a \u201creset\u201d of sorts. Who knows, we might even see a Toy Story 5<\/i> sometime in the next decade. But I highly doubt that which comes next will reach the heights of these recent self-aware sequels that force their pseudo-cowboys to examine the end of the line, and eventually, cross. Usually, a lack of necessity is a curse. Instead, Logan<\/i> and Toy Story 4<\/i> convert their obsolescence into a goldmine. We didn\u2019t need another X-Men movie. Ever since the raucous pastiche of the original Deadpool and the bloated, redundant X-Men: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":569,"featured_media":12075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1400],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-on-the-marquee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/569"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
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