A Logan drinking game: take a shot every time Wolverine shouts “fuck!”, or blood sprays after someone’s head is impaled by adamantium claws. Or if you’re Logan, finish off the whole bottle. Pop open a new one. Take a long, deep swig to ease the pain. It’s all allowed now, since Logan is the first X-Men outing to be rated R (not counting the Deadpool movies). And honestly, thank God for that- the movie has a refreshing groundedness that is (understandably) sometimes missing from a franchise defined by visually dramatic superpowers like weather witches, human magnets, speedsters so fast they seem to stop time. Instead, Logan is a viscerally real, heartrendingly raw examination of the consequences of heroism and trauma. It’s intensely intimate and personal, at times more character study than action film. These are words you might’ve never thought you’d hear describe a X-Man film, but Logan is a definite outlier in the franchise: it’s truly unlike anything else in the X-Men oeuvre, and it benefits significantly for being different. 

Wolverine (also known as Logan, or his birth name James Howlett) has always been a character with a dark edge to him, and the movie viscerally explores that darkness, exposing the consequences of his attempts to deal with years of trauma, bad coping mechanisms, and indestructible adamantium bones poisoning his body. Well, “attempts to deal with” is a vague term, if constant drinking, yelling angrily at people, smashing things, and carrying an adamantium bullet to maybe one day blow his own brains out counts. In Logan, Logan is as far from his superhero identity as possible: he chauffeurs while taking care of an aging Charles Xavier/Professor X (a tender Patrick Stewart) with the help of Caliban (Stephen Merchant), who’s getting increasingly frustrated with trying to help a man who doesn’t want to be helped. After Logan’s approached by the desperate nurse Gabriela Lopez (Elizabeth Rodriguez), he’s (somewhat unwillingly) dragged into one final mission: protect the nine-year-old mutant Laura (a fierce and uncompromising Dafne Keen) on a journey to the Canadian border, where she’ll be safe from the Reavers, a group of men lead by the villainous Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook).

Logan is a coarse, weathered, broken man; he’s still capable of impaling people on his iconic claws, but he stumbles, he limps, he hacks up blood. (And it is so, so strange to see him get injured without healing). Professor X, now a self-proclaimed “nonagenarian,” suffers as his brain breaks down; he’s haunted by the consequences of his seizures- the loss of his school, the end of the X-Men- as they freeze and kill anyone in his vicinity. Logan is superheroes at their most vulnerable, at their most mentally fragile, at their most human, and the movie makes it gut-wrenchingly depressing to watch. It also helps that both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are utterly committed to their roles, imbuing their superpowered characters with a tragic tenderness that foregrounds the humanity at their core.

Fittingly, Logan’s the first X-Men movie since Days of Future Past to feature Wolverine: both films are set in end times- albeit of entirely different forms. Days of Future Past featured the bleak, lifeless end of humanity; it was a commentary on the power of fear and paranoia, the consequences of mistrust, and the end of both mutants and humanity through invincible Sentinels is overt and dramatic. Logan, on the other hand, is a personal apocalypse. It’s a search for purpose- a reason for living- in a world that feels as dusty and barren as the numerous deserts it’s shot in (the film at times seems more like an episode of Breaking Bad than a X-Men film).

Unsurprisingly, then, the movie’s a slow one- don’t expect many of the dramatic action sequences that are trademarks of the X-Men franchise. Logan is a meandering film; it’s also, at times, frustratingly vague. The film’s exploration of the necessity of finding purpose in life is subtle verging on undefined, which frankly seems to be a trademark of the film as a whole; the same can be said about the growth of the relationship between Logan and Laura, which is mostly slow, subtle, and unspoken. Regardless, I appreciate director James Mangold’s insistence on leaving things understated: in a genre where everything is exploded and exaggerated, a film that doesn’t feel overdone or overwhelming is a rare and welcome surprise.

At the end of the day, Logan is a fitting close to a beloved character. (This is, after all, Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine). Not to spoil, but if you’re the type who cries during movies- don’t forget tissues. You’ll need them- the fact that Logan is the last Hugh Jackman X-Man movie, and probably the last X-Man (or even superhero) movie of its breed, is enough to justify crying about.