‘Logan’ Promises Something Unheard of in Superhero Movies — Closure

By going into the future, it looks like Logan is finally giving Wolverine the big screen adaptation the character deserves.

The new trailer, which debuted Thursday after weeks of teasing, sells the movie as a simple, western tale. Logan rides into town, reconnects with his old mentor and reluctantly must save a child whose powers make her a target, just like he was years earlier at the hands of Weapon X. There’s no cities being destroyed or Easter Eggs setting up an extended universe.

If Logan delivers on the promise of this trailer, it will be a true rarity in modern superhero movie making.  

With his final film as Wolverine, Hugh Jackman will leave behind perhaps the greatest legacy of any superhero actor ever. Christopher Reeve launched it all with Superman, Heath Ledger gave the best comic book movie performance of all time as the Joker, and Robert Downey Jr. turned Iron Man into the centerpiece of an unprecedented cinematic universe. But Jackman may top them all. After starring in four X-Men films (and cameos in two more) and three Wolverine spinoffs, he will have spent a 17 years with the character — carefully building an emotional bond with the audience through the good and the bad. 

My absolute favorite shots of the trailer shows Logan, Charles (Patrick Stewart) and their young charge smiling around a dinner table. The X-Men films have been at their best when they are about family, and even in these bleak times, these lost heroes have found it again. The expression on Charles’ face says so much — and the trailer is a reminder of how much Stewart has given to the sci-fi and comic book movie genres. It’s not only those years of playing Charles — but also the years of playing Jean Luc-Picard — that he’s bringing to that dinner table. 

There’s also a true sense of sadness hinted in this tale. Mutantkind is basically extinct and our heroes are weakened. Logan’s healing factor isn’t what it used to be and Xavier — once the most powerful being on the planet — is bedridden, living inside an abandoned smelting tower.

There is no saving the world here. No matter how bad things get in the Marvel or DC film universes… well, there’s always the next movie to fix things, isn’t there? Not this time. It really seems like there’s nothing our heroes can do to fix the screwed up world, other than to do right by a young girl (Dafne Keen), who is modeled off the comic fan favorite X-23, billed as the “female Wolverine.” She’s got claws and healing powers that put her in the cross hairs of Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), an anti-mutant fanatic who either wants to kill her or experiment on her. Saving her will be the last deed of two men who have saved the world multiple times throughout their careers. 

For the X-Men franchise (which still has plenty of projects in the pipeline without Jackman), it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. (As Jackman noted at San Diego Comic-Con in 2015, the fans have always let them know when things haven’t gone well.) And trailers can be deceiving, but so far it looks like Jackman’s Wolverine is in very good hands for his final big screen adventure. 

Logan hits theaters March 3, 2017. 

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Oct. 20, 10:20 p.m. A previous version of this story misidentified the actress who is featured in the trailer. THR regrets the error.