Logan Analysis

Mostly the sections I listed earlier but haven't covered here yet are The Western and the Eastern, which is about the influence of Western films and the Samurai concept, and Born of Torture, about how trauma formed him into who and what he is. I'm not sure either one needs its own section. I certainly don't want to spend a great deal of time writing about trauma. I think it might work best to just include both in the introduction in a paragraph or even just a sentence or two. Or whatever is required.

I also think I've reached a point where it needs some dwell time. Let it marinate for a few weeks or months, then maybe watch the movie again and see if anything new presents itself. After you've discovered a lot of the ideas lurking beneath the surface and written about them, you can often find new connections and deeper ideas you didn't spot before. It's a kind of see-sawing back and forth to find those smaller details, or ones you hadn't noticed before. And also your ideas are merging and growing in your mind. After taking a little time away when you get back into it you'll often find new ideas popping out and begging to be followed up on.

Now I'm wondering exactly what Claremont meant by making Wolverine a 'failed Samurai.' Failed in what way? Because he can't control the inner beast when it takes over? I assume that's it. A Samurai has perfect control even when the sword is unsheathed. He's a "Masterless Ronin" (as stated by the Silver Samurai in The Wolverine) because he was built to be nothing more than a controlled weapon of the state (which is what a Samurai was) but he retained his humanity (I assume the healing factor kept healing it). His swords are built-in and emerge of their own volition when the killer beast is awakened in him. They're symbolic of his Wolverine personality, and so is the way he looks after being horribly mangled, like when he gets badly burned or loses lots of flesh and takes on the appearance of (as I said earlier) a fiend from beyond the grave. It's the true inner nature of his wild beast personality taking visible form—the Cronenberg thing again. Inner states manifesting physically in the flesh. It makes him look demonic. It's actually brilliant that he looks like that briefly and then takes on the appearance of a man again, like flashes of the hidden inner truth emerging momentarily—the monster born of torture and shaped by some evil government agency.

There may well have been advance publicity for Jaws, mentioning the unstoppable killing machine that must always move forward, leading with that mouth. I'd say there definitely was. And Bruce is back out in the lead now. But I could be missing something even before any of these.

Oh Shit!
Jaws came out in '75—Wolverine and the Exterminators were already things. Were the unstoppable killers birthed in the comic books? But then, there was a book for Jaws, published in... 1974. Crap! What MONTH?!! (lol—shades of Kyle Reese asking the cop "what YEAR??!!")

And now I'm stunned by how fast Spielberg made the movie.

I keep looking back at the Monster Predecessors post, where I broke down some of the ancient meanings for the sun and the moon. I seem to want to write more about that. So here goes.

They're like the Yin and Yang symbols—opposites, with the sun being seen as masculine and the moon feminine. The Yin/Yang duality contains many pairs of opposites, and they do seem to reflect the conscious and unconscious minds (I believe many of the ancient paradoxes and metaphors, especially the dualistic ones, do the same).

The sun is Gold, the moon Silver. The sun and gold both represent the eternal (gold is the only metal that doesn't corrode or rust in any way—bury it and dig it up in a century and it's as good as new). The sun is a symbol for God or a sun god, and the moon has its moon goddesses, who preside over the more feminine, interior, feeling-related things, whereas the sun seems to be objective. It sheds brilliant clear light, like the light of pure reason or public scrutiny, on everything, but the moon allows mystery. And is subjective. And private. The sun is awake-time, the moon sleep-time and dream.

I've also linked the Yin/Yang duality to the poetic (Yin, the feminine, etc) and the prosaic (Yang, the masculine, etc). The unconscious makes connections, even if they're not scientifically provable or objective. They're poetic and artistic.

And because I keep calling it a duality it collides with these superhero characters, who I've said have a dual self. Two characters sharing one body/mind. And I think in most cases, or at least with Daredevil and Wolverine, the human self is the daylight, socially-acceptable, more objective one, and the other is the lunar, poetic, dark, shadow side. I think I've already said this. Or some of it. Maybe I added a little.

Am I just restating things I've already said? I can't tell. Am I just weirdly obsessed with all this and really it's stupid? Or am I really finding what feels like profound depth and meaning in it, maybe a little at a time, and with a lot of writing about the same ideas, but adding a little each time, or making new connections? It's discovery writing, which means trusting intuition, the inner gods, the muses, the poetic imagination. I feel like I'm being stretched in unfamiliar ways now (or maybe familiar ways but farther than I'm used to). Maybe it's just too late and I need sleep. Maybe I drank a bit too much (it was my friend's birthday today, and he was happier than I've seen him in years that I came over with a gift and Taco Bell).

As for The Rogue Cut, I'm glad I've seen it now, it's interesting, but I see why the scenes were cut. They were very lackluster and didn't really add anything. Her whole performance was blah, like she was drugged. I guess she was supposed to be still suffering the effects of anesthesia or something? But the result is it feels like a totally phoned-in performance, as does everything else about the new scenes. Poorly executed, shot, directed, like they were all done by 2nd unit on a low budget and in a big hurry. I did like the parts with Sentinels attacking inside the X mansion, but otherwise I don't care for the added material.

One more. This is Chris Claremont, who wrote Days of Future Past for the comic book, playing a congressman in the movie:

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Another fun easter egg in Days is when they're on the private jet and Magneto claims he didn't kill JFK. Charles says "The bullet curved." And Magneto says it's because he was trying to save the president. This has nothing to do with a Wolverine or Logan thread, it's just fun.

James Mcavoy is playing Charles here. He was in the movie Wanted with Angelina Jolie. They were assassins who used a special technique for making a bullet curve. I cracked up hearing him talk about it here. Just another little tongue-in-cheek reference.

The filmmakers are definitely aware of the similarities between Wolverine and the Terminator. There are two easter eggs in Days of Future Past (the movie where Logan travels back in time to change the future—exactly what the T-800 was doing). First, when he shows up in the past (in the waterbed) he's naked* and ripped far beyond what he's ever been before (not to Arnold levels though), and in that scene he mentions being a traveller from the future. And later, when they're visiting Quicksilver to get him to break Magneto out of the Pentagon they tell him they're mutants just like he is, and he asks how he knows it's true. Charles looks at Logan and says "Show him," and Logan pops the bone claws. It's in imitation of the scene in T2 where Arnold peels the flesh off his forearm to prove he's a robot from the future.

Also, both movies have a segment near the beginning showing the future war-world, and it's incredibly intense and desolate in both, as if mankind has lost everything already. This is too much to be coincidence. I don't think it's any more than a playful connection though. They must have realized they're doing a movie where Wolverine does exactly what Arnold did in the Terminator. Of course in this instance Logan doesn't have the metal endoskeleton, but it's something he's known for and does have in the future world.

I thought about this because Popcorn in Bed just posted their reaction video to Days (the Rogue Cut). I noticed these connections to the Terminator long ago, but seeing scenes tonight reminded me. And I just bought the Rogue Cut on Prime video. I had never seen it, and the unfamiliar scenes intrigued me. I'm watching it now. Days is my favorite X-Men movie (I seem to be in good company there), but I don't think there's enough there to warrant an analysis.

I'll tell you what though—doing these analyses is really making me appreciate the superhero movies (the really good ones anyway) way more than I used to. It turns out there's a lot more depth and humanity in some of them than I even credited them with. And I'm a person who likes a lot of them and defends them.

* I just realized both movies also feature a booty shot of the naked time traveler character. Yeah, way too much to be a coincidence.

I need to amend some of what I said in the last post. I accused monster movies of being completely shallow and materialistic, and that just isn't true, Some of them seem well aware of the full depth of meaning in the ancient ideas, and use them well. It's too easy when you're comparing two things and writing fast to fall into "This good, so that bad." I'll fix that for the final piece.

Monster Predecessors
Among those Hammer Horror monsters there are several that stand out as contributing to Wolverine. First I'll mention the Frankenstein monster, which was the brain of a murderer in a nearly indestructible body designed to be stronger and more agile than the mere human. He's more of a predecessor to the Exterminators though, and the Terminator through them. Sort of a side avenue to Wolvie.

But Wolverine does share certain commonalities with both vampires and werewolves. The werewolf connection is pretty obvious—they're human beings who turn into a wild beast and kill. In their case it isn't when they get angry, but when the moon is full. Let me break that down real quick though, it doesn't mean what it's been taken to mean in the movies, at least not entirely. These are ancient legends, and as such they have a lot more depth to them than the completely materialistic versions cranked out by movie studios of the twentieth century. Keep in mind Apollo was a sun god, and Dionysus was his opposite, a god of music and wine, the dark of the moon, and drunkenness. But they weren't just taken materialistically (this applies across the board to all ancient concepts)—there was some deep meaning behind it all. Today we think of the sun as a star and the moon as a small satellite of the Earth, which indeed describes them at their simplest scientific level. But at a human (or poetic) level they mean much more than that.

The sun is daylight. It's associated with all that's true and good and straight and socially acceptable. The moon is that other light, the smaller, dimmer one, that hides secrets and cloaks people's motives and actions in darkness. It's also associated with mental illness (lunatics, or loonies as they're called, from the root word for Lunar). Looked at from a Jungian perspective (and he gives us the best perspective on so many things)

they stand in for the conscious and unconscious minds. ​

It may be more complex and subtle than that, in fact I'm sure it is, but I don't want to try to figure it out in detail right now. Let's just say it breaks down roughly to conscious and unconscious. As so many ideas from the ancient world do, that they painted in such powerful and evocative symbolism. And that we discard contemptuously today, as if they were trying to do purely practical science and just were too dumb to figure things out. No, they thought largely through the unconscious mind, since the conscious one hadn't been developed extensively yet through things like the scientific method. The unconscious works through symbol and metaphor, in dreamlike fashion, and like dreams, its products can be analyzed and reveal incredible levels of meaning that a shallow surface reading misses (the kind of reading scientists and modern 'thinkers' and others trapped entirely in limited conscious thinking give it). Just as when it's done well, art is made largely from the unconscious to be understood symbolically by the unconscious of the viewers or readers. Substitute subconscious if you want, they mean the same thing.

Basically the moon is the ruler of the dark side of the human being—the Shadow side. It cloaks secret lovers and murder attempts, indiscreet visits and all manner of things people wouldn't want revealed in the brilliant and merciless light of full day. It's a metaphor for secrecy and inner darkness. For the Shadow mainly. Werewolves and Vampires live by it, and die by the scathing brilliance of the sun. I know, werewolves don't die in sunlight, but they also don't live in it, they revert to their human form. And in their case it needs to be the full moon, which I take to mean maximum lunacy or Shadow activity. I use a lot of metaphors and colorful symbolism that work well when taken in with some mindfulness toward subconscious symbolism, but that sound stupid if taken purely literally. Like everything written by the ancients. Wow, I had no idea I was going to go into so much depth about this. But I like it.

As for vampires—Logan lives a sort of half-life, in the margins between life and death (symbolically), due to his PTSD and depression and anger issues. He can't keep a girlfriend, and terrible things tend to happen to them as well as anybody he's close to. Also like a vampire, he can spread his sickness to those he infects. I guess I'm thinking about Laura, who is so much like him, and probably destined to live a similar half-life. She's literally the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood. But in the larger scheme of things, Logan represents (among other things) veterans scarred by PTSD, and they can spread misery and woe to those close to them. Not meaning to of course, but misery and depression have a way of doing that.

Another predecessor is the shark in Jaws, the first unstoppable killer I can think of, outside of supernatural monsters in the old Hammer movies and folklore. Those are certainly a wellspring of inspiration, and i'll go into them in a bit. But the way I see it, that shark was the spiritual godfather of all the unstoppable killers in the slasher movies of the seventies and eighties, as well as the Xenomorph ("the perfect organism") in Alien. Bruce was a big idea, and it caught on in a flash. And the Terminator and Wolverine owe their existence to it.

Adding Some Depth and Complexity
Of all of these though, Wolverine stands out as more complex and deeper than the rest because he's fully human. I mean he's a person, not a mindless soulless monster or robot. And, at least after the idea had been refined by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller on a long road trip, he got split into two beings sharing the same body—the human Logan and the savage unstoppable berserker beast known as Wolverine. Apparently at first he was a very shallow character—little more than a murderous psychopath ready to shred anybody, including his own allies, at the drop of a hat. Claremont and Miller, Marvel's two best writers, were tasked with creating a miniseries or a short arc featuring him, but neither one really wanted to, because he was such a paper-thin character. Until Claremont introduced the idea to make him a failed Samurai of sorts. He saw the Samurai as the human pinnacle of absolute control and grace—living weapons but under strict control when the sword is sheathed—and he wanted to use this as the polar opposite of Wolverine's beast mode self. This is what gave him the complex, fascinating dynamic that made him Marvel's most popular character, the dual-self character structure that he shares with many of the best superheroes.

The brilliance of Healing Factor + Adamantium Bones
I was just struck by this. The people who created the Wolverine character put a lot of thought into it. He isn't invulnerable, as some of the most powerful superheroes are (Superman, Luke Cage, Captain Marvel). Instead he gets wounded, sometimes severely so, and heals very rapidly. It's a whole different dynamic, and involves pain, which makes him feel a lot more human and relatable. But of course, if he were to be chopped into pieces he probably couldn't heal from that (or would each piece grow back into a new Wolverine?—probably only the main piece, which would include the head I assume. In the same way a lizard can regrow a tail, but a severed tail doesn't grow a new lizard). So they also gave him an indestructible skeleton, to prevent his pieces from getting separated, as well as preventing him from being crushed to death.

Spiritual Predecessors
This whole concept—not being invulnerable, feeling the pain but healing rapidly, no matter how bad the injury—is something I hadn't seen before. The closest relative I can think of is the Terminator, which came out shortly afterwards. And it isn't clear whether the Terminator feels the pain or not. He isn't really human at all, which makes it a very different thing, though they do share a lot in common. Several times you see the Terminator get knocked down for a moment before getting up and coming after his prey again. Though he doesn't heal rapidly. If his flesh is damaged I assume it will heal at a normal rate (if it's able to, otherwise it rots). When he goes down momentarily after a shotgun blast or some other big shock it seems more like a machine thing, like he needs to reboot or something.

But they share more in common that that. They both have essentially a metal endoskeleton.

An indestructible core with human flesh over it,​

and even if all the flesh gets stripped away, they can still keep coming at you. Though I suppose in Wolverine's case he needs to still have some muscles or he wouldn't be able to move. So if those are destroyed he'd have to wait for them to grow back. And he'll grow his body back right before your eyes, which must be terrifying for his victims. At times he looks like a fiend from beyond the grave, with all his skin burned off or much of his flesh missing. A nightmare monster.

I won't speculate on whether Wolverine served as inspiration for Cameron's creation, it could very well have been similar ideas arising at nearly the same time in different places, It's been known to happen many times before. Or maybe he saw a comic book and the seed was planted, who knows?

This line of thought lead me to start thinking about possible predecessors. I had already done that to an extent for the Terminator and came up with a few very interesting things that I'll include here, because the ideas are closely tied together.

Exterminator One, painted by Ken Kelly
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Most people won't know about this one, but as a comic book geek I was aware of a killer robot called the Exterminator One, which came out in Eerie magazine in September of 1974 (Wolverine appeared in Oct 1974 and the Terminator in 1984). It didn't have human flesh around it, but it was an indestructible robot with the brain of a murderer inside the head, so a different combination of human with robot. Inside-out compared to the Terminator—a crunchy robot shell with a soft chewey human center. In this case the human mind existing inside a completely impervious body and carrying an armament of military weaponry, sent by some government agency or something on kill missions. It was so popular they later came up with a new model with treads instead of legs.

Exterminator One and Two, Ken Kelly again​

I think one thing I did here that was smart though was to start with a general introduction, where I didn't try to separate topics but let them all bleed into each other. That feels like a really good strategy, and then you start listing topics and going into detail on each of them separately (to what extent that's possible).

I should have paid more attention to the order in which I covered these topics. It feels like it's done now, because I covered the end of the movie, but I still have several topics to deal with, including what made him what he is (which is a big one and probably should have come first). Ah, the problems of doing an analysis entry by entry in a format like this! Well, I'll go ahead and do those other topics, and fill in any additional things I might have missed. Then it will be a matter of re-arranging things for the final format as well as refining the often crappy way I worded things here. And adding more pictures (which I was planning to do here, but it takes a lot of work).

If I was smart I would have followed the order I listed the topics in previously, on the Superhero Mega-Thread. Oh well...