'Logan' Proves That Superhero Movies Have Yet to Solve Their Villain Problem

*Spoilers Ahead*

Let's get one thing out of the way up front; I loved Logan. Easily the best superhero movie of the last few years, as it used its R-rating smartly to deliver what I consider to be the quintessential superhero experience. Its ability to tackle a familiar character in a new way without the restrictions of a PG-13 rating ensured that audiences would receive a genuine and authentic Wolverine-focused movie that wouldn't shy away from the hero's darker side. While 2015's Deadpool showed that adult audiences were ready to support an R-rated superhero film, its use of humor and being an easily accessible protagonist made it an easy sell to the masses. Logan doesn’t have that working in its favor, as Wolverine's character has a slightly more complicated history, as well as being a drama, which can be a hard sell for those on the fence about superhero movies. Fortunately, Logan proved that you could tell meaningful stories within the medium of superhero movies, and while I applaud it for this accomplishment, Logan shows that the medium still has to improve on core aspects of itself.

More specifically, superhero films are still primarily plagued by their lack of compelling antagonists for heroes to overcome. This problem is infuriating for many reasons. First, unless it's a film featuring an original superhero with no prior source material, smartly consult THE SOURCE MATERIAL! If we're talking about a Marvel or DC comics movie adaptation, there is close to 100 years of source material between the two companies. Source material that features some of the best characters and stories ever to be printed in the written word.

So, it is mind-boggling that the villains in Logan were not only chosen but just how bland and uninspired they come off. Now, I'm not suggesting that Logan should have included larger than life villains such as Apocalypse, The Juggernaut, or even Magneto, as part of what separates Logan from other superhero movies is just how grounded in reality it feels. Sure, at the end of the day it's still about a guy with claws who can shake off a bullet to the brain, but the lack of spandex and over the top CGI helps facilitate Logan's grounded tone. So, the decision to not have Logan duking it out with well known classic X-Men villains was a calculated and clever decision by Director James Mangold.

And despite his calculated decisions, Mangold followed in the flawed footsteps of countless other superhero movie directors who supplied the heroes of their films with underwhelming and frankly, lame, supervillains. There are three main villains in Logan, Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), Dr. Rice (Richard E. Grant), and X-24 (Hugh Jackman), X-24 being the most infuriating, so I will start by addressing this character.

My biggest pet peeve with superhero movies is when directors and writers get together and decide that it will be cool for the hero to fight a super villain that is almost identical to them. In Logan, X-24 is a carbon copy clone of Logan and thus has the same abilities. This not only shows a lack of creativity and originality but is tiresome and contrived to see countless directors still abiding by this trend. A trend that started long ago before Mangold, the first instance that immediately comes is 2015's Ant-Man, as Ant-Man squares off against super villain Yellow Jacket who, despite his altered suit, features powers essentially identical to Ant-Man. This trend was also present in 2011's The Incredible Hulk, where The Hulk fights Abomination, who is a carbon copy of him. Two brief examples, and while it isn’t a trend that appears in all superhero movies, it’s frequent enough that it's a pattern that I would like to see an end to.

Next is the villain Dr. Rice, who is the lead scientist of the Transigen program which aims to capture and control mutants. His character is fairly one-note in that he merely serves as a mad scientist who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. A typical character arc, but I had hopes that his prior connection to Wolverine — Wolverine killed Rice's father who was a scientist in the Weapon X program, which gave him his powers—would give his character some depth, but this is only ever mentioned once and then never revisited again. His character amounts to nothing more than a bland and uninspired, cliched vessel for Wolverine to direct his anger towards, and while he serves his purpose adequately in this regard, he is entirely forgettable outside of serving as that vessel.

And finally, we arrive at the final poorly fleshed out antagonist of Logan, Donald Pierce, Transigen's head of security and leader of The Reavers, the cyborg mercenaries who are hunting Wolverine. I'll admit I was intrigued by his character since the first trailer for Logan. Equipped with a robotic arm, slick undercut, and a throat tattoo that would make Jack Sparrow jealous, Donald seemed an ominous villain who I wanted to learn more about. And yet, just as those before him, he amounted to little more than another hired gun, whose only discernible differentiating characteristic from the other nameless Reavers is his southern twang. It's a shame considering more could’ve been done to flesh out his character, other than providing "cool, southern variant" to the Reavers. And this is my main problem with Logan: while the villains served their purpose to facilitate a succinct story that feels more concise and methodical in its construction more so than any other of X-Men films, they end up feeling like hollow shells of character who never leave an impressionable mark on the film.

Now that I’m done ripping on the film's villains, I must say that I am appreciative that Mangold took an approach to a superhero film similarly to how director Christopher Nolan went about with his Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan delivered classic Batman villains, but grounded them all in reality by making them more believable both aesthetically and by removing their “superness.” Sure, that’s a word. Mangold did something similar in selecting villains for Logan that were somewhat grounded; except X-24, the villains are cyborgs or humans, and not mutants. I applaud him for that because, given the current superhero movie landscape, where every new movie is looking to one-up the last one regarding special effects and scale, Logan never abides by this. None of its marketing promised massive set-piece battles or mutants hurling fireballs or ice beams at one another, something that no doubt separates it from the competition.

Now that I have made my criticisms of Logan's villains known, my solution to it would have been this: Sabertooth should have been the main villain. Preferably, Liev Schreiber would reprise his role as Wolverine's longtime nemesis, and what better than to see the two duke it out one last time. Before Logan's release, it was made public that this would be Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart's final foray as X-Men, as the pair has starred in X-Men films off and on for the better part of 17 years. Sabertooth would have been a terrific casting for a somewhat grounded supervillain, who superhero fans no doubt have some familiarity with, and more importantly, a character who has a deeply rooted relationship with Wolverine. Despite Wolverine and Sabertooth having similar abilities to one another — a pet peeve of mine as stated earlier — an analysis of their relation to one another would have made for a more an impactful subplot to the film than The Reavers and Dr. Rice provided.

I suppose some will cry foul at this villain casting choice: “but he’s a mutant! The Reavers would never work with him!” Historically Sabertooth has always flip-flopped between sides in the Brotherhood and X-Men conflicts, so it seems reasonable to me to assume that a character for whom loyalty is no an integral part of their character would aide any group in their goals if it meant allowing him to fight Wolverine one last time. As for Sabertooth’s backstory, even if audiences weren't familiar with it, it doesn't matter, as the amount of time required to explain this backstory would need the same amount of time dedicated to The Reavers and Dr. Rice's backstories. It’s a stretch, I know, but having a character that a majority of the audience would be familiar with, which in turn understanding the villain helps to understand better the hero, was a missed opportunity on Mangold's part.

I have been exceedingly critical of this one aspect of Logan, but it can’t be understated just how much I enjoyed it overall. It is unlike any other movie featuring Marvel characters and properties. Seeing the transformation and growth of Wolverine's character amount to more than “the guy with the claws” is a display of the true potential of the types of stories that are capable within the medium of superhero movies. I don’t think it’s grandstanding to say, “there can be more to superheroes than just capes and spandex.” Of course, the trend of big budget, larger than life superhero movies like The Avengers or Justice League aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but it's nice to know that films like Logan are possible and hopefully will continue.