A final glimpse into Wolverine's swansong

After a superbly off-track first trailer for superhero films last October, “Logan”, the final chapter of one of the most celebrated superheroes of the silver screen is back for a second and final trailer, and it sets the anticipation in motion. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine is bringing out his claws one final time, but he's found someone to pass the claws on. 

The trailer shows a lot of Laura Kinney (played by Dafne Keen), the barely-teenage mutant “very much like” Wolverine himself, and how an ageing Wolverine and the elderly Professor X are trying to keep her from being taken by a group called Reavers. The intense, almost visceral action pieces are intertwined with moments of sensitivity and connection rarely crafted as sincerely in movies of this genre. Kinney's power and intensity is exhilarating to watch, while the sense of parting begins to embark as Wolverine's end seems near. Professor X (played by the brilliant Patrick Stewart) is just the right support role, playing the bridge between Logan and Kinney to bond.

The film had been targeting an R-rating from the get-go, and it becomes more evident from the second trailer why that is the route the studio went. While “Deadpool” did big business on a rather small budget and a lot of it was attributed to its R-rating and the freedom it gave to the storytelling, “Logan” walks the complete opposite direction in terms of narrative tonality. And it will most likely prove as good a decision.

Last month, director James Mangold screened the first 42 minutes of the film for press, and gave opening remarks to introduce it. One of the focal points of that was that the movie aims to avoid superhero fatigue. “There's a slew of films, comic book-themed films, superhero movies, whatever you want to call them, and I for one am feeling kind of an exhaustion watching them, generally. So my concern making one was, not only I want to like what I make — that's a nice thing — but I also want to be excited by what I make,” said Mangold. “I wanted to make a film that was built on the drama first.”

And he seems to have certainly delivered that. “Logan”, that hits theatres March 3, promises to be a superhero movie that stands clear of all the superhero action hullaballoo around it (and there is a lot of that this year), and may even find some love from the critics.