Paul Klein

Logan, the final go around for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was released this year, and if you haven’t caught it yet, you’re missing out. But, before you do, we at No Majesty wanted to remind you why the character has graced our screens for 17 years. Let’s snikt away.

10 – CAGE FIGHT INTRODUCTION

X-Men (2000)

The first introduction to the adamantium-clad badass; Jackman is great with his overly done hair as he prepares to take on another cage fight. He can go rounds without getting injured and just when we think this guy is a total boss, his fist connects with another for a metallic clang. Anna Paquin’s Rogue and the audience gasp, realising he’s clearly no ordinary man. The scene is a simple one, showing the brutality of Logan, and the world in which mutants are pitted against each other for sport. Plus, we get the immortal line: “anything goes but don’t kick him in the balls, he’ll take it personally”.

9 – “I’LL TAKE MY CHANCES WITH THEM”

X2 (2003)

Most of the drama of X2, the superior X-Men movie is about what is going to happen with dear old Logan. He searches for his identity and finds nothing, but when government agent and former Vietnam vet Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) shows up, his past comes back to haunt him. While other scenes show more concrete that he’s a good guy, it’s the choice Logan makes at the end which is the most significant, finding out who he truly is by choosing whether to save Stryker or walk off to the X-Jet with a little mutant boy in his arms. He delivers this line, and with that becomes one of the X-Men’s most vital members.

Read more: Check out our review of Logan

8 – “I LOVE YOU”

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

By no means the best X-Men film, but not the worst of them, this so-so third entry saw the departure of director Bryan Singer for Brett Ratner. While the first film was about Rogue, and the second around Logan, the third is about Jean Grey. Despite a fairly flat and boring love story, the climax of the film in which a resurrected and out of control Jean channels the Phoenix force to reduce everything to nothing is epic and grand. Given she has already turned her actual boyfriend Cyclops into dust, along with Professor X, Wolverine’s attempt to get to her to stop her is moving enough but his tearful declaration of love, despite knowing it would never be reciprocated cuts deeper. With his statement of love, and his flesh pealing away, Logan stabs Jean, freeing her from the Phoenix force and saving mankind.

Check out the year ahead in film: What to watch in 2017

7 – “GO FUCK YOURSELF”

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Matthew Vaughn’s James Bond with super powers prequel got a lot of things right, and it also bungled a lot of things, but a quick montage of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) recruiting mutants for their government team has to be the stand out. They go to a bar, and introduce themselves to a grouchy cigar chomping Logan, who quickly tells them where they can go, to which they leave. Simple, but so-so funny.

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6 – NAGASAKI

The Wolverine (2013)

While not the perfect solo Wolverine movie we hoped for, this very good solo outing starts with a brilliant flashback. At the backside end of the second world war we’re introduced to several Japanese soldiers in a POW camp, just then a plane goes overhead and drops a bomb. As the mushroom cloud flattens most of Nagasaki, two of the guards take to their knees to end their life by their sword with honour. The third, a young man we’d come to know as Yashida decides he’s in no mood to die, and runs away only for Logan to tell he to jump into a prison hole. Logan uses a piece of metal to protect them, and the blast burns Logan until he looks like Darth Vader. He then heals before an awestruck Yashida, and the two climb out of the hole. Yashida offers him his sword, but Logan refuses, telling him to look after it for him, and that one day he will return for it. A perfect way to introduce a film that is all about a lone wolf finding something to belong to, and a great way to show that there is more to Logan than just X-Men.

5 – THE RAID ON THE MANSION

X2 (2003)

If Bryan Singer wasn’t that confident when it came to action in the first outing, he didn’t show it in the second with his central action sequence being a large scale raid on Xavier’s Mansion. Stryker has played the game perfectly, Scott and Xavier are paying a visit to Magneto, whilst Storm and Jean are out looking for Nightcrawler. The only adult at the mansion is Logan, who chats awkwardly with Bobby Drake a.k.a Iceman, Logan being overly protective of Rogue when all hell breaks loose. Stryker’s men raid the mansion shooting darts into the kids, and it’s up to Logan, with a little help from Ice-Man, Rogue, Pyro and Colossus to round up as many kids as they can and evacuate. Logan kills as many guards as he can until he comes face to face with Stryker, setting the stage for an epic confrontation later in the film.

4 – MEETING BOBBY’S PARENTS

X2 (2003)

X-Men is never better than when pulling a thinly veiled metaphor for homosexuality. Parallels with struggles of the LGTBQ community have always been an element of the X-Men writing, so when Logan, along with Ice Man, Rogue and Pyro end up at Iceman’s home only to be greeted by Bobby’s parents, it’s time for some old school awkward comedy. Ian McKellen apparently coached them on how to make it seem like a gay coming out scene (“have you tried not being a mutant?”). What makes the scene even better is when Logan pipes up to defend them, and is asked what he is a teacher of. Deadpan, he remarks “Art”. Classic.









3 – WOLVERINE VS STRYKER’S MEN

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

I think we can all agree the latest X-movie was poor by any person’s standards, but the sequence in which Logan emerges from a chamber in the damn-based military base to find himself in shorts and with some funky head gear is a rare moment of quality. Naturally he’s a little annoyed by all of this and decides to slice the crap out of everyone who isn’t an 80s mallrat. He pretty much kills half an army without stopping to ask what is going on, and it’s a glorious little moment in a film that’s a little lame.

2 – A BETTER FUTURE

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

After all the time travel madness of the movie, and basically righting the wrongs of everything that came before there is something beautiful about Logan’s dumbstruck walk through a full and happy X-Mansion. He’s greeted by Beast, he sees Bobby and Rogue being intimate, Kitty and Colossus are teaching, Storm is there, and then he walks into the Professor’s office, and sees Jean. The build up of everything is enough to make anyone well up, but then Scott’s rebuffing of Logan, breaks the emotion wonderfully, with Logan saying it’s good to see him. The Professor makes a quip about him being late for a class, and when Logan asks for some history, the look of pure joy on Charles’ face brings home their friendship.

1 – FUNERAL FIGHT

The Wolverine (2013)

De-powering Wolverine is a pretty lame plot device but when a black suit clad Logan at a funeral finds himself without his healing powers, takes on the Yakuza at the funeral of his one time Nagasaki pal, it becomes one of the coolest scenes to involve the clawed Canadian. It’s a wonderfully cool moment involving gangsters, one vicious guy, very little CGI, and the juxtaposition of the Japanese cultures against the brutality of Logan makes it a moment worth seeing the film for.