Tear Jerker / Logan

"When it’s not showering you in blood, it’s trying to make you spill tears."

— Chris Nashawaty

This movie throws all the sad moments from the X-Men film series out the window.

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Film

• The title of the film is somewhat depressing. It's not a badass title like The Wolverine. It's just Logan, simple and bittersweet, which plays well into the End of an Era theme of the film.
  • He's so tired.
• Xavier is now suffering from some form of degenerative brain disease, with Logan and Caliban caring for him. To see the man who has been the heart and soul of the X-Men for years, the living symbol of hope and peace between humans and mutants, reduced to a old withered man is heartbreaking of itself. Doubly so if you know someone who suffers from dementia.
  • On top of that, the fact that he needs Logan to care for him implies that he no longer has his mansion or resources to care for himself. The iconic School for Gifted Youngsters is gone.
  • It gets worse once you see that when he has seizures, they generate lethal psychic waves, and that is what killed the X-Men.
  • Even worse is the scene after Xavier's seizure in the casino-hotel. As Xavier gets wheeled out, all he can muster is a pitiable yet heart-wrenching apology. Patrick Stewart really sounds so despondent in that moment.
    • Speaking of Patrick Stewart, fans of the man in general who had regarded him as a surrogate grandfather now have to face one of their worst fears: seeing a classy epitome of Cool Old Guy succumb to senility and fragility.
  • While spending the night at the Munsons', Xavier muses that it was the best night he's had in a long time, until he starts to remember that he was responsible for killing the X-Men, and begins to wonder if he even deserves any sort of happiness. And this is all right before he's killed by X-24.
  • Though Xavier's ramblings in his first scene are quite amusing, the Mood Whiplash when he sees Logan and delivers the Wham Line "Who are you?" can bring any viewer, regardless of having seen the other films, to tears.
    • When this happens, Logan pays little attention, and simply says "you know who I am, Charles". The sheer bluntness of Logan's voice suggests that this has happened so many times that Logan has simply gotten used to it.
  • This line from Charles to Logan:
    Charles: I always know who you are, it's just sometimes I don't recognize you.
  • And this exchange, following in short succession:
    Charles: I gave you a family.
    Logan: They're gone now.
    Charles: (unable to recall the Westchester incident) Logan...Logan... what did you do? What did you do?! Answer me! Why are we here?! No one should live like this, drugged in a fucking tank!
    Logan: It's for your own good.
    Charles: No, no! It's not! You're waiting for me to die!
  • Xavier's belief that mutants can control their powers and live peacefully alongside others has ultimately been proven wrong. Even Xavier, the strongest and most disciplined mutant, couldn't do it forever.
  • Charles Xavier swearing. Please, no.
• Logan's state in the movie is also heartbreaking. Not only is his healing factor breaking down, but his spirit is as well. It even extends to his claws as well, as in one scene, one of his claws doesn't pop out all the way, and he has to painfully pull it out with his other hand.
• Despite Logan changing the timeline in X-Men: Days of Future Past to save the mutants, most mutants still end up dying out in this new timeline, shortly after the events of the aforementioned film.
  • Logan has now lived through two different timelines in which his friends and most of mutantkind die. All that effort to stop that from happening only for it to happen again must weigh on him greatly.
    • If it helps a little, the creators realized this, and this film is officially designated in a third timeline branching off as a Bad Future of the ending of Days of Future Past, so the Apocalypse timeline isn't All for Nothing. This doesn't make it any less tragic for the context of this film though.
    • In the movies at least, Jean Grey has always been the love of Logan's life. He has now lost her a total of four times across the series, if one counts her "ghost" in The Wolverine. Having to kill her in X-Men: The Last Stand utterly destroyed him. To lose her again after that... it's no wonder Logan is as lost and broken as he is in this film.
  • On this note, when Logan opens one of Laura's comic books, what does he see on the first page? Him and Rogue, the first mutant he met in his time with the X-Men. A cover features Logan and Colossus doing their signature Fast Ball Special. Judging by how wistful he becomes in seeing them, even in comic book form, he misses his "family" very much.
    • In the scene where Laura finally speaks, Logan tries to tell her that everything in the books is made up. Between the coughing, you can hear Logan's voice cracking and pausing as he laments that the creators had turned everything he and the X-Men had done into a "big fucking lie." Logan is clearly heartbroken that this is how he and his friends will be remembered: as cartoon characters dressed up in "self-promoting leotards." Of course, he's overlooking the fact that regardless of the actual content or accuracy of the books, they inspire hope in people like Laura and the X-23 kids and give them heroes to look up to.
    Logan: Maybe a quarter of it happened, and not like this.
    • The deleted scene of Bobby asking Logan about Sabretooth twists the knife even further. He reveals to Logan that Laura has told the other kids what he said about the comics, and that it was all made up. You can hear the heartbreak in Bobby's voice if he asks whether that's true, and that everything they've believed in and has been holding them together all this time was all a lie. It crosses over into Heartwarming when Logan assures him that even if it didn't happen the way the books said, there was at least a grain of truth to the stories.
  • Logan throughout almost the entire film. He just looks and sounds so weary, tired, and defeated.
    • To add to that, watching Logan, the literally unstoppable Wolverine, now even struggling to so much as walk is incredibly heart-wrenching. Considering that it's only been a year since the Westchester incident and conditions like these take a while to get this bad (also applying Logan's healing factor), and it's fairly likely that he started deteriorating sometime after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Had things not gone awry, Logan could have received better treatment.
  • What may be the absolute worst thing about this world is The Reveal towards the end of the film. A company called Transigen figured out that there was a way to exterminate the mutant race without ever having to risk themselves becoming known: they found a way to produce a GMO strain of corn that contained a chemical which prevented X-gene positive embryos from coming to term, then infiltrated the food industry and began distributing it all over the world, snuffing out the mutant race quite literally in the cradle. So, in the end, Magneto was right: humans and mutants could NEVER coexist thanks to Fantastic Racism, and if the X-Men had not stopped Magneto or Apocalypse from wiping out humanity, then mutants would never have gone extinct. Xavier believed in humanity's goodness... and was proven wrong. And the entire mutant race paid for one man daring to be idealistic.
• Poor Caliban. In Apocalypse, we see his place lacks any openings that would allow in sunlight. In this movie, we see why: not only is he weakened by it, but he's also hurt by it. Every time he goes outside, he has to cover every inch of his skin.
• After all the trouble Logan went through to save mutants, whatever happened has broken him so much that when he finds out Laura is an X-Men fan, he bitterly tells her that life isn't like the stories, and that in the real world, people just die.
• X-24 killing the whole Munson family, which would not have happened if Charles hadn't insisted on staying overnight. A mortally wounded Will Munson ends up holding Logan responsible for this, and after he takes down X-24 with his car and headshots him, he tries to shoot Logan too before dying. And Logan just stands there and lets him take the shot, although he turns out to be out of ammo.
  • When Laura sees Charles's dead body, she absolutely loses it. In the short time she knew him, Laura came to care about Xavier just as much as Logan did.
  • After seeing X-24, Logan keeps looking at Laura and then back at Charles. Even though their relationship can be vitriolic at times, this alone shows that Logan cares about his daughter and his father figure... and to see them both in serious, very likely lethal danger terrifies him.
    Logan: (looks up) Charles! (looks back at Laura, then back up) Charles!!
• X-24 overall. Yes, it's a merciless killing machine, but the way Rice talks about it — detailing how it was easier to make something dedicated to rage wholesale rather than brainwashing someone like Logan — just makes it seem pitiful and its existence as a whole utterly miserable. This is Logan as the monster he often perceives himself as — berserker rage incarnate, no mercy and completely cold and vicious — and yet is something he's never fully succumbed to. X-24 is nothing but that monster. There's no chance for it to develop like he has, no great love for it to cling to, no family or friends that a Charles Xavier has sought to surround him with. X-24 is a successful Weapon X, and it's upsetting as a mirror for Logan and what he could have become, if those who took advantage of him had their way.
  • X-24 gets upset when he sees Rice dead. He's not a complete monster. Does that make it better or worse?
• Logan seeing a mortally wounded Charles and repeatedly saying it wasn't him who did it. Not to mention Charles' death and funeral, where Logan struggles to provide a eulogy for him. Even with Laura holding his hand to comfort him, Logan cannot even complete a sentence before he gives up, breaks down emotionally, and proceeds to vent his anger on his broken car.
  Logan: (trying not to cry) Well... It's got water, and... It's got water.
  • The funeral itself is also saddening. Unlike in X-Men: The Last Stand, where Charles' funeral was at the X-Mansion, surrounded by his beloved students and colleagues, this time he's buried in a pitiable grave on the banks of a small pond or lake by Logan, with only him and Laura there to mourn him. The leader of X-Men and the voice for better human and mutant relationships dies basically forgotten.
    Xavier: Our boat... the Sunseeker...
  • What makes Charles' dying words even more saddening is that he says them while seemingly hallucinating that he and Logan are finally on board the Sunseeker, when in reality, he's dying on the back of a pick up truck.
  • There is also another similarity to X-Men: The Last Stand. Once again, Xavier dies near Logan, with a smile on his face.
• Logan's death at the end of the film. The last shot of the film being his stone-covered grave, complete with the cross re-positioned into an X, only rubs further salt into the wound.
  Logan: So, this is what it feels like...
  • Laura's reaction^note  in that scene, those are Dafne Keen's real tears and last words to Logan upon his death.
    Laura: Daddy...
  • Don't be what they made you. A double tearjerker: Logan is wishing for Laura what any parent wishes for his child — that she'll live a better life than he did. And it's a callback to his own fate, a fate his daughter shared: being tested on and used as weapons and killers because of their mutations, instead of just living as people. He's wishing her something beyond that fate.
  • The music that plays during the scene. It's so low and simple as to be barely above ambiance, and filled with melancholy.
  • Laura's graveside eulogy, paraphrased from Shane, which she watched with Charles in the hotel room.
    Laura: A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can't break the mold. There's no living with a killing. There's no going back. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand that sticks. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her... everything's all right. There are no more guns in the valley.
  • It's even sadder when you consider that Logan and Charles were (possibly) the last of the natural-born mutants, and that the remnants of the original X-Men are now gone.
  • It also turns out that Yukio's prediction came true. "I see you on your back, there's blood everywhere. You're holding your own heart in your hand." Logan isn't literally holding his heart when he dies; he's holding Laura's hand.
  • And to twist the knife even further, the only Canadian X-Man (in the film continuity, at least) dies without reaching his homeland one last time.
  • Hell, you know a scene is sad when even Honest Trailers doesn't play it for laughs.
• Logan carries an adamantium bullet everywhere he goes (which is implied to be the same one that gave him amnesia in X-Men Origins: Wolverine since it was likely never fired in the new timeline). He carries it just in case he can't deal with living anymore and wants to end it all.
  • It appears that all that's keeping him from using it is his sense of duty to care for Charles (and, later, for Laura).
• In their last conversation before the climax, Logan refuses to accompany Laura and the X-23 kids the rest of the way across the border, insisting he only agreed to come as far as North Dakota. He then tries to rationalize it by telling her the people he cares about have a way of dying on him, the implication being that he's come to care about her, too, and doesn't want to see anything happen to her.
  Logan: I never asked for this! Alright? Charles never asked for this, Caliban never asked for this. And they are six feet under the ground! I don't know what Charles put in your head, but I am not whatever it is you think I am, okay? I only met you like a week ago. Now, you got your Rebecca, your Delilah, your Blah, Blah, Blah, whatever. Everything you asked for, you've got it! And it is better this way. Because I suck at this. Bad shit happens to people I care about. You understand me?
  • What makes it worse is that Laura coldly snarks at him that she'll be fine and walks off... only to drop the cold facade once out of his sight. We see how much of a child wanting to be loved she is, though it's brief.
• While Dr. Rice and his men are killed and the X-23 kids escape to a better life, Transigen have already wiped out the mutant gene, with seemingly no way of undoing it. Mutantkind may have won this battle, but they lost the war a long time ago.
• After Xavier's funeral, the scene where Logan beats up the broken-down truck was seen by many to be Mood Whiplash, but it's much less funny when you realize that this is Logan venting his rage for everything that's happened to him in these past few days (or even years). Fridge Horror sets in when you realize he left Laura at the grave, most likely blaming her for what happened to Charles, Caliban, and the Munson family, and was probably planning to ditch her there.
• Early in the film, Pierce sarcastically remarks that the carnage Logan left in the opening scene was thought to be by a tiger, only to point out that this couldn't be possible, given that tigers are now extinct. While it's only a casual, offhand mention as part the film's near-futuristic setting, it's a truly depressing reminder that mutants are not the only species being destroyed by human greed, and the extinction of tigers could very well become a reality in the near future.
• A minor one compared to everything else in this movie, but the slight Hope Spot for Laura and Gabriella when Logan finally agrees to the job... only for him to return to the apartment complex and find Gabriella brutally murdered. She demonstrated bravery and compassion even when Dr. Rice tried to convince her not to, and ultimately gave her life so that Laura would have a chance to survive. While Logan doesn't really have time to mourn her for a number of reasons, the brief look on his face says it all; one even gets the impression Logan blames himself for not being back in time to protect her.
  Gabriella: She is not my child, but I love her. You may not love her, but she is your child.
• Throughout much of the film, it's not clear how much Laura is really processing about what's going on around her beyond her immediate survival, because she spends most of the film silent, sometimes behaving more like an animal than a human being, and often like a child half her age. However translating her first Spanish rant at Logan reveals she's only been silent by choice. And more to the point, she was completely aware that on several occasions, Logan tried to leave her behind.

Trailers/Advertising

• The first trailer, with "Hurt" by Johnny Cash.
  • The last shot shows Logan with a shovel, implying that he's just buried someone. Whether it's Charles or some other character we know or love is uncertain, but the look on Logan's face indicates we'll be feeling the same as he is when we find out.
  • How about that same trailer but with footage from the previous movies, just to hammer the sense of finality in more?
  • This exchange.
  Charles: She’s like you —- very much like you.
  Logan: Someone will come along.
  Charles: Someone has come along.
• Xavier's speech about home and family in the second trailer.
• All of TV Spot #3, "Grace", between the footage and the melancholic use of "Amazing Grace."
  • Especially the second-to-last shot. The indestructible, immortal mutant we all knew is now bloodied, in severe pain, and reduced to crawling for movement.
• "Sunseeker", a short promotional video, is rife with a sense of finality and weariness courtesy of a haggard dialogue-less performance from Hugh Jackman.

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