What happens when your favourite comic book hero dies in front of you on the big screen? You want to cry like a kid holding your mother. But neither is your mother watching the film with you nor you are a kid. But more importantly, one thing this revered hero of yours has taught you all your life is to never express your emotions explicitly and you don’t wish to dishonour him.
So, when Logan died, I didn’t cry but something inside me died too…the fact that Hugh Jackman will never play Wolverine marked an end of one of the most cherished ‘something’ of my life. I am sure there will be many more movies made on X-Men and many characters will play the flawed character with the claw, but there won’t be Hugh Jackman. And Hugh will also go on to play some of the finest characters of his life but he won’t be Wolverine. Arguably, it was the best actor-character combination I have ever seen. To see them one from the other is almost impossible.
X-Men had such fine characters to choose from with great powers and a fine sense of right and wrong. But Wolverine who stands nowhere in front of the powers of Professor X, Jean Grey or Magneto, brought the fanboy out of me. Seeing his devil may care attitude, his bike, his leather jacket, his perpetually annoyed self yet having a sense of humour, his love for cuss words, cigar and booze…and I had an idol in front of me. The characters that have a great love for all good things but don’t hesitate in killing the bad guys have always been my favourite. I guess for the same reason, the mortal Batman remains one of my most loved characters in the world of Godly superheroes. But what connects them all and my love for them, is also their tales of unrequited love. When the most dashing guys don’t get the girls, you can forgive yourself for not having done greatly in that department. Also, their flaws, make them more relatable.
Coming back to the Wolverine – As he was laid to rest, I hoped against hope that the claws will come out but they didn’t. And I felt those stupid days of taking my mother’s knitting tools and showing them off as my claws, or being so famous for your love this character that in college that your friends called you Logan and your best friend Victor, or putting his images as profile pics on social media, also getting buried. So to review Logan, the movie, is out of the question. When a favourite chapter is about to end and you don’t judge it. You just savour every word. And that’s what I did.
The character is a great lesson if his life is read little deeply – All wounds heal, some of them just take a little longer. Sometimes, you got to kill what you love the most for the larger good. It’s fine to be all by yourself. The past can haunt you but you will figure out to live with it. Sometimes we so eagerly wait for death that we forget to live.
All wounds heal, some of them just take a little longer
Thanks, for the lessons. Goodbye, bad boy. James ‘Logan’ Howlett. Weapon X. Wolverine. The Professor of “Arts”.
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