TV tip: One of the best and most brutal Marvel films of all time – the Avengers, on the other hand, are children’s films!

Admittedly, in “Doctor Strange 2,” Scarlet Witch doesn’t exactly treat her opponents with prudishness, and there are also minor spikes in violence in the MCU from time to time. But what causes pure horror among the Avengers and Co. would just be a side note in “Logan – The Wolverine”. This Marvel film is the Death Valley of superhero films. Rough, merciless, deadly. Just like its title character. If you don’t know “Logan – The Wolverine” yet, you need to do so ASAP. After that, the next MCU movie will seem as innocent as a trip to Teletubbie Land.

You have the chance to do this today, December 26, 2023, when “Logan – The Wolverine” can be seen on ProSieben at 11:05 PM. If the appointment is too late in the evening for you, you can watch the film at any time in the fixed rate program of your Disney+ streaming subscription.

The FSK 16 title is of course also available as an option (4K/UltraHD) Blu-ray, DVD or paid video-on-demand from online retailers such as Amazon* to have.

That’s what “Logan – The Wolverine” is about

“Logan” takes place at the very end of the X-Men timeline, in the year 2029, when almost all mutants have already been exterminated. The healing powers of the 200-year-old title hero (Hugh Jackman), better known as Wolverine, slowly fade, causing the man with the adamantium claws to show signs of aging for the first time. He spends his last days as a driver, living in the bleak wasteland of the Mexican border with the seizure-ridden Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and another mutant named Caliban (Stephen Merchant).

One day, Logan meets a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen), who, like him, has extendable claws. Because she is a mutant, a violent mercenary group led by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) hunts her down. But Logan vows to get her to safety and smuggle her across the Canadian border…

The violence in ‘Logan’ is not gimmicky, but consistent

Gross films are not necessarily better and in many cases blood fountains etc. are only used for shock effect or even entertainment. But In ‘Logan’, all the suffering serves a very specific purpose: to make us feel the emotional world of the title hero.

This neo-Western Marvel thriller from director James Mangold (“Death Train to Yuma”) takes the special character of its protagonist seriously and consistently develops it. Wolverine’s claws and ability to regenerate don’t turn him into a brilliant superhero, but condemn him to a life of pain.

Because what’s so brilliant about this iconic Marvel hero: Every use of his adamantium blades causes him suffering. Although he recovers quickly, he feels his injuries just like any other person – but with one crucial difference: when he suffers wounds that would kill others, he gets back up and takes the next potentially fatal blow.

For about 200 years, Logan was shot, cut open, and beaten bloody countless times. To construct his adamantium skeleton, hot liquid metal was even flushed through his body. The result: Hellish torment that only a Wolverine could endure, let alone survive.

Furthermore, over the course of his life, Logan has had to endure not only physical pain, but also a lot of emotional suffering. His slow aging process forced him to repeatedly watch loved ones around him die. ‘Logan’ even takes this idea to the extreme, as the film is set in a future setting in which the mutants and thus virtually all of his friends from the previous X-Men films have been wiped out.

This Marvel movie makes us feel for Logan

It is clear that at some point Logan became numb from such pain that he became cold-blooded, and even the slaughter of hordes of opponents did not cause him any pangs of conscience. For anyone who has experienced so much suffering and death, cruelty is a natural state. However, such theoretical insights alone are not sufficient to understand Wolverine’s mental life. We as viewers get to experience Logan’s pain firsthand. Not with the intensity of real flesh wounds, but at least as intense as cinema can achieve with its own resources.

And “Logan” takes no prisoners. Skulls are pierced, stomachs are cut open and other body parts are constantly mutilated – and not in the cartoonish “Deadpool” style, but so realistic that you cringe again and again. Not all brutal murders can be attributed to Wolverine or the villains. Because the little girl Laura slaughters her enemies even more brutally than her protector.

Wolverine is a mutant with the ability to grow claws as long as a machete between his knuckles, and no other film has ever delved as deeply into the psychological consequences of such a burden as Logan. The result is an unusually dark descent into a seemingly post-apocalyptic world by Marvel standards, in which only suffering, pain and violence seem to have a place. But it is precisely this ruthlessness that makes ‘Logan’ a unique viewing experience within its genre.