Logan

I hope Deadpool & Wolverine is good (edit: It was alright!), because it would be a real shame if that movie sullies what could have been a stunning sendoff for Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine in Logan. The 2017 film is best taken as a standalone story given it doesn’t seem to fit neatly after any specific X-Men movie, but its distance from everything else makes it the most distinct film in the franchise, and in all of superhero cinema. Logan follows the men formerly known as Wolverine and Professor X in a dystopian future where mutant births ceased decades ago and the X-Men have been almost entirely wiped out.

From the outset, Logan is about lost pasts, and dwindling futures. The film is a character study into a version of Logan who has lived through the worst tragedy we’ve seen in these films, one he can’t forget or erase with time travel. The two members of the X-Men believed to be untouchable finally face mortality, and it brings out one of the most contemplative versions of any superhero put on the big screen. Logan gives Jackman and Stewart goodbyes fit for two defining actors in the superhero genre, who were given a chance to explore new, devastating territory in a career-defining film.

Of course, that didn’t pan out because the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in its multiverse era and brought Stewart back in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Jackman is set to star opposite Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine. But as a final note before the X-Men were dragged into the MCU machine? Logan is an inspired film that respects the journey it took to get here. — Kenneth Shepard