Hugh will always be Wolverine

Hugh Jackman bids farewell to Wolverine with his latest offering 'Logan'

KARACHI: There is something about childhood heroes that hooks you on for eternity. You grow up watching cartoons, reading comic books and watching movies which bring your favourite characters to life; your eyes and mind stay glued to the spectacles that unfold on the screen and trigger your imagination. You want to be with them. You want to be them. You, even for the duration of a dream, become them.

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Everyone has had their favourites. Some liked Superman, others were more fascinated by a certain dark knight who rode fancy cars through the night. I, on the other hand, grew up adoring Wolverine.



On days when teenage angst takes over and you suffer from low morale, it is your heroes who cheer you up. Wolverine, with his killer claws and signature beard, was the cool and edgy good guy who beat up the villains. And that absolutely cheered me up.

It wasn’t until I grew up that I realised Wolverine was more than just a one-dimensional superhero. He was more human than a soldier and too self-aware to be a weapon. The last and the latest film in the Wolverine franchise, Logan, proves that. Hugh Jackman’s character captures that guilty, self-loathing personality of a man who has witnessed the absurdity of life for over 200 years.

The film is set in 2029, as Logan grows old and his healing power starts to fade, the effects of Adamantium becoming visible. If there is one thing he signifies, it’s being an outcast. Logan encapsulates a man who has, for so long, wanted to fit in by being human and denying his true nature that it is slowly killing him inside. It’s Adamantium which has been slowly poisoning him - an obvious metaphor for the superhero’s self-destruction from what made him indestructible in the first place.

PHOTO:FILE

In 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Kayla Silverfox tells Logan that the moon was lonely because she has a lover named Kuekuatsu and every night, they would wander the skies together. That made one of the other spirits jealous. “Trickster wanted the Moon for himself. So, he told Kuekuatsu that the Moon had asked for flowers; he told him to come to our world and pick her some wild roses,” says Silverfox. “But Kuekuatsu didn't know that once you leave the spirit world, you can never go back. And every night, he looks up in the sky and sees the Moon and howls her name. But... he can never touch her again.”



This story, in a way, perfectly characterises Logan. All this time, he was finding a way to go back to the spirit world – thus, his unhappiness with the things around him. The fact that he considered his mutation a curse only solidified his angry melancholy. And it is only fitting that Logan the character faces his feral clone at the climax of Logan the film: he has to defeat his inner demons to survive.

PHOTO:FILE

I must say Logan is a character which felt more real than perhaps any other superhero. Yes, villains have made us cheer for them and most of the good guys come off as bland caricatures, if not treated well. Wolverine, however, rose above that. All the credit goes to Jackman for capturing the essence of a man who went from understanding his powers and taming them hoping to become human to an old man who, until his final moments, made us believe more in his humanity than he ever did.

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