Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2017

The Contenders:

Call Me by Your Name (winner)
The Disaster Artist
Logan
Molly’s Game
Mudbound

Lone Wolf(verine) and Cub

Film: Logan
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

Let’s talk for a minute about what movies based on comics are and what they can be. What they are when they are at their best is fun action movies with great special effects and big action set pieces. We get villains who are purely evil set on world domination or world destruction and acts of great heroism. We get some thrills and some laughs and have something that serves as a vehicle for popcorn and Sour Patch Kids. What they can be is Logan.

Logan is set in the future of the X-Men universe, and it’s a future that hasn’t gone well for the mutants. It has been 25 years since a mutant has been born and in this world, most of the X-Men are dead. Logan (Hugh Jackman), known to the wider world as Wolverine, now lives in secret as a limo driver in El Paso. His former mentor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) has lost control of his mental abilities and lives in an abandoned smelting plant just over the border in Mexico where Logan keeps him heavily medicated to prevent his mental attacks that inadvertently wiped out the X-Men the previous year. With them is Caliban (Stephen Merchant), an albino mutant with the ability to track down other mutants. Logan’s mutant powers are starting to slow down. While he still heals injuries, he doesn’t always heal as quickly or completely, and he now has scars covering his body from previous battles. He’s in constant pain, which he medicates with pain killers and alcohol.