But snickering on a nearby overpass there’s the other reason that a studio might be willing to take a flyer on an R-rated superhero character, and it’s from the same studio and the same stable of characters: “Deadpool.” The surprise smash hit currently nestles in 2nd place, just $7m or so shy of the $370m domestic take of “The Passion Of The Christ,” in the all-time R-rated charts, and comfortably occupies the all-time R-rated opening weekend number 1 slot with a staggering $132.4m haul. That’s massively more than the nonetheless impressive $85m take of “Logan,” which puts it in 5th place for R-rated opening weekends, not to mention even the number 2 title (“The Matrix Reloaded“: $91.7m).
Comparisons between the two are inevitable. But where “Deadpool” would be nothing without its R — indeed it could uncharitably be called an R-rating in search of a film — “Logan” not only could exist without it, it even feels like it may be done a disservice by it. What is impressive about the film is not the endless head-gougings, several of which happen before the opening credits have even rolled and which quickly begin to feel gratuitous. Nor is it the profanity — the previously erudite and unfailingly civil Professor X (Patrick Stewart) suddenly dropping f-bombs with Tourettic abandon. In fact, that’s an element that never sits quite right — how strange that even though it’s true that senility can entirely change a personality, it’s somehow easier to accept a Professor X who has, however inadvertently, killed all the X-men, than a Charles Xavier who shouts “Fuck you.”
The trappings of the R-rating are at worst counterproductive and at best unnecessary here, because “Logan,” and this is the unholy surprise of the whole endeavor, succeeds on its own storytelling merits, which are pretty unique within the canon of the superhero film and have nothing to do with graphic bloodletting. It’s at its most effective and moving when it’s depicting the pitilessness of the aging process on the body, the soul-deep horror of watching a loved one lose their faculties before your eyes or the way time can rob you of all the things that ever made you the person you believed you were. “Logan” is about illness, aging, vulnerability and mortality — but it’s least about those things when adamantium claws are shicking through yet another face. It feels like a lot of those shots are included precisely to “use up” the R-rating’s permissiveness, like if they’re not there the rating will be judged false advertising, and people will go away disappointed.
This is the paradox of the R-rating. On the one hand it is supposed to signal adult content, and yes, “Logan” is the most grown-up superhero movie in a long time. But on the other hand the R-rating is only ever slapped on in response to a perceived excess of violence, sex or profanity, and as such has become a kind of aspirational badge of honor for the most juvenile of sensibilities — the ones that “Deadpool” plays to so unapologetically and so gleefully. It’s hardly a problem for the film itself, seeing as “Logan” looks set to make decent bank despite/because of its restrictive rating. But it’s a shame that a film that has so much else going on under the hood is being coopted into an argument promoting an approach to blockbuster filmmaking which it arguably does not represent at all.
Already the narrative into which it’s being channelled is becoming “the public wants more R-rated superhero movies” and not “the public wants more thoughtful, intelligent, iconoclastic takes on the superhero mythos.” You can suggest that the R-rating fosters those qualities, but things that the rating actually brings to “Logan” — a flawed but far more fulfilling superhero movie than we’re used to — are not at all fundamental to what makes it good. In fact, they’re possibly among the very things that keep “Logan” from taking that final step up on the podium, from “surprisingly good superhero movie” to “actually great film” — a trick very few titles have managed in any meaningful way. The highest compliment I can pay the empire of dirt that is the glowering, muscular doggedly downbeat “Logan” is that it wholly earns the use of that tremendous song on its trailer. But here’s the thing about Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”: it’s not R-rated.