Mini Review - Logan

Wolverine has been regarded as one of the most popular X-men, he’s shown up in almost every X-men movie in one way or another, and has been the main character in the vast majority of them. That’s a testament to Hugh Jackman who elevated this character beyond his comic book popularity, to the fact that whilst Fantastic 4’s future in comics went into doubt after Secret Wars, the X-men survived and recently Wolverine was brought back into the fray in the Marvel Legacy title.

Logan, Jackman’s final performance as Wolverine is based on a comic book Old Man Logan, I have not read the comic book but I know it has a following, with him replacing Wolverine in certain X-men titles and having a steady performing solo book.

With the success of Deadpool, Fox knew that an R-rated comic book movie could be successful and given Wolverine’s powers and history, an R-rated movie was ripe for him. Of course, they want to mitigate the risk, the budget for this movie was $96m, about half what the budget of your average superhero blockbuster. It was very successful, earning $616.8m at the box office and having a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review - Arena

It’s Samuel L Jackson Month

We’ve seen Samuel L Jackson as a veteran, we’ve seen Samuel L Jackson as a jackass, we’ve seen him as a coward, now let’s take a look at him playing an outright villain.

No, we won’t be covering that one this month, although it may come up as a possible future review. My feelings are that I do not have enough expertise on Will Eisner’s work to give that movie the thorough trouncing it deserves – watch the Bad Movie Beatdown/Atop the Fourth Wall crossover if you want to see people’s work that matters on the subject. In the meantime, let’s look at Arena

Made on a modest $10m budget (no idea about performance figures) Arena did not go down well with audiences, a 27% rating on rotten tomatoes with an average 2.5/5, the one critic whose review is on the site gave it a 0/4.