I got to see this last night and .....it's still sticking with me. So much on my brain!
Like other people have said, the emotions in this were even more important than the super-heroics. It was almost easy to forget this is a "comic book movie". For one thing, Patrick Stewart's performance broke me. Watching him, both shrunken by time (and weight loss), but not fully able to control his own mind, was like reliving both my grandmothers' deterioration until their recent passing, especially since one had dementia. The anger, the frustration, the helplessness was palpable. Watch Logan having to lift him into cars and bed was like watching my father having to care for his mom all over again. Now, obviously, neither of my grandmothers had psychic abilities, but everything else was so damn real it was heart-wrenching. I love how things like this, and Logan's own battle with his illness, were given as much importance as their mutant powers. I know the movie is called
Logan, but I hope he gets some awards for his performance.
Back in 2000, Hugh Jackman is what made me like Wolverine, after over a decade of being annoyed with the character in the comics and cartoon. (He just always came across as an over-used, over-hyped jerk to me.) He really knocked it out of the park for this last time. You could feel his exhaustion: as a mutant, as a care-giver, as a survivor.
One of the strengths of this movie is they don't explain much. There was no soliloquies on what really happened in Westchester, what happened to the other X-Men, who the project X-23 are. It removed that usual comic movie trope and made everything seem more real. I know they said they had more explanations scripted, but I'm kinda glad they didn't include them. I know there was also supposed to be a minor Sabretooth plotline, which might explain the physical appearance of X-24. (In my mind, they used some of Sabretooth's DNA as well, which would add to the "soulless killing machine" they wanted to create.)
The only thing that took me out of the movie was Laura/X-23; not because of her performance, but she is a dead-ringer for my cousin when she was younger. My cousin is also 1/4 Peruvian and speaks Spanish, so that didn't help, either. But my cousin also isn't an unhinged killing machine...that I know of.
I want to say this is just a weird coincidence, but her father works in Hollywood and it would not be the first time someone in our family served as a model/inspiration for tv or film.