LOGAN RSS

300, AMERICAN BEAUTY, BRAVEHEART, Christ-like, CITIZEN KANE, ELYSIUM, GLADIATOR, GRAN TORINO, LOGAN, protagonist, ROMEO AND JULIET, Sacrifice, SCARFACE, SPARTACUS - March 02, 2022

KILLING YOUR PROTAGONIST

Every once in a while we’ll see a film in which the protagonist dies at the end. It’s a tricky maneuver to pull off, but by looking at movies that make this bold move, we can see some patterns in what works, and in which types of stories this kind of thing tends to occur. We most often see dead protagonists in period action-adventure, typically in the key of “epic.” In this very specific genre we find several examples: BRAVEHEART, SPARTACUS, GLADIATOR, 300. There is a certain high, bloody drama to seeing the protagonists of films of this nature die...

One Great Scene: LOGAN

In this series of articles, we’re going to do a deep-dive on one knockout scene from a great movie. Today’s movie is LOGAN. The scene is when Wolverine pays a visit to Professor Xavier, who is suffering from dementia (here’s a link to the scene as a refresher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv3cU4-iwv4). The scene starts with Logan going into a massive tank where Professor Xavier has been locked away. It’s immediately both grounded in reality and mythic in stature. Professor Xavier, an old man with dementia, is so powerful as a mutant, still, that his version of a nursing home is a giant...

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