Western genre tropes in the film “Logan”
“Now you run on home to your mother and tell her, tell her everything’s alright, and there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”
Quote from the 1953 film “Shane” as referenced in “Logan”
Logan draws in many themes from the western genre, one of the strongest ones which spoke to me when watching the film was the idea of the barbarian’s place in civilisation.
In his 1651 book Leviathan the english philosopher Thomas Hobbes outlined the idea of the “social contract”. The social contract he suggested was required to prevent people living a Natural Human Life, the sort of “Natural Life” he suggested would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” as humans murdered, raped and pillaged without constraint. Hobbes described it as Bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all).
The idea of the social contract is that the individual in a group sacrifices the freedom to do whatever they want to other members of the group, to gain protection from other individuals doing things to them. This idea forms the basis for nearly all systems of laws and government, of western civilisations through history. Through this system the selfish barbarian horde can be structured into the co-operative society of citizens or subjects.
Intrinsic to myth of the American Western Frontier was the ideas of freedom and individual liberty, where laws and the societal hierarchys of what was the victorian era, had yet to be fully established. Likewise the protection of laws and policing had not been established either. The western expansion was also a rich breeding ground for a lot of American mythology.
An iconic character type of this western mythology is The Gunslinger, an individual who is a strong and effective warrior but with strong ethical, moral and / or religious beliefs to guide themselves. A version of the same character appears in Arthurian legend in the form of the Knights of the Round table and also Japanese myths of the Samurai.
The both films “Shane” and “Logan” revolve around a Gunslinger character (whose name is also the title of the film). In both, Shane and Logan have frequently violated the social contract (eg. Use of violence etc) but for both of them, their actions start to weigh heavily on their consciences. Throughout his story Logan refers to “something” inside him is killing him. Rather than explicitly saying it is the Adamantium in his bones, it leaves it open to interpretation that it might be his conscience catching up to him after hundreds of years of violence.
The theme of family and belonging, feature heavily in both films too. In “Shane”, while travelling through a valley the Gunslinger drifts into the lives of the Starrett family who are homesteaders (people establishing farms and infrastructure in the wild grasslands of the plains), and initially pauses to rest, but they open their family to him and he sees the opportunity for a different life and maybe redemption for his past actions.
However the Starrett family and the other homesteading families in the valley are involved in a land dispute with ranchers who only want the land to graze cattle. The ranchers are not settling in the land, they are just exploiting the open grasslands to graze cattle and leave again.
The ranchers constantly harass the homesteaders, cutting their fences and trampling their crops, so showing the contrast between the transient barbarian ranchers and the beginning of a community of homesteading families, out of which towns, cities and infrastructure will grow.
In “Logan”, the Barbarians are the non-mutant humans in an ailing consumerist society as characterised by the crime and violence of the gang trying to steal Logan’s wheels and the drunken debauchery of Logan’s passengers, which includes chanting “USA, USA” as they drive along the Mexican border wall. More human barbarity is revealed when Logan learns of the experimentation on the children, and shown throughout as the armed mercenaries (called The Reavers) chase down unarmed children.
The X-men and the Xavier School is the contrast, providing community and a family, a family which Charles points out, allowed Logan to leave his own mercenary barbarian history behind.
In “Shane”, Shane’s presence starts to cause disruption to the Starrett family even as he helps protect them from the ranchers. The young impressionable son Little Joe, starts to idolise Shane for his shooting ability, which terrifies his mother who hates the violence her family is exposed to in the valley.
Likewise when the Munson family take in Logan, Charles and Laura after they help rounding up their horses, the barbarians arrive again. At first this is a mirroring of the plot of “Shane” with the corporate thugs disrupting the Munson’s water supply in an attempt to drive them off their land. Logan steps in and uses violence to resolve the situation. Then the Reavers attack the Munson’s home and Logan is confronted by the literal barbarian version of himself in the shape of his clone X-24.
The Munson family is completely destroyed in the fight against the Reavers, with the father in the Munson family repeatedly shooting X-24, he then goes to turn the gun on Logan, recognising him as just another violent outsider, as he does Logan just waits for the shot as if confirming the accusation.
Both Shane and Logan are forced to use their skills at violence to defeat the Ranchers and the Reavers respectively. Logan using the very last of his strength and healing factor defeat X-24 and the Reavers with the help of Laura. In “Shane” a saloon shootout eliminates the remaining Ranchers, but Shane is shot and mortally wounded.
Shane mounts his horse, for what the audience is sure is the last time, and delivers one of the most famous lines from the film, the same line are spoken by Laura over Logan’s grave:
“Joey, there’s no living with… with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks. There’s no going back. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her… tell her everything’s all right. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”
Shane rides away to remove the final guns from the valley, his own.
Both Logan and Shane felt because of their previous choices and temperament, they did not belong in peaceful society, but still sacrificed themselves to remove all the barbarians, including themselves.
Similar themes are often present in the Samurai films for Akira Kurosawa, especially the film “Seven Samurai” which was eventually remade as the western film “The Magnificent Seven” which draws heavily on the Gunslinger part and “Bugs Life” which draws on the outsider looking for a home and family part.
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