What surprised me most was there was no epic turnaround where everything starts going right...it's all just one downward slope. I love that you caught the parallels that you mentioned in the tags! I was a crying mess at the end of the movie, dude, but I also can't stop thinking about how good it was... I actually haven't really watched the other X-Men movies but I also thought Charles felt very real. Everything he said and did reminded was very human and I
felt like I knew him. Like he was my grandpa or something... It's a sad day when superheroes become as vulnerable as the rest of us. Not just physically but emotionally. That's what this whole movie was.
Maybe it's because I'm a bit older than the average tumblr user, but the issues it deals with---illness, old age, death, the inevitable withering away of all things---they really hit close to home. Mostly because they weren't treated in a condescending way. Like the fact that Charles Xavier---XAVIER, who is sort of a mutant god or prophet figure in this verse---has a degenerative brain disease, and how this profoundly affects him and the people who love him. And there's no magical solution for that at the end restoring his powers, making things okay again, just as there's no solution for Logan either. Their days are over, but it’s okay, it’s part of life, it means it’s time to pass the mantle to someone else, the new generation. it was an incredibly brave and risky choice for an x men movie and especially one with Wolverine, an immortal, as the protagonist. it was more than acknowledging that hugh jackman can't be wolverine forever, it created a story, it put the relationships (and the loss of them) front and center, it made it MATTER.
and i just loved how the main bulk of the movie is a road trip featuring an old man, a middle aged man and a small girl, like the three ages of mankind, in a way.
and that Logan is eventually killed by... himself, but his soul is saved by ANOTHER version of himself, too.
