Heartwarming / Logan

'"This is what life looks like..."

These moments prove that viewers can still say "aww" during an overall grim, depressing movie.

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• Many scenes featuring Logan and Laura/X-23 are capable of tugging the heartstrings. Compare the simple shot of Logan resting in the car with her to the overall bleak tone of the rest of the film, and you will notice a difference.
  • The scene at the Munsons' house shows Logan, Laura, and Charles eating dinner together and just genuinely having a good time and enjoying each other's company.
  • Charles getting control back one last time and being able to calm a bunch of frightened horses.
  • The music that plays as Charles gracefully guides the horses is also a nice touch.
    • The dinner scene as a whole is fuzzy, due to a family of three inviting Logan, Laura, and Charles to dinner because they helped them out with their horses. Logan and Laura both smile in the scene, with jokes all around, and afterwards the family insist they stay the night. It makes it that more heartbreaking when the family is attacked and killed by X-24 later. ... Excuse me...
  • Logan refers to "Chuck" as his father when concocting a cover story for the Munson family. He isn't entirely lying.
  Logan: Let me get pop settled.
  • Laura tells Logan that Charles told her Logan is dying and wants to die. Logan asks what else Charles told her. Her reply: 'To not let you'.
• Laura holding Logan's hand as he tries to give a eulogy for Charles after the latter's death. While he ends up immediately pulling his hand away, Laura's effort is pretty touching considering that up to this point she and Logan's relationship has been very standoffish.
  • Logan breaks down in grief. He beats the shit out of his broken truck with a shovel because he just lost his father. It was difficult, but Logan loved Charles.
• Logan has now become Charles' full-time caregiver, as shown with a scene of him carrying Charles to bed. Even in the mutant post-apocalypse, Logan is not about to leave his mentor in the cold.
  • Which speaks volumes on how far Logan has developed since the first X-Men movie.
  • Though Charles' remembering how he accidentally killed the X-Men during a seizure is mostly an unadulterated tearjerker, there is a sort of fridge heartwarming in there; throughout the film, Charles keeps asking Logan why he keeps him in such poor condition and on drugs that clearly upset him, and Logan always refuses to answer, even though it makes Charles confused and suspicious and accuse Logan of just wanting him to die. The fact that Logan tolerates such hurtful comments rather than just tell Charles the (fully justified) reasons for his actions shows how deeply he cares for his old mentor; he would prefer that Charles hate and blame him rather than live with the guilt of what he did.
  • Not to mention that Xavier killed Logan's Fire Forged Friends, albeit accidentally. No-one would have blamed Logan if he'd refused to have anything more to do with Xavier, but he keeps protecting him and never blames him for what happened.
• Caliban has also done an apparent 180 since the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, helping Logan care for Charles with no other reason than that Logan asked him for his help.
• There are apparently comic books being made about the X-Men's adventures, showing that their heroic efforts of protecting both mutant- and humankind from numerous threats over the years haven't gone unnoticed.
  • The fact that Laura herself seems to be a fan, with Logan having pulled them out of her bag and that she might be a fan of Logan himself.
  • As much as Logan chastises Laura for believing in "bullshit," not only are the comics clearly the source of the Transigen kids' reverence of Logan and the other X-Men, but a random plot point in one of them served as their literal, physical safe haven where they get to take a well-deserved break from dealing with their tormentors. Even in fictional overexaggerated forms, the X-Men save mutant lives.
• Despite the utterly shit situation he and Logan have been left in, Charles Xavier still hasn't lost his hope.
  Charles: This is what life looks like. People who love each other. A home. You should take a moment...feel it. You still have time.
  • Even more Fridge Heartwarming: Even after everything Xavier went through in X-Men: Apocalypse, which ended with him developing a harder personality and a less naive view towards human and mutant relations, he has still kept his beliefs and optimism.
  • A subtle, possible YMMV example from "Sunseeker": Logan wants to get a boat as a "retirement gift for [his] dad", and you just know he's talking about Charles.
• When Logan, Charles, and Laura are escaping from the Reavers, Laura gets shot in the arm (which is inconsequential to her considering her powers). Why? She was covering Charles.
• Charles discussing just why Laura has her toe claws and his gradual warming to the topic of how males and females develop different evolutionary advantages, and Laura actually listening to him with growing interest is a wonderful reminder that beneath the age and dementia, Professor Xavier is still in there.
• Gabriela freeing some of the children created by Transigen because they could be killed due to being seen as useless with the creation of the X-24 program. Despite the fact it's clear that if she is ever found she will be killed, she works as hard as she can to try and get Laura a way to North Dakota.
  • When Logan first meets Gabriela and Laura, he asks "Is that your daughter?" Gabriela smiles slightly and says yes. She clarifies later in the video she leaves for Logan.
    Gabriela: She is not my daughter, but I love her. You might not love her, but she is your daughter.
• In addition to the above, it's revealed near the end of the film that there are many children from Transigen who survived their escape, and that there is someone out there in Canada who's looking out for them and willing to provide them a safe haven. It's even implied that this group of children aren't the only ones who survived, suggesting mutantkind as a whole is not wiped out yet.
  • And with Rice gone and the rest of the project trashed to make way for X-24 (who also died), it's highly possible that mutants will start to naturally be born in USA soil once again.
• The doctor that Laura takes an unconscious Logan to after their first fight with X-24. Unlike so many other people we've seen, who treat mutants with fear or hatred, or want to exploit them, this man not only has no problem with treating him, he even feels honored to have met one of the last remaining mutants, and expresses genuine concern about Logan's advanced adamantium poisoning. Logan, in turn, declines the doctor's offer to let him stay at the clinic until he has fully recovered — not because he doesn't appreciate it, but because he doesn't want to endanger any more innocent lives.
  Doctor: Please, mister, if you don't want to go to a hospital, maybe I can help you. Maybe I can run some tests—
  Logan: Look, Doc, you seem like a nice guy, all right? You want to save a life, save your own. Forget we were here.
• The look of sheer awe on Laura's face when she, Logan, and Charles arrive in Oklahoma City, and she sees the neon lights of the casino. This is a girl who was born and raised in a lab, and is only for the first time experiencing life in the real world (even if she is on the run). Her sense of wonderment as she takes in these sights the audience likely takes for granted is palpable, and the small little smile she gives Charles when he takes note of her reaction really says it all.
  • Laura has several more of these moments as she experiences things she never got to have at Transigen for the first time, such as listening to Nate Munson's music player, watching Shane with Charles in their hotel room, or even something as simple as the coin-op pony at the convenience store.
  • One small "first ever" moment like that at the end is when Laura is surrounded by Reavers and Logan, having given himself the mutation enhancement drug, re-enters the fray. Watch her face as she realizes, seeing the Wolverine charge at the soldiers: for the first time in her life, her dad is coming to her rescue.
• Speaking of the above, the very grandfatherly way Charles explains Shane to Laura while they watch it together.
• Seeing the bond between Laura and the other Transigen kids at the rendezvous point, and also her interactions with Nate Munson about his music and trophies. They're among the only times we get to actually see her get to be an 11-year-old girl.
• The way Logan introduces himself and the others to the family they helped on the road.
  Logan: I'm James, this is Laura and that's my dad, Chuck.
  • Not to mention, he has begun using his birth name as his alias, obtaining a driving license as "James Howlett" and the three of them being referred to as "the Howletts", implying that at some point he learned something of his past after all those decades of wandering without memory, with whatever peace that knowledge might have offered him.
  • Possibly from his interaction with Jean, when they set him free.
• Even though they argue a lot, Logan does show some soft spot for Caliban, as demonstrated when he immediately tries to attack Pierce when the latter said that he apparently had Caliban killed, and tells Laura later in the movie that Caliban didn't ask to be involved in this whole mess and thus get himself killed.
• Caliban himself is also willing to do what's right when it counts. Despite being captured and tortured by Pierce, he does whatever he can to slow down the Reavers and make sure his friends stay one step ahead of them. And when he sees that Dr. Rice doesn't care about civilian casualties when he orders X-24 to get Laura, he sacrifices himself to stop the Reavers from hurting others further and to save his friends (who don't even know that he is still alive).
• When Logan is flipping through the X-Men comic, who is his comic counterpart saving? Rogue — the girl Logan met all the way back in the first movie, the meeting that sparked off the start of the franchise.
• In Gabriela's video, the nurses are shown giving the children a birthday party. It shows the motherly nature of the nurses with the children, defying Rice's orders as he tells them not to see the children as people.
• Laura desperately repeating the names of the other children to Logan. She's not just wanting to get to Eden, she's determined to get to her friends, no matter what Logan says. These kids were supposed to be mindless soldiers with no attachments, but they're obviously attached to each other.
• The ending involves Laura going to Canada. Where her dad came from. Home.
• The deleted scene of Bobby asking Logan about Sabretooth. When he reveals to Logan that Laura has told the other kids what he said about the comics, and that it was all made up, you can hear the heartbreak in Bobby's voice if he asks whether that's true. It would mean that everything they've believed in and has been holding them together all this time was all a lie. Logan assures him that even if it didn't happen the way the books said, there was at least a grain of truth to the stories.
• It's a brutal sort of heartwarming, but at the end, when Laura attacks X-24, what sets her off? Logan collapsing where she can see him, wounded. She takes one look at him and then throws herself at X-24, screaming at the top of her lungs. It really shows how much she cares about him by the end of the movie.
• How kind and accepting the Munsons are, especially of Laura. As she's (in their eyes) a mute eleven year old with stunted social skills, it would be easy for them to be wary of or unfriendly to her, but they go the complete other way. Nate, despite clearly finding her odd, talks to her as she looks around his room and lets her listen to music, later letting her keep the music player for the night. Will has a sympathetic talk with Logan about his mute daughter, and the mother, despite her son lying wounded, yells at X-24 to put Laura down while brandishing a shotgun. It just shows that they're good and tolerant people who don't judge Laura for being different.
• The final shot of the film: Laura turns the cross on Logan's grave to the side so it resembles an X. Also, one of the boys is holding a Wolverine action figure during the funeral.

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