I left that theater absolutely devastated.

I had an experience in that theater that I was not prepared for, that the previous installments of the X-franchise had led me to believe that I would never have.

I didn’t watch another struggling attempt of an X-Men story, I finally got to see what X-Men stories are really about.

In the long scope of the X-Men mythology, it is far more common to come across existential epics that explored profound themes rather than a monster-of-the-week adventure. The chief requisite of being a part of the X-Men is that you literally fight to give children a better world to live in and that you routinely place yourself in danger in order to protect the very people who fear and hate you. Nobility and sacrifice are the bare minimum; we have time for morality plays, tragedies, heroic sagas, stories of anguish and despair.

No character in the comic book pantheon is deeper in existential crisis than Logan. He is always a man who wishes he was both a better man and worse man than he really is. If he were a better man, then he wouldn’t be such a gifted killer. If he were a worse man, then maybe he wouldn’t mind the killing. In Logan is a person who I think most of us want to be like: someone who is honest enough about their own failings and yet, can never bear to walk away when he is needed. In classic literature, a tragic hero is someone who has a fatal flaw, something that sets them on their path. In Logan, that flaw is his heroic nature and that nature is tested to its breaking point in this film.

The world in this movie is nothing like we’ve seen in previous X-Men films. In the not-so-distant future of 2029, the mutant population is all but extinct. Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters is no more, the fate of which is merely alluded to throughout the film. Charles Xavier is old, sick and frail and his caretaker Logan is feeling a little worn out too thanks to his healing abilities being compromised. This future looks bleak and it doesn’t look up when they meet Laura, a young 11-year old girl who is the result of genetic experimentation which leaves her with claws and healing abilities of her own. Three guesses as to why she is so similar to the title character.

Laura is X-23, a new mutant created by a company interested in building their own army of superpowered child soldiers.  She’s in search of a place called Eden, a sanctuary for mutants and needs help getting there. It’s the normal setup for an escort mission but the package in question happens to be a feral killing machine with a worse temper than the famed Wolverine. And the people chasing her? They are so ruthless in their pursuit of her that they make no qualms of causing some serious collateral damage in their wake.

But the trick that this movie manages to pull off is that this isn’t just another superhero film with mindless action. This is a character study of people who happen to have a heightened experience of life because their abilities have allowed them to have extraordinary experiences. The pain, anguish and poignancy that this film reaches is a level that I’ve never experienced in many other films, definitely never in the comic book/superhero genre.

I left that theater completely wrecked. I was weeping. I was overwhelmed that this film respected its source material enough to not care about toeing the line and told an X-Men story without compromise. The world the X-Men live in is a dangerous one where children, I repeat, CHILDREN!, are in danger of losing their lives because of the circumstances of their birth. This is not the sterilized theoretical danger shown in the previous installments which means the heroics made against that dangerous world are all the more courageous, noble and poignant. No more manufactured, shallow drama of wondering if our heroes will win the day. We know they will but we now get to see what the cost of being a hero truly is.

Shit has gotten real and “Logan” does not apologize for any of it.