With the one-two punch of Deadpool and LOGAN R-Rated comic book movies have moved from a virtual impossibility or box office death sentence to almost the new vogue and while Deadpool obviously used it for that characters language and crassness, many thought that LOGAN did so to simply embrace the violent berserker rage of it's titular character that appears not to be the whole case.
Speaking about the film at the 2018 Writers Guild Association Beyond Words panel Mangold spoke on the topic stating:
You have to have a slightly off-pedal goal for your film, and the people who are gonna go "What the [frick] is that 8-minute scene between Professor X and Logan? That's like 8 minutes of two guys in a tank talking" and it's like "Yeah. That's not gonna change because the vibe of this movie is an adult drama". That's why, for instance, we wanted an R-Rating. It wasn't because of the violence and it wasn't because of the language, but because I didn't have to write a movie, and neither did my compatriots, for 11-year-olds. If we had a rated-R movie there were gonna be no Happy Meals. There can be no action figures. There was gonna be no marketing on Saturday morning cartoons or anything like that, so that suddenly you're not making a movie written for someone under 14 / 15 and that changes the length of scenes. It changes what they're talking about."
This approach to letting scenes breathe and allowing a more mature sense of drama to exist was certainly one of the many things that made LOGAN stand apart from its fellow comic book movies and was no doubt a contributing factor to the films Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay a feat it wouldn't have achieved had the film not been able to have the pace and approach it did without the requirements and expectations put on a PG-13 blockbuster.
What do you think? Would you like to see more CBM's embrace convential drama sensibilities and tones? What films would you like to see get an R Rating? Leave your thoughts below.
ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.