Deriving from comic books, the "superhero," for many years, was thought of as only for children, after all, they are cartoons. However, over the years, the comic books got darker, with more adult themes, making them not just for children anymore. Logan and The Dark Knight are often compared in terms of their darker and realistic takes on their characters.
Logan is a character study of a broken superhero while The Dark Knight tries to avoid being called a superhero movie and attempts to make a statement about the world itself. While The Dark Knight is darker-toned than its predecessors, it at least tries to be fun while Logan is strictly serious and, at times, downright depressing. So which of the two dark superhero movies do audiences prefer?
Logan: The Violence
Children love X-Men and Wolverine but no child could see Logan because it's rated R. Taking its cue from the hard-edge graphic novels that inspired it, Logan is a visceral and brutal movie. Not only does Logan spend much of the movie slicing people up with his claws, but the new character, X-23, an ll-year-old girl with the same abilities, does too.
Logan inhabits a real world and in the real world, his abilities do much more damage than we've seen before. The characters are a lot more vicious than previously depicted and Logan doesn't hold back.
The Dark Knight: The Joker
When audiences think about The Dark Knight, it's hard not to think immediately of Heath Ledger's performance. An Oscar-winning performance that has gone down in cinema history as one of the finest ever given.
Not only is the performance terrifying but the character is so well written that it makes audiences think. He's not a villain who seeks to destroy Gotham with some comic-book style, end-of-the-world plot but instead wants to cause such intense anarchy that it corrupts people from within. This villain wants to make other people into villains, which is a chilling concept. While Logan has some nasty villains, they don't stir up audiences the way Joker does.
Logan: Deconstructs The Superhero
Audiences have seen Logan fight bad guys in at least seven other movies, but now we see the toll it's taken on him. Superheroes are usually infallible but Logan presents one that has chronic pain, can't heal as fast as he used to, and doesn't fight alongside the X-Men anymore after a horrible accident.
This is colder, harsher, cursing, alcoholic Logan who's had a long, hard life and he's at the end of his rope. He works as a limo driver and the only person he's interested in helping is dementia-suffering Professor X (Patrick Stewart). He even concocts a way to successfully kill himself. It's heavy stuff and audiences might forget they're even watching a superhero movie, but instead the tragic story of a broken man forced to be the hero people believe he is when it's really hard for him to.
The Dark Knight: The Themes
The Dark Knight is noted for its themes that few comic-book movies attempt to tackle. While X-Men movies have always tackled discrimination, others shy away from saying more about the world through their characters. However, The Dark Knight delves into such themes as corruption, escalation, and more.
The Joker attempts to entice the citizens of Gotham into immoral behavior and the movie's main premise is that crime gets so bad in Gotham that it pushes Batman into doing things that are just as bad as the criminals, in an effort to defeat them. Which some audiences might agree with him for doing, and some might not, making the film all the more layered, rich, and fascinating.
Logan: Hugh Jackman's Performance
Hugh Jackman's performance as Logan has gone down as one of the best superhero performances of all time. Logan would be the ninth and final time he played the character, over the course of 17 years. Playing the role so many times, audiences care about the character more, having lived with them for so long.
Hugh Jackman's performance is dark, heartbreaking, and believable. Jackman portrays Logan as a real man, not a superhero. He's a torn, conflicted man with a good heart. While Christian Bale is great as Batman/Bruce Wayne, The Dark Knight was only the second time he played the role so audiences aren't as attached to the character and the role didn't demand the same gravitas as Logan.
The Dark Knight: The Tragedy
Logan is full of tragedy but it comes at the end of a long cinematic road and audiences feel comfortable saying goodbye to old characters as a new hope emerges. The Dark Knight seeks to tear good people down and kill good people in their prime. Batman was born of tragedy and The Dark Knight continues that tradition.
The Dark Knight isn't apprehensive about killing off someone else Bruce Wayne loves, Rachel. From there, a good man, Harvey Dent, who has the ability to be as heroic as Batman without the mask, gets corrupted and dies after being viciously scarred, figuratively and literally.
Logan: Emotional Depth
The X-Men movies have always touched on themes like discrimination and acceptance, however, they did descend into the overblown spectacle, particularly with the film released a year before Logan, X-Men: Apocalypse. Logan explored the father-and-son-like relationship between the title character and Professor X. It took these fantastical characters and made them real, costume-less people.
The grittier nature of the film allows audiences to relate to it more and audiences hurt when Logan hurts and cry when he and Professor X dies. Audiences want them to succeed in the end and when they do, despite tragedy, they feel they've been on an emotional journey that reaches a satisfying conclusion. While The Dark Knight does take audiences on a ride, it's not nearly as emotionally satisfying because Batman is still a rich guy in a costume.
The Dark Knight: It's A Crime Movie
Part of The Dark Knight's appeal is that it tries to go out of its way to not be a superhero movie. Director Christopher Nolan was heavily influenced by Michael Mann's Heat, the classic neo-noir crime thriller. Despite its tone, the world of Logan is still a fantastical one and even its conclusion features magical powers, but in a grounded way.
Christopher Nolan is more interested in making the world realistic and with real consequences, despite it being based on a comic book. His intent is to depict this as it would happen in real life. In doing so, he portrays the characters as real people in extraordinary situations and he would probably consider this a crime movie as opposed to a superhero movie.
Logan: The Hero Dies
After 17 years of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, Logan dies so that others may live and his death is particularly moving. After fighting a vicious version of himself, which in itself is a great metaphor, Logan gets killed, allowing the next generation of mutants to live.
The last shot is X-23, a girl who has practically become his daughter, adjusting the cross over his grave to make an "X." At that moment, 17 years and 9 movies' worth of moments come flooding over the audiences, memories of an unforgettable hero who died an honorable death.
The Dark Knight: The Hero Becomes A Villain
Usually, in a superhero movie, the superhero wins. Even, in Logan, despite ultimately dying, Logan saves the day and is remembered as a hero. Both films feature sacrifice. However, in The Dark Knight, Batman's final act of heroism is that he's forced to become the villain.
In the film, if Harvey Dent is revealed as a criminal, all the criminals he put away during his time as district attorney will be unleashed. Therefore, Batman takes the blame for Dent's heinous acts as a way to preserve order. Unlike any other superhero movie, the final scene has the cops after Batman, the hero now branded a villain, as he must go on the run. The hero who cares more about the city he protects than his legacy, or even himself, is a true hero.