2) Smaller Scale = Bigger Stakes
In recent years, we’ve got used to every superhero movie introducing an end-of-the-world scenario that our heroes have to stop – usually it involves some big glowing portal in the sky (seriously, why does that keep happening?). By now, then, this incessant raising of the scale has made us largely apathetic towards that kind of story – it also doesn’t help that we’re never in any doubt that the world is really going to end.
What Logan realizes is that it’s better to have a smaller scale and work on raising the emotional stakes instead. In the movie, there’s a sort of apocalyptic scenario – but this has been and gone, with mutantkind already having been made near-extinct when the film starts. With that, Logan doesn’t become a race to save the world but just for our three main characters to save their own lives.
Again, there’s a familiar enigmatic, evil organization out there with big plans, but in a movie which has already killed off our heroes off-screen, all bets are off for how they’ll be dealt with. We genuinely don’t know if the bad guys will win the day or not.