There’s a lot to love about this week’s release of Logan on DVD and Blu-ray. First and foremost, we get to re-live every gritty second of the best film in the X-Men universe. But we also get to consume all the awesome behind the scenes tidbits! A recent post on io9 shed some light on how the film’s best action sequence featuring Professor X freezing time from his hotel room.
Everything that went into the making of one of Logan’s best fights https://t.co/dbZQKg9tVE pic.twitter.com/r25VkSci8D
— io9 (@io9) May 23, 2017
The link in that tweet will lead you to io9’s page where they share a clip of Logan director, James Mangold, explaining the iconic “frozen in time” scenes from the film and particularly the one where Logan brutally takes out multiple attackers while they can’t move. The film depicts Charles Xavier suffering from a degenerative brain disorder that causes his powers to go way out of whack when not kept in check with medication. Logan has taken up the task to keep Charles away from everyone for years since it’s alluded to that one of his first bad spells of this telepathic glitch caused the death of every single one of the X-Men (sans the ever-regenerating Logan).
Mangold explains that when Charles has a seizure it results in everyone around him stopping in their tracks much like we’ve seen in previous films. Except that with Xavier’s powers degrading, this also causes people to stop breathing altogether. A horrible thought to think about in terms of what we see in the movie but even worse to think about how everyone back at the X-mansion wasn’t so lucky.
The frozen effect and Logan struggling to move through it was accomplished with some digital trickery and a whole lot of movement on the camera’s part. Filmmakers literally vibrated the camera itself to effectively mess up the shots and then fed that footage through image stabilization removing most of the movement. What’s left is a blurred effect that seems to perfectly encompass being incapacitated by Xavier’s powers. Frankly, we hope this effect isn’t some trade secret now because we can’t wait to see if there’s BTS footage of the rig they used.
What’s your favorite part of Logan? How about your favorite VFX in recent years? Let’s discuss in the comments below!
What happened to all the mutants in Logan?
Images:Â 20th Century Fox
