The glory of a good mashup is not only making sure the two properties match up, but in using their differences to heighten one another’s central themes. It’s one thing to sync a reboot movie’s pacing and music with the visuals of the original, but it’s quite another to put together two things that don’t actually have anything to do with each other (except basic naming functions) and see if they make something. In the case of the above video, who’d have thought using the pacing and soundtrack of the upcoming Logan film would work so beautifully with 1976’s Logan’s Run? Not me!
This video, “Old Man Logan’s Run,” is another from the supremely talented YouTube channel ThatMattCaronGuy. This project may have started with a simple play on words, but it became something altogether more interesting. 1976’s Logan’s Run is about a seemingly Utopian society where resources and space are strictly regulated, to the point where people are killed when they turn 30. Logan 5 (Michael York) is a “sandman” who is tasked with chasing down and killing “runners” who don’t submit to voluntary removal. Only, when he gets sent out into the wasteland, he becomes a runner himself, and has to protect a young woman from certain doom.
Now, weirdly, it actually fits very well with the themes of the similarly-named new X-Men movie Logan, a movie where an over-the-hill warrior has to protect a young girl with familiar but unrefined powers from the wasteland of dangers. It’s an amazingly kismet melding, and the video uses Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier dialogue to hammer home some of the shared themes. As much as I love Logan’s Run (I wrote about it for Schlock & Awe some time ago), it’s pretty cheeseball, and yet this mashup, using Johnny Cash’s gravelly and mournful version of “Hurt,” really makes the movie look epic. (I assure you folks, it is not.)
But the fact that X-Men films producer Simon Kinberg is evidently in talks to make a Logan’s Run reboot might actually mean they’re closer than we thought…
Let me know what you think of this great trailer, and about Logan and/or Logan’s Run, in the comments below!
Image: Fox/MGM
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!
