Logan | 2017

Basically a road movie, supposedly travelling from ‘Juarez, Mexico’ to the Canadian border, Logan was filmed in only two US states. Find out how they did this with the filming locations.

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James Mangold’s film determinedly stands apart from the run of comic book adaptations. There are no universe-ending catastrophes or eye-popping FX but a sombre ending to the X-Men saga.

The production was based at New Orleans' Big Easy Studios, otherwise known as the Michoud Assembly Facility, an 832-acre manufacturing complex in New Orleans East owned by NASA.

It’s where Saturn rockets and Space Shuttle fuel tanks were built – in fact, there's a Saturn V rocket displayed at the main gate – but NASA rents out part of the facility to the studio, which has been home to such productions as Jurassic World; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; Terminator Genesys; Ender's Game, GI Joe: Retaliation and Jack Reacher.

In the world of Logan, it’s 2029, most of the mutants are dead and no new mutants have been born for years. Professor Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) faculties are declining and he's being cared for down in 'Juarez, Mexico' by Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman) and the kindly Caliban (Stephen Merchant).

Most of the practical locations can be found in Louisiana but New Mexico provides more of the rocky or desert locations, and that’s where we start.

To shield the outside world from his unstable mental powers, Xavier is confined to the collapsed metal water tower of an old smelting plant, a set built to incorporate an abandoned water well complex on Phoenix Road NW a couple of miles west of Northern Meadows, north of Rio Rancho, New Mexico. There's nothing left so see now but a couple of water tanks.

Logan has distanced himself from his old life and works as an anonymous Uber driver. It's on one of his jobs at 'Greenwood Cemetery' that problems begin when he's approached by the seemingly crazy Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez) begging for help.

Well the name 'Greenwood' is close – this is Greenlawn Cemetery, 1005 Western Avenue in Hammond, on US Route 190 about 45 miles east of Baton Rouge in Louisiana.

Logan has other urgent business, furtively collecting under-the-counter medication for Xavier from a contact outside what is New Orleans’s old disused Charity Hospital, 1532 Tulane Avenue.

Logan is not the only production to film here – the hospital's basement was used as the lair of Dracula (Nicolas Cage) in 2023's campy Renfield.

It's here he's approached by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) from an organisation called 'Transigen' who is searching for this mysterious Gabriela.

Logan refuses to help, though he visits Gabriela at the 'Liberty Motel', where she offers him $50,000 to take her and a girl she claims is her "daughter" to the Canadian border in 'North Dakota'.

The motel, where he later finds Gabriela dead, was the Aloha Motel which stood at 3300 Airline Drive beneath the Three-Level Stacked Roundabout at Causeway in Metairie, west of New Orleans. It's since been demolished.

Realising their cover has been broken, Logan prepares to flee with Xavier and Caliban but also finds himself unwillingly responsible for Laura (Dafne Keen) – the girl Gabriela claimed was her daughter.

Transigen’s heavies arrive, discover that Laura is not the helpless waif she appeared to be. Although Logan, Xavier and Laura escape to start their journey north, Caliban is taken captive.

Taking a comfort stop, Laura has to be restrained from attacking the hapless shop assistant after he sees her shoplifting, in the ’70 Mart’.

Don’t be fooled by the ’Texas’ flags. This is the Laguna 66 Pit Stop, I-40 Exit 114 (the old Route 66), Laguna, 46 miles west of Albuquerque in New Mexico.

The journey moves on to 'Oklahoma City' and its casinos, but really we're back to Louisiana. The Harrah's hotel at which they stay was Harrah's New Orleans Hotel, which has since been rebranded and rejigged to become Caesars New Orleans, 228 Poydras Street (and, fun fact, it’s the only land-based casino in Louisiana, apparently).

To complicate matters further, that's not the entrance to Harrah's/Caesar's to which Logan's bullet-riddled limo rolls up. The sudden collapse of an old underground tunnel opened up a 30-yard sinkhole on Canal Street, which meant that the exterior shots were filmed in front of (what is now) the Caesars Superdome entrance, 1500 Sugar Bowl Drive.

It's while they're staying at Harrah’s that Xavier and Laura watch George Stevens’ classic 1953 Western Shane on TV, a film that's a major influence on this movie in many ways.

When Logan decides to trade in his limo, supposedly still in 'Oklahoma City', we're back not only to Metairie but to a spot only 100 yards or so north of the Aloha Motel site, on North Causeway Boulevard, where the auto dealership was set up under the freeway.

Logan takes the opportunity to grab a drink and it's in the nearby bar he realises that ‘Eden’, the safe haven they're heading to in 'North Dakota', is no more than fiction taken from a comic book.

This bar is Gennaro's, 3206 Metairie Road at North Causeway Boulevard, claimed to be the oldest bar in the city, dating way back to 1937.

Intergen is not far behind but one of Xavier's seizures temporarily freezes everyone at the hotel giving Logan and his passengers a chance to escape.

A chance encounter on the road with the Munson family, after Xavier uses his powers to calm their escaped horses, leads to the three accepting the family's hospitality.

The Munson farmhouse in 'Kansas' was filmed on a property near the town of Ferriday, in eastern Louisiana (fun fact, birthplace of of both rocker Jerry Lee Lewis and evangelist Jimmy Swaggart) to take advantage of the surrounding cornfields.

Logan, the stranger stepping up to help Mr Munson when he's threatened by aggressive landowners, is a scene straight out of Shane. What's not out of the 1953 Western is the bloody outcome – the massacre of the Munson family, Logan's fight with X-24, virtually a clone of himself, and the unexpected death of Xavier.

Logan wakes up to find himself being nursed in an emergency walk-in clinic. This is 125 West Oak Street in Amite City, on US Hwy 51, in central Louisiana. Don't look for emergency care here if your problem is anything more serious than split ends – in reality this is The Hair Box hairdresser.

There's a quick diversion to the school gymnasium being used as a Transigen facility where the bodies of mutants, including the unfortunate Caliban, are being stored.

As it says, "Home of the Hornets", this is Highland High School, 4700 Coal Avenue SE in Albuquerque (the school's mascot is Herbie the Hornet, named after the aircraft carrier USS Hornet). Mark Blutman's 2009 comedy Doubting Thomas (aka Spy School) was filmed here and the school has also featured in several TV shows – including the same gymnasium turning up in Breaking Bad.

Logan and Laura finally reach 'North Dakota' where they discover, if not the promised 'Eden', a group of feisty mutant kids living in a fire lookout station (this was built for the film) and planning to cross the border into Canada and safety.

The cliffs of the 'Dakota Badlands' are the white cliffs of Plaza Blanca in Abiquiu, New Mexico, which you might recognise as the place where aliens set up their gold mining operations in Jon Favreau's 2011 Cowboys and Aliens, with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford.

And the final forested scenes as the kids reach the border were filmed about 40 miles north of the cliffs, at the remote wilderness retreat Corkins Lodge, 750 Highway 512, near Chama in northern New Mexico.

Movie buffs will have recognised that Laura's final elegy over the grave uses the words from the final moments of Shane.

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