It's just the whole "serving two masters" slippery slope that plagued the TDK trilogy as well. Once you go full "Heat" or "Silence of the Lambs" and then make an abrupt left into "flying on rooftops" territory it can be a bit jarring unless it's the best damn flying on rooftops scene ever.
On the flip side Unbreakable and Split went full Hitchcockian thriller without backtracking into any jarringly cliche superhero tropes. Imagine if halfway through Split Anya Taylor-Joy jumped up, wrapped her legs around McAvoy's neck and threw him to the ground. It'd be kind of a "really, we're going there?" moment.
The MCU has had movies that served two masters but they tend to pic genres that make for a more traditional overlap, like 70's political thriller meets 70's James Bond (The Winter Soldier.) Unforgiven meets Star Trek just takes a little more getting used to.
Because that's kind of what Logan did. 90 minutes of Unforgiven and then all of a sudden it's Captain Kirk vs. Evil Kirk, and then back to Unforgiven. But again, it might play better going forward knowing to anticipate it.
Anyway, mulling over the ending more has given me a new way of looking at it. Logan makes it clear that his entire life, spanning more than a century, has been nothing but him outliving everyone he cares about. Whether they die violently (which is often the case) or by natural causes they still die while he has to live. Finally he gets to rest which is actually the only happy ending he ever *could* have. If he had walked off into the sunset with Laura then it'd still just be only a matter of time before he had to bury her too. Unless she buried
him.
I *really* appreciate the ambiguity of "so that's what it feels like." What
what feels like? Love? Death? Victory? Peace? Take your pick, the movie doesn't clarify so we get to decide. Whatever "it" is was something that had eluded him his entire life. He got to check out knowing that all the present danger had been defeated and that "someone he cared about" was still living and breathing when it was all said and done. Whether she lived five minutes or five decades after that moment didn't matter. The cycle was broken and finally someone outlasted Logan's watch.
The farmhouse scene was tragic for the family but Charles' gift to Laura was an opportunity to laugh. And sit at the table as a family, with neighbors, getting just a sample of how sweet "normal" life can be. Charles said it was the best night he'd had in years which means it was probably Laura's best night EVER. And that was a precedent she got to take with her after Logan's death. And if Charles' gift was laughter then Logan's gift was prompting her to return to speaking verbally and more importantly getting to experience having a father. She literally said as much at the very end.
And if Xavier's greatest gift to Logan (that Charles angrily threw in his face early in the film) was "giving him a family" then that means in the last few moments of his life Logan stopped being "Wolverine" and took on the mantle of "Professor X," giving the gift of family to one last student.
