First appearing in 1991’s New Mutants #98, Deadpool was a typical lone wolf assassin until he was re-imagined as an irreverent, Fourth Wall-breaking antihero a couple of years later. From then on, the character could do no wrong, starring in multiple titles, crossovers, and team-ups, before hitting the big time in 2016’s self-titled film starring Ryan Reynolds. The film was a hit across the board, validating Reynolds’ persistent pursuit of the project, following the character’s abortive introduction in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. 

While a crossover with the main X-Men films was teased, no encounter was as anticipated as one with Hugh Jackman’s (The Greatest Showman) Wolverine. But with Jackman retiring his portrayal with 2017’s Logan, a team-up between Marvel Comics’ two most infamous mutants seemed impossible – until now.

Was it worth the wait? 

The story

When Deadpool learns of his world’s impending demise, he sets out on an inter-dimensional road trip to find the one hero who can help: Wolverine. While locating the famed X-Man goes relatively smoothly, the two mutants quickly discover that the more difficult task will lie just trying not to kill each other. 

Nobody ever said being a hero was easy (or this violent).

Hack and slash

Deadpool & Wolverine may be light on plot, but that’s [more than] made up for by a virtual deluge of meta gags, references, in-jokes, and cameos. Narrative anorexia notwithstanding, this is a film that wears its love for superheroes on its sleeve while also managing to be even more unpredictable, irreverent, and unrepentantly violent than anything in the first two Deadpool movies. Heck, this one literally opens with a corpse defiling played for laughs.

Levy, who’s worked with both Reynolds (in Free Guy) and Jackman (in Real Steel) before, puts his genre acumen to good use, staging brutal, tongue-in-cheek fights that make full use of the environment while showcasing each character’s unique skills and power sets. A sequence set in and around a beleaguered Honda Odyssey stands out for its brutality and the inventiveness of the ass-kicking on display; this movie is rated R for a reason, and the filmmakers take every opportunity to justify it.

How did this get made?

That Reynolds and director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, The Adam Project) managed to get any of this approved by the House of Mouse is nothing short of miraculous, and we are here for it. The unfaithful need not apply – basically, if you’re the sort of person who finds the idea of a Liefeld shoe store hilarious, this one’s for you. For everyone else, audience mileage will most definitely vary, depending on their a) affinity for these characters, and b) tolerance for Fourth Wall breaks referencing every superhero movie made in the last two decades.

Does it make sense? Barely, but that’s kind of the point.  

Does it propel the MCU into its next galaxy-spanning saga, or attempt to make sense of what’s come before? No, and no, but that’s fine – audiences have seen enough doomsday scenarios and overblown finales to last a lifetime. 

Is it fun? F*CK YES.

The heroes’ journey

Reynolds and Jackman shine in the roles they were born to play, their chemistry and rapport jumping off the screen. With the secret sauce being their real-world friendship (forged while shooting X-Men Origins: Wolverine), watching them butt heads is a fanboy’s dream. At some point, the actors disappeared, having been replaced by Deadpool and Wolverine, and nobody at our screening wanted it to end.

Seeing Jackman finally don his character’s yellow suit after 24 years is great, but it’s the intensity and vulnerability he brings to the performance that elevates the entire affair. Fan service aside (and there is a TON of it), the film surprises in its willingness to dive into the heads of its leads. These characters (and their actors) have become so iconic as to become archetypes, so it’s great that the screenplay gives them new layers to peel back. If you’d told me even a week ago that we’d get a movie where Wade and Logan pondered the meaning of being a hero and the difficulties that come from having to embody such ideals, I never would have believed it.

The lines land because we’ve grown up with these characters, and the actors leverage that familiarity to make us care, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances. When Wolverine snarls that Deadpool’s inability to die is a joke on humanity, Reynolds sells the pain of recognizing the truth of the statement without us even seeing his face. 

The storytelling’s effectiveness ultimately comes across as somewhat ironic, given that the characters in question were never part of the MCU in the first place. As far as holdovers go from the days of Marvel characters being owned by different studios, these two are excellent choices to revitalize the current franchise. Of course, Deadpool takes the time to point out that they’ve arrived at something of a low point.

Crisis on Infinite Earths

It’s no secret that Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has had its share of stumbles since Avengers: Endgame came out in 2019. While the interceding years did yield excellent entries in Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Wakanda Forever, No Way Home, their shine was dulled by lesser films such as The Eternals, Love and Thunder, and Quantumania.

The lack of an overarching narrative exacerbated matters – where audiences once had the Infinity Stones as a throughline across a literal decade of films; the next five years just gave us innumerable versions of (seemingly unrelated) multiversal crises that failed to coalesce into anything interesting. It certainly didn’t help that the one film that even had “Multiverse” in its title was an unannounced sequel to the Wandavision TV show, while the villain meant to tie everything together, Kang (Jonathan Majors, Creed III), well, he’s got his own problems.

Quantity over Quality: The MCU Dilemma

The MCU’s forays into streaming via Disney+ muddied things further, as multiple television series (ie. homework) were added to the already-loaded release schedule of 3-4 Marvel films a year. Something had to give, and in the end, it was quality. The acclaimed Wandavision gave way to the uneven Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the underrated Hawkeye, and more, before devolving into whatever the actual hell Secret Invasion was. In the meantime, the films were spinning their wheels on which direction to take the Multiverse, resulting in overall boredom for an increasingly frustrated fanbase.

The announcement last May that Disney would be reducing Marvel’s output was a direct result of this, as was the peace offering of (finally) officially canonizing the Netflix Marvel shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, et al.) from ten years ago into the MCU. Deadpool & Wolverine acknowledges this state of affairs with savage wit, and one wonders if the studio would have been so willing to be skewered if its last few films had been successful. In any case, they weren’t, and here we are.

Let’s f*cking go!

Deadpool & Wolverine goes for all the marbles and scores big time with a pop culture extravaganza for the ages. Plot issues, such as Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, Firefly) existing solely as motivation for the third straight time, or questions over when in the X-Men chronology this series supposedly takes place (Deadpool 2 had cameos from the First Class team, while this movie clearly occurs in a post-Logan timeline), are irrelevant.

Any such concerns are glazed over by the filmmakers’ enthusiasm, and the joy of seeing who they managed to rope into this insanity is shocking in both audacity and execution. To elaborate further would be venturing into spoiler territory (and there are more than enough clout chasers out there doing just that) suffice it to say that longtime Marvel fans will be rewarded for their faith.

Deadpool saves the Marvel Universe(?!)

Unlike some other superhero actors’ claim that his role would shift his universe’s balance of power, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool actually goes the distance, reinvigorating interest in the MCU as a last-minute substitution and restoring hope to an endeavor thought lost, while accomplishing said feat by sticking to what he’s been good at from the start: DISRUPTION. 

Now that’s a redemption story nobody could have seen coming. 

The MCU’s got its groove back, boys and girls – LFG!

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