Deadpool & Wolverine

During the early 2020s, it’d been a while since Marvel was able to ignite the world with excitement, due to their less than impressive slate of releases, but it felt like that energy resurged once people got their first look at Deadpool & Wolverine. Already being an incredibly popular franchise with both previous Deadpool films from 20th Century Fox doing quite well, this third entry told the world that they would be bringing Deadpool into the MCU, and would pair him up with Wolverine, with Hugh Jackman returning to reprise the character once again. Marvel and Ryan Reynolds knew they had a goldmine on their hands, as the initial trailers (which showcased the film’s sparkly tone, elaborate sets, possible fun cameos and a great dynamic between the infamous pair) had so many views in the first 24 hours that they broke a Guinness world record by accident, it had the workings to be the massive hit Marvel needed to repair some of the damage. When it came out, the public ate it up like crazy, but how has the movie look now that the hype has died down?

After trying and failing to get into the Avengers, Wade Wilson (played again by Ryan Reynolds) decides to give up the Deadpool mantle and try living a mundane life, but that cliched plotline is quickly redacted when he’s kidnapped by the Time Variance Authority (or TVA), and an agent named Mr. Paradox (played by Matthew Macfadyen) offers him the chance to join the 616-universe (the one housing the MCU) since his old world is dying due to no longer housing a Wolverine variant (who is labelled as an ‘’anchor being’’ for their timeline). Needing another Logan to keep his world alive, Deadpool starts jumping through universes and eventually comes across another Wolverine (played again by Hugh Jackman), who Paradox says is the worst version out of every timeline. Dumping both of them in the void (essentially the trash bin for unwanted universes), this odd couple encounters several others who were lost to the void, including Cassandra Nova (played by Emma Corrin), who controls the wasteland with her disturbing mental abilities and plans to escape and wreak havoc on all universes. Needing to work together in order to return to their timelines and fix their mistakes, swords and claws will be drawn and blood will be spilt in order to set things right.

While not the masterpiece most comic book fans will have you believe it is, Deadpool & Wolverine provides a zany, electric experience with solid direction, humorous writing, great action set pieces and some very entertaining performances.

Even though it always seemed intentional, the original plans for this film didn’t include Wolverine. Initially constructed after the success of the first film, this third feature had to deal with a lot of altercations and disruptions, which included Disney’s acquisition of Fox and the SAG-AFTRA writer’s strike in 2023. Before Hugh Jackman himself reached out and asked Ryan Reynolds to be in the film, the movie seemed a little lost in terms of nailing a solid premise, with these outside interferences actually giving them time to construct a story that could not only feel like a step forward for the off-the-walls merc-with-the-mouth, but also bank on the popularity of Marvel’s cross-over premises by combining two very popular heroes together. Pitching itself as a buddy film, Deadpool & Wolverine has a slightly different atmosphere and vibe from the previous Deadpool films now that they’re owned by Disney, but that dissimilarity isn’t entirely problematic. It still has the excessive violence, vulgar dialect and zany personality that mixes extreme violence and a childish personality with legit clever wordplay and comedic set pieces.

It is definitely much softer though, which does raise the one true complaint of the film, that being the actual narrative is not that good from a dramatic standpoint. It works comedically, with the scripting by Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells and director Shawn Levy, providing a lot of great material which ranges from verbose deep cuts to bluntly delivered in-jokes, and the directing by Levy is also pretty good, capturing the uniquely gruesome yet strangely light-hearted energy of these movies, and delivering a picture that is a little shallow in many places, but still has great passion, kinetic flavor and a great usage of its soundtrack (this guy directed the Dear Billy episode in Stranger Thing, he knows how to pair scenes with a song). With that said, this shallow quality does factor into the narrative, as while the previous two films had similar identities, their plots were still grounded thanks to a dirty unpleasant atmosphere and legit pathos behind its content and actions, whereas this movie doesn’t have any weight to its dialogue or conflicts. It feels fairly secondary, a lot of the emotional scenes feel redundant, and come the end of the film, it doesn’t really feel like anything has noticeably progressed, but it offered a fun time, so it’s hard to get mad at it.

The movie seemed to hype up the collaboration between Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds as much as it was its titular characters. Both being actors who had their fair share of filmmaking duds but are both collectively loved for their comic book roles, Jackman and Reynolds are notoriously good friends in real life and audiences were dying to see them interact as these two iconic Marvel characters. As a duo, the comedy and situations write themselves, with Wade’s zappy, unfiltered, extraverted nature clashing with Logan’s cold, blunt, rarely-speaking attitude very nicely, and even though it’s hard to say either are doing anything that different from what they’ve done previously (it feels like Jackman has played out this exact arc in every single X-Men film), it still feels fresh and lively thanks to the situation, their dialogue, and just how strong both are as performers. They get the comedic timing down fantastically, but when they film does have a softer moment, they really nail it even if the film doesn’t really support it (especially Jackman, with the car scene becoming iconic for how well acted it is)

While most of the characters in Deadpool’s world are mostly useless and feel extremely watered down (they seem to keep throwing Monica Baccarin into lame cliched storylines which sucks given how strong the chemistry between her and Reynolds is), but most of the new faces are pretty good and match with the film’s personality quite nicely. Matthew MacFadyen plays a fairly stereotypical role as Mr. Paradox yet brings a wacky British ambivalence to the part which saves him from being just another stale archetype. The same can also be said for Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, taking a role that honestly isn’t written that well (her motivations are annoyingly generic and lame), and makes it work through a gripping performance that contains that expected wacky sentiment, a lot of great expressions, and a wonderful disturbing power set that is presented in a very fun way. The film does have a lot of cameos that (without going into spoilers) feels like a love letter to a specific period of Marvel’s film history (made extra clear by the ending credits) and it’s cool to see a lot of them return to these roles quite smoothly, but they do just feel like cool set dressing rather than anything meaningful (they could’ve been excluded and nothing would’ve changed).

The film offers more vibrancy than the last two films, with being under Disney’s banner allowing for a tone that isn’t afraid of looking too ‘’silly’’ and letting these comic book movies actually feel and look like comic book films (which Fox rarely allowed). Their outfits created by Graham Churchyard and Mayes C. Rubeo looks very stunning and even if some components can be a little hard to adapt into real life (it’s great to see Wolverine’s mask in the classic yellow outfit, but it does look a little silly), it’s just great to see them faithfully brought to the big screen for possibly the last time. The action is a lot of fun and most of the scenes have great choreography, camera work and kinetic energy.

While some aren’t perfect like a conflict within the void near the end of the film which has shaky camera work and choppy editing by Dean Zimmerman and Shane Reid (almost feeling like it was intentionally done to cover up certain cameos not being as consistently effectively at the moves as they would’ve been in the past), but the remainder are a lot of fun and are spread out pretty cleanly throughout the film. The opening is a great starting point and showcases the film’s attitude and comedic sensibility very well, along with just how good the soundtrack is going to be. With a ton of retro music that is a bit more of the frilly side than anticipated for a hard-core highly rated action film, it actually works perfectly with Deadpool’s nature and results in several scenes that are equally as hilarious as they are legitimately well delivered.

Deadpool & Wolverine is going to deliver for ecstatic fans, and will do so in an entertaining, delightfully macabre manner, but feels pretty hollow after the party is done. When you peel back the mountainous levels of easter eggs, call backs, in-jokes and payoffs to fan requested material that goes as far back as the early Fox X-Men era, you see that the actual meat and potatoes of the film aren’t bad but certainly aren’t delivered in a way that could be called consistently handled. They don’t ruin its strong points and if anything, shows that even with actively rotten pieces, it can still work around them to create a solid film, but there’s a reason why no one really talks about it years down the line (some have even turned on it, which seems a little extreme). It has good direction, fun writing, great acting and some memorable fight scenes, and even though the cameos are very frequent, the story isn’t that great, and this movie isn’t really going to work as well for people who aren’t privy to the inner workings of comic books and the established world of Marvel, for people that are, they will gladly indulge. It already swallowed up its weight in cash and people were already clambering for it to release on Disney+ even after seeing it multiple times in theatres, and considering the kind of film it is, multiple viewings might just be par the course.