If viewers want nothing more than a bunch of solid laughs, gory set pieces, and the promise of two violence prone super-anti-heroes teaming up and brawling in equal measure, director Shawn Levy’s crossover blockbuster in the making Deadpool & Wolverine is here for them. If they’re hoping for a coherent story or at least an anarchically playful way to get the beleaguered Marvel Cinematic Universe back on the rails, those people are shit out of luck, bub. Proof that Marvel can’t have things both ways, but they can still turn out an entertaining movie every now and again, Deadpool & Wolverine is the kind of popcorn flick that’s perfectly fine provided that you don’t think for a single second about any of its logic or questioning what it all means in the larger scheme of things. This latest outing for Ryan Reynolds’ “merc with a mouth” and Hugh Jackman’s indestructible hard-ass makes good use of its stars considerable talents and comedic chemistry, but the degree to which is succeeds on the whole – outside of sheer entertainment value – is debatable.
Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is trying to prove to his fed up, but supportive girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), that he can make a difference in the world. His efforts to prove he can be a team player are thwarted when enforcers from the Time Variance Authority come forcefully calling and demand Deadpool answer for the time travelling shenanigans he performed at the end of the previous film. Wade is brought before the mysterious Mr. Paradox (Matthew MacFayden), who says he can give the disfigured, unkillable mercenary everything he ever wanted. All he has to do is forego his universe’s dying timeline to help save what’s known as “The Sacred Timeline.” With Wade’s reality in danger of being annihilated, along with the small handful of people he loves and cares about being doomed to certain death, he “respectfully” (meaning bloodily and snarkily) declines the TVA’s offer. Wade’s only hope to save his universe hinges upon somehow resurrecting or finding an alternate universe version of Logan (Jackman), a.k.a. The Wolverine, to help restore order to the timeline. Since the Wolverine in his world is deader than dead, Wade finds one from an alternate universe to take the old one’s place. The only problem is that this one is somehow the worst (and most broken) in all the possible universes and timelines.
If that sounds like a lot of exposition for a Deadpool romp, it most certainly is, and that’s only scratching the surface of the narrative drowning pool here. I haven’t even brought up everything that happens with the film’s secondary (or potentially primary?) villain, bald headed tyrant Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), ruler of a wasteland that can best be described as a literal IP graveyard for Marvel’s once promising, but abandoned characters and ideas. Everything links up in satisfactory/shoddy fashion, but good luck trying to make heads or tales out of how all of this is supposed to work. And trying to think about whether or not making no sense at all was part of the plan is somewhat head spinning.
Deadpool & Wolverine is not only a sequel to a franchise known for cleverly, profanely, and bloodily deconstructing superhero tropes and cliches told from the viewpoint of a sarcastic motormouth who curses more than a fleet of frat boys, but also a mea culpa for Marvel, a studio that hasn’t churned out a well liked picture with crossover appeal for the better part of a few years now. This is where the interests of trying to appeal to Deadpool fans (who crave comedic splatter), Wolverine fans (who want something more grounded, serious, and emotionally brutal), and the machinations of the larger behemoth franchise that has enveloped it (which has gone all in on multiverses to an extent where it has forgotten to make genuinely unencumbered movies) are at war.
One hopes early on that Marvel chief Kevin Feige is using Deadpool & Wolverine as a “get out of jail free” card. By letting a character as unhinged and fourth wall breaking as Deadpool run roughshod over the bloated MCU, Levy’s film could be used as a hard reset button while still giving viewers what they came to see: two beloved heroes clashing and bashing everything and everyone around them to piles of guts and dust. But the script – credited to Reynolds, Levy, original writers/producers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells – feels like its making things up as it goes along, and not always in a good way. They also appear to be stuck with an edict from on high that not everything that has been put into place can be destroyed. And for that matter, it seems like a lot of other bits and pieces from Marvel’s up and down past can’t be re-done or undone either. To top the messiness of this sundae off, the film has two weak villains (one with a fascinating backstory that’s barely used) whose motivations are often contradictory and make little sense. It has all the chefs it needs, but they’re not being allowed to cook everything they want.
It’s all very confusing, but the perverse humour Deadpool & Wolverine gets out of its own unnecessary convolution papers over a lot of the story’s shortcomings (which could be a byproduct of turning in so reliant on writing in the midst of a writer’s strike). Even though there are several – repeated – apologies made for the MCU being at a low point and the film running longer than necessary or advisable, these jokes only serve to date Deadpool & Wolverine to a very specific time in cinematic history. A lot of the jokes that work best are about the overall staleness of the MCU, but those are jokes that will age terribly. The narrative glut of the MCU – and of the various X-Men films, for that matter – weighs heavily on Deadpool & Wolverine. A lot of the jokes in Deadpool & Wolverine aren’t funny because they’re self-aware, but because the are self-owning. A film that knowingly jokes about its own shortcomings while doing nothing to fix them isn’t clever. It’s cynical.
But Wade Wilson and Logan are both cynics in their own different ways, so to some degree, the shoe fits. Even when Deadpool & Wolverine fails, it’s still winning in the end. Reynolds is in top form comedically, still wearing the skin tight suit of the role he was seemingly born to play like a glove. Jackman gets to strike a nice balance between Logan’s brooding and his own keen sense of comedic timing, offering a nice back and forth with Reynolds. Viewers will likely pop for the large number of unpredictable cameos and nerdy references peppered throughout, and they’re nice, even if most are unnecessary and gratuitous. And while Levy (Real Steel, The Adam Project, Free Guy) has never been known as a prominent stylist, he knows how to create a polished blockbuster. The action sequences and sight gags are always on point, and he knows when to let the visual effects do the talking and when to get out of the way of his cast so they can steer this rudderless ship.
While I have a lot more thoughts about Deadpool & Wolverine on the whole, my feelings about the film are a lot like the ones I had about Twisters last week. Would I say this is a good movie on most objective or critical levels? No. Would I say I had a great time watching it? Yes, and I would probably watch it again for those reasons. What can I say? I like to laugh. I don’t know many people who don’t, and a lot of this is genuinely funny and exciting stuff that tickles the pleasure centre of my brain. The difference is that Twisters was just kind of a dumb sequel, whereas this is a once promising franchise that has been co-opted and shoehorned into another franchise that is faltering hard. My problem with Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t that it’s dumb, but rather that it might not be dumb enough to make a difference.
Deadpool & Wolverine opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, July 26, 2024.
For another take on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out editor-in-chief W. Andrew Powell’s video review below!
