Review: Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, gore and sexual references

Score: 3 out of 5

The Marvel Cinematic Universe's first R-rated film, and the long-awaited arrival of Deadpool into the MCU following Disney's buyout of 20th Century Fox, is exactly what I was expecting: a gleefully lowbrow pisstake on superhero movies that this time lets them train their fire directly on the 800-pound gorilla of the whole genre now that they're all under the same corporate umbrella. It's undoubtedly a weaker film than its two predecessors, one that is unfortunately afflicted by many of the problems that have recurred throughout the MCU in general and its later period in particular, most notably exceptionally thin narrative tissue that serves primarily as filler to get to the action, the jokes, and the laundry list of cameos. But really, that's just about what I expected from Deadpool entering the MCU: a movie where you knew Disney wouldn't let him interact with the really important stuff, especially not at a time when the whole franchise is at a crossroads thanks to declining reviews, audience burnout, and well-publicized behind-the-scenes troubles, and would instead give him his own little corner of the universe to fuck around with in exchange for mocking the shit out of the rest of it from the bleachers. The result is, basically, a oneshot Deadpool/MCU shitpost fanfic done professionally, a film that, for all that Wade Wilson hypes himself up as "Marvel Jesus" who's gonna save the MCU, knows that it doesn't really matter except maybe on a thematic level. It's a movie made for everybody who's gotten bored with superhero movies in general and Marvel's brand of such in particular, one that's also a pretty good example of the genre in its own right and a fun welcome party for Deadpool into his new home -- even if, and I can't believe I still have to say this after three Deadpool movies, parents absolutely, positively should not take their kids to see it.

(Kids themselves, on the other hand? Feel free to sneak in to your heart's content. I'm not gonna stop you. Shit, I'm the kind of guy who bought a metal water bottle specifically small enough to sneak it into theaters in my pockets. I swear, the Deadpool movies are basically this generation's version of RoboCop in terms of extremely R-rated films that kids seem to love anyway.)

You know exactly what kind of irreverent movie this is the moment it opens with Deadpool, in an effort to save his universe from destruction by the multiversal time-cops of the Time Variance Authority, nullifying the tragic, moving sendoff that Wolverine (and, by extension, Hugh Jackman) experienced at the end of Logan by literally digging up his grave and then defiling his corpse by using his adamantium-plated bones as weapons to brutally slaughter the TVA agents after him. (Oh, and spoilers for Logan. This movie spoils it anyway, so hey.) The entire plot is a metaphor for how Disney's buyout of 20th Century Fox means the end of Fox's X-Men movie universe and all the other superhero movie franchises that Fox produced, starting with the fact that Wolverine's death means that the timeline that he and Deadpool inhabited lost its "anchor being" -- which is to say, Wolverine was the breakout star of those movies, and the decision to kill him off marked the symbolic end of the X-Men movies. And the ambitious TVA bureaucrat Mr. Paradox has decided that, rather than let that timeline naturally decay and fade away over the course of a few millennia, they're gonna strip it for parts and then "prune" it with a sci-fi doomsday weapon that will delete it from existence. Deadpool decides that, even though Disney the TVA wants him in the MCU Sacred Timeline because he's that awesome a character, he's not gonna go if it means that all of his friends are gonna get blinked out of existence as their timeline is "pruned". No, he's gonna find a new Logan to replace the one his universe lost, and if that means crossing the TVA, so be it.

Thus begins a wild and wacky buddy action flick in which Deadpool manages to snatch a Logan wearing a comics-accurate blue-and-yellow Wolverine costume, but one who was also a failure in his own universe whose alcoholism caused him to let his fellow X-Men down in fatal, catastrophic fashion. Hugh Jackman, returning to the part he's played for over twenty years now (and, as Deadpool jokes, is probably gonna be dragged back to until he's ninety), serves largely as the straight man to Ryan Reynolds' off-the-wall humor as Deadpool, and as the film's emotional anchor who gets much of the drama and trauma in his life and past. There's no way his performance here would ever top Logan, but for the kind of movie this is, Jackman is still perfect for the part, establishing great buddy chemistry with Reynolds right off the bat as the two of them bicker, argue, fight, try to kill each other on multiple occasions, and eventually set aside their differences and become friends. At its core, underneath all the in-jokes and moments that have had comic book fans buzzing for months now thanks to the rumors circulating about them, this is a buddy cop movie without the cops, and Jackman and Reynolds sell it the way that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover sold it in Lethal Weapon.

As for everyone else, merely listing the characters who show up here, drawn from throughout the history of Marvel comic book adaptations over the last thirty years, would spoil half the fun. The experience of watching this as a lifelong fan of superhero movies is a two-hour version of the famous shot in The Avengers of Captain America saying "I understood that reference," and I'll admit that it's pretty shallow and, in its own way, suffers from a lot of the same problems with continuity lockout that have plagued the MCU lately. In this case, instead of the plots of movies and TV shows that came before it, this film asks you to be familiar with a lot of the backstage drama and inside baseball that's gone on with them, from canceled X-Men spinoffs to the prior roles of some of the MCU's biggest stars to a reboot that Kevin Feige and company have been trying to get made for years but which at this point seems to be cursed. If ever the term "Reddit movie" were to be applied to a film, this would be the ticket. Personally, I did, in fact, understand those references, being as I am in the prime demographic this movie was made for, a young man raised on superhero movies who does in fact use Reddit. As such, I laughed my ass off at a lot of the jokes here. That being said, I can easily imagine how a lot of this film's humor might fly over the head of somebody younger or much older than me who isn't familiar with the movies this one is referencing, and would wind up as lost as I did watching the third act of Last Action Hero when that movie turned into a parade of '90s Hollywood in-jokes. Fortunately, the general pop culture jokes and cheesy pop music dance sequences (with some Y2K-era bangers thrown in alongside the expected '80s classics) are things that I can't see ever getting old. This may be more of a "reference movie" than its predecessors, but make no mistake, it still has their sense of humor, and it taps that to the fullest.

Beyond the humor, what plot this movie has is pretty thin and exists mainly to propel it to the next joke or action scene. Emma Corrin was easily the standout in the supporting cast as the villain Cassandra Nova, an evil twin sister of Professor X who got banished to the Void and rules it as her own personal fiefdom. The role was honestly pretty thankless and existed largely to give the movie a superpowered villain, but Corrin utterly devours it, playing Cassandra like a femme version of Gene Wilder (who Reynolds compared their performance to) as a kinda smarmy, aristocratic, and mischievous figure whose friendly demeanor can vanish in an instant the moment she decides she doesn't like you. The action scenes are about what you'd expect from Marvel at this point, boasting that familiar blend of CGI spectacle with the wacky setups we've come to expect from anything with Deadpool in it, from the 20th Century Fox logo having been dumped into the Void to some very creative use of a Honda Odyssey. These movies were all about the humor and the raunch more than anything else, anyway, and having the action and plot here be basically MCU boilerplate but with more blood and gore keeps the spotlight squarely on such, even if it never reaches the heights it did in prior films.

The Bottom Line

Joining the MCU has taken away none of Deadpool's characteristic charm or bite and given him plenty of new targets to mock. There may not be much to this movie beyond humor and bloody violence, and it may not be as lightning-in-a-bottle awesome as the first two, but as far as a 128-minute joyride goes, I was never not amused.