Rated R, 127 minutes
Directed by: Shawn Levy
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corin, Matthew Macfadyen, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Brianna Hildebrand, Aaron Stanford
The last time we saw Deadpool/Wade Wilson he was playing with time and correcting some mistakes. He painted a Green Lantern script with blood and brain matter after shooting Ryan Reynolds from behind. He also extinguished the Deadpool in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE before Hugh Jackman could fillet him with his claws. Low hanging fruit of the sight gag variety but so on brand. Deadpool, the dirty-mouth wisecracking, fourth wall-breaking mercenary was a breath of fresh air with solo adventures in 2016 and 2018.
That fresh air becomes a stiff breeze of fan service with DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE as the “Merc with the Mouth” takes the mantle of “Marvel Jesus” in helping resurrect a Marvel Cinematic Universe that had become stale. His regenerative healing powers alone aren’t enough to correct all of Disney’s pegging indiscretions, however. Gobbling up companies and IPs like Pac-Man, Disney has become too big and not very forward thinking, producing sequels, and pushing nostalgia to the masses. And like Bonnie Tyler, Marvel has been holding out for a hero after its imitated-never-duplicated cinematic universe reached its apex with AVENGERS: ENDGAME in 2023.
When we last saw Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan he gave us an emotional sendoff and one fitting of a young actor thrust into superhero stardom. The death of the Wolverine in James Mangold’s LOGAN signaled the end of a particular era of comic book movies that began with 2000’s X-MEN.
Or so we thought.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is a high school reunion full of yearbook superlatives. Particularly, winners of Class Clown and Most Likely to Win a Tony Award. The movie is salty and surly madcap fun giving the former enemies turned frenemies a world in need of saving. A world in which our cancer-surviving antihero works as a used car salesman with his sugar bear BFF, Peter (Rob Delaney). Instead of taking up a stool at Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children, Wade sits in the back seat of a Honda Odyssey trying his best not to swear during a test drive. He’s in a funk, finding his life empty if he can’t be hero.
Then the Time Variance Authority (TVA) knocks on his door, and Wade discovers he can be an agent of change in Marvel’s multiverse. All he has to do is leave everyone he’s ever cared about behind forever. There’s always a catch. Make a difference in a cinematic universe while your world is deleted.
Already giving the middle finger to his parent companies, Disney and Marvel were more than willing to give Deadpool the thumbs up and creative control to be mocked. (Except for doing cocaine, that’s the one thing Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige wouldn’t allow.) While Walt Disney may be rolling over in his grave at the thought, Wade Wilson is shovel ready to get a laugh. And he literally does just that; not to Walt, but to the lumbersexual with the retractable claws.
Wolverine is Deadpool’s key to disrupting an overzealous TVA middle manager named Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who wants to speed up the process of eliminating timelines. To him, pruning is just too much trouble. After a short, time-traveling montage appropriately set to “The Power of Love” in selecting the best Wolverine variant for the job, Wade and Logan are pruned and sent to The Void.
The Void is superhero purgatory, and Ryan Reynolds goes full hog in aping the netherworld. The best visual for The Void is to imagine what would happen if Andy’s old toys from TOY STORY ended up in MAD MAX’s Wasteland.
Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, along with three other writers, work fast and furious in throwing blood and jokes across the writers’ room in a collective, maximum effort in delivering a candygram so sweet and spicy that longtime comic book fans will be transported to nirvana once they sample the goods.
There is a bigger story, but it’s a paper-thin plot involving a supervillain that never had the chance to be loved and now wants to destroy all universes except their own barren slice of paradise. It’s a major consequence but is very much the B story. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in matching ketchup and mustard outfits verbally sparring and slicing-and-dicing each other are the main attractions.
Conversely, the core concept of time and redemption is not lost. Across three films, Wade Wilson has worked to extend his time so that he can be with the ones he loves. But it comes at a cost, be it looking like a burn victim, and seeing his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) die – which is surreptitiously resolved without consequence, unless Wade’s penance is leading a dull life and feeling irrelevant. Then you have the guilt-plagued Wolverine who spends his days in an alcoholic stupor trying to escape his past. One wants to live, the other wishes he were dead. Put them together and DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE becomes a buddy-cop pairing with a motormouth and the growler that just wishes he would shut the hell up.
Ultimately, the movie is no risk and all reward for Disney and Marvel. But don’t expect a game changer for what should be expected in future MCU outings. It’s very much a high school reunion, as previously stated. Sophomoric humor, cartoon violence, an alpha male reliving his glory days, and God’s Perfect Idiot as Marvel’s new messiah, while the DJ shuffles between *NSYNC, The Goo Goo Dolls, and Green Day.
That’s DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE.
Rating: B
