As someone who enjoyed the first two DEADPOOL movies, and loved many of the X-MEN movies, especially LOGAN, and has feelings ranging from a soft spot to a great love for some of the other characters featured within, it’s easy to find mild to moderate amusement in DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. There are chuckles. There are smiles. There are funny ideas. I had a pretty fun time.
It’s easy to forget what an underdog Ryan Reynolds (SMOKIN’ ACES) seemed like when the first DEADPOOL came out. He had stumbled in other comic book movies, even playing that same character in X-MEN’S ORIGINS OF THE WOLVERINE. But he kept pushing to turn it into something and after seven years of doubts he managed to get this R-rated, wise-cracky meta movie made. It felt new and refreshing at the time and it’s fair to say it was a phenomenon.
Eight years later it’s a whole different world. Deadpool is an overdog, his movie correctly predicted to make giant loads of cash in a summer when actual great movies did not. Reynolds is on his third full Deadpool movie, with plenty of non-Deadpool ain’t-I-a-stinker performances in between. Admittedly I didn’t watch most of those, but I did see the commercials, as well as the ones he does for the phone and gin companies he bought with his DEADPOOL money. You see quite a bit of Ryan Reynolds these days, whether you’re looking for him or not.
Also, the world has grown wary of super hero movies after they’ve dominated pop culture for so long, and after they’ve started to grow sloppier and less special. It’s supposed to be an event that corporate mergers have brought Fox character Deadpool to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, a franchise even gluttons like me are no longer that invested in. In the movie Deadpool tells Logan “Welcome to the MCU, you’re joining at a bit of a low point,” and it gets a big laugh because it’s undeniable.
Making a watchable Deadpool and Wolverine team-up might be a lay up, but making one that will still be watchable five or more years from now is another story. Disney knew to make it special they’d need a truly great director, but on second thought that seemed like too much trouble so they got Sean Levy, the guy who did the Steve Martin PINK PANTHER movie and episodes of Animorphs.
Seems crazy, but here’s the strategy. One (1) time thirteen years ago Levy directed a pretty good movie called REAL STEEL. What are the chances he would only have that one? Odds are it would be technically possible for him to do a second good movie at some point in his career, and if so it could arguably end up being this one. But I mean what really is “directing” anyway. Probly an urban legend.
I’m being mean. A stinker, like Deadpool. I’m sure Levy’s a nice guy, that’s why they hire him, but I think genre movies – even studio product or whatever you want to call this – deserve directors with serious chops and vision. I don’t read a comic book with mediocre art and say “who cares, it’s a comic book, it’s not supposed to be The Guernica.” Comic book movies should have great art! That used to be one of the goals. Not just in the good old days, even as recently as part 3 of THOR and part 2 of GUARDIANS they were trying to push the visuals into new territory for the genre. It was a good idea.
The filmatism of DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is not the worst. But I think we should ask for better than mediocre in our blockbusters. Steven Spielberg did not bless us with the summer movie season so that we could watch $200 million TV shows. I don’t care that much about green screens and all that, it can look fake as long as it looks good. Unfortunately this is not the kind of movie that has beautiful imagery. It’s also not the kind of movie that knocks you on your ass with a propulsive action sequence and when it’s over you catch your breath and think “Wow!” It is the kind of movie with lots of montages and set pieces built around needle drops and the songs never seem to have any lyrical connection to what’s going on (which I’m personally fine with) and sometimes don’t seem to really fit the scene well musically (more of a problem).
I will say, it is enthusiastic about putting them in comic book type poses, and some of the action concepts are good, like the fake oner that side scrolls as Deadpool and Wolverine move through and slaughter dozens of alternate universe Deadpools. But if you put that scene up next to, say, the overhead shootout in JOHN WICK CHAPTER 4 (since there’s a similarity there) I think it shows the difference between a professional movie director and a born filmmaker. I’m not saying arrest Sean Levy for only making adequate movies, I’m just saying don’t forget that movies can be great. Don’t lose sight of that. We can still have greatness. It should be the goal.
(Bad news from a New York Magazine headline: “Is Shawn Levy the future of populist cinema? With ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ he became the first director to also write and produce his Marvel movie. Disney hopes he’ll save ‘Star Wars,’ too.”)
As far as Deadpool humor goes, it’s pretty funny that this continues after Wolverine’s death in LOGAN, with Deadpool insisting that “that’s not how regeneration works” and going to dig up his grave, only to find a rotted adamantium skeleton that he then uses as weapons to murder a bunch of Time Variance Authority Or Whatever agents during the opening credits sequence.
You don’t really have to know it, but this connects with Loki, a show that was kind of cute for one season and then I realized “oh, you want me to keep watching for multiple seasons? I’m afraid I’m no longer available.” But I saw enough to know it introduced the TVA, this bureaucratic organization that can watch all the universe’s possible timelines on TV screens, and time travel in order to— well, just watch TIMECOP. The same as TIMECOP except with multiple simultaneous timelines they have to police.
The TVA calls Deadpool in because he is somehow in the timeline of LOGAN (which took place in the future) and the death of Wolverine is going to cause his timeline to end (just go with it) so they offer to save only Deadpool and make him an Avenger in our timeline. He tells them to fuck off and hops through different timelines trying to find a different Wolverine to bring to his, assuming that will save it somehow. I’m not sure if it’s established why he’s so sure of this, but of course they just want to do a montage where we get to see different famous Wolverine comic book costumes and scenes. I guess Deadpool is picky because he rejects each of the Wolverines (?) until he chooses one that’s a miserable alcoholic who the world hates because he got drunk instead of saving the world one time (?). Only as I’m trying to summarize this plot do I realize that in the whirlwind of alternate timelines and trying to remember who died and was brought back through time travel or whatever I was just going with the flow and not necessarily always understanding what was going on.
But I do know that TVA bigshot Mr. Paradox (Matthew MacFadyen, THE ASSISTANT) has some type of evil scheme or something, so he dumps the boys in The Void, a FURY ROAD inspired wasteland where the TVA dumps people “pruned” from alternate universes (mostly characters from the pre-MCU Marvel movies). They’re terrorized by Professor Xavier’s evil twin Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin, The Crown) and a giant cloud monster called Alioth. I like that Deadpool says “You mean Alioth from Loki Season 1, episode 5?” because I promise you I would not have known it was from Loki even though I saw that episode.
In The Void we get our recommended Marvel allowance of special guest appearances. SPOILERS FOR SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCES. Since I didn’t run out right away and see this I was unable to avoid finding out pretty much all of the old characters who were gonna return. Maybe the only exception is Aaron Stanford as Pyro from the X-MEN movies, but it took me a scene or two to realize that’s who he was. I had already seen confirmation of Wesley Snipes returning as Blade before I started getting “Are you going to see DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE? Because there’s a reason you in particular should see it” type messages, so those didn’t spoil it and I do appreciate still being someone people think of whenever something about BLADE comes up. It’s an honor.
And I know Snipes was honored to play the character again. That, and the warm feeling of him and Reynolds apparently getting over BLADE: TRINITY related resentments, are the reasons to appreciate it, even though this is honestly not a great use of the character. You know how the original BLADE gives us the blood rave, likely the most badass introduction any cinematic super hero ever got, or ever will get? Here they tried to capture that magic by— no, just kidding, most of his part is a long scene where he and several others are just in a room talking and giving exposition for a long time. I believe he’s sitting down.
I kinda like the white streaks they gave him, even though he’s supposed to age slow. And they changed a few other things. He doesn’t have his trench coat. I don’t think he has his sword!? He seems more social, is able to live with roommates. There are no vampires in this movie, maybe they don’t exist in The Void, so he’s had to rethink his life I guess. He has a couple funny lines and cool parts but then they make him repeat his iceskating line. Like John McClane, somehow he found out which sentence he once said that we’re fond of.
Besides the big one there are four other major guest stars, two for laughs and two serious. I like the joke of bringing back Chris Evans not as Captain America, but his earlier role of Johnny Storm from the FANTASTIC FOUR movies. Then they have Channing Tatum as Gambit, a movie that was announced and developed for about five years before being cancelled when Disney swallowed Fox. Tatum is from New Orleans, really wanted to play the character, was going to produce it, even went to San Diego Comic Con to promote it. Darren Aranofsky and Gareth Evans are among the directors who turned it down. It came close to being made with Rupert Wyatt, then Doug Liman, then Gore Verbinski. It went through endless scripts, but was always described as a heist movie, and sometimes as a romantic comedy. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like, but I’m guessing he would’ve not had this comic-accurate of a costume and would’ve worked harder on the Cajun accent. There are pretty good jokes alluding to him being from a movie that never happened.
A more serious character is Jennifer Garner as the ninja assassin Elektra from DAREDEVIL and ELEKTRA. I think she actually fares the best of these characters, but then again I’m one of the few who liked her movie. Like Blade, it’s a little weird to see this loner character hanging out with a bunch of pals, but she has the gravitas to be sort of the leader, plus gets one of the biggest laughs at the expense of Garner’s real life ex-husband.
The other serious character is Dafne Keen as X-23 from LOGAN. I knew she was keeping up with her fight work because she recently played a Jedi in Star Wars: Acolyte (season 1 of 1) but it’s cool to see her great LOGAN character grown up.
That’s the Void team and they battle Cassandra Nova’s army of mostly X-Men villains. I did enjoy seeing Rob Zombie’s Tyler Mane return (briefly) as Sabretooth, but having him with other mutant characters we’ve seen before, now played by unknown actors (Juggernaut is bodybuilder Aaron W. Reed instead of Vinnie Jones, for example) it feels a little cheap. Oh, you took this pretty far. Not all the way, but pretty far.
Sorry to be ungrateful, but if you’re gonna ask us to be excited about this multiverse gimmick again you should insist on taking it all the way. It’s not an original thought, but you sort of need to say it in a review of this movie: it’s time to put a pin in the multi-verse shit. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is one of the best super hero movies ever made, and used it both for gimmickry and for meaning. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME felt like a bit of a rehash, but I liked those Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and it was cool to bring the characters back. And then Raimi himself did some light multi-versing in DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTI-VERSE OF MADNESS but it seemed like he knew it wasn’t enough to hang a whole movie on. Finally THE FLASH did it, armed with the novelty of being the DC universe this time and getting Michael Keaton back in the Batman cowl and having a reference to a famously unmade Superman movie. But that would have to be the last one, it felt like.
Now here we go again. Admittedly this being the smartass meta version, with the opportunity to say goodbye to the Fox era of Marvel movies, and to have Blade in it, does bring something different to the party, does help them get away with it. You can get away with wearing the same jeans a certain number of days if you change your shirt, but only so many. We’re really pushing it with this laundry, guys.
Multi-verse gimmicks are the jeans you gotta retire. Deadpool (character and franchise) at least needs to be washed. I’m sure he can have more adventures, but I don’t know how much I’m gonna enjoy them if they don’t come up with a way to reinvent him. Like it would be cool if movie #4 took place in a timeline where he starts to think talking about buttholes and masturbation all the time isn’t necessarily that funny.
Fortunately, this is also a Wolverine movie. On one hand, it didn’t pull a TOY STORY 4 and make me think “Well, I thought they had the perfect ending but this does justify its existence by showing there’s more to be said here.” On the other hand, I love seeing Jackman as this character, and he gives it his all, it really feels like Wolverine is back, it’s not kinda half there like Keaton in THE FLASH. And when you’ve got Deadpool dancing around chirping little wisecracks about penises all day the buddy movie format really helps, because at least there’s a co-lead who wants to fuckin kill him and has the power to occasionally give us a break from him by having a serious campfire talk with X-23.
I guess part of what they considered unfinished business for Wolverine was that in all those movies he never wore the yellow costume from the comics. Not important to me, but it was fun to see him do it. A surprise they left out of the advertising is when he also pulls out a mask like from the comics! I thought it was great for about half a second, and then they gave him animated white eyes. That works for Deadpool and Spider-Man, but here you immediately see how much of Jackman’s performance is in the eyes and appreciate that none of his real movies were stupid enough to turn him into a personality-less special effect for the climax.
Now that I think of it though that would’ve been funny if they also felt it was time to finally give Blade a comics accurate costume. Damn. Missed opportunity.
Let’s return to the subject of the Daywalker one more time. His team in the Void agree to battle Cassandra Nova to help Deadpool and Wolverine escape. They seem to consider it a suicide mission but a worthy sacrifice because “we finally get an ending” or words to that effect. On the story level I don’t think it’s very convincing that it’s a worthy sacrifice and I’m not sure it’s fully explained to them what’s even going on. On the meta level it’s actually offensive because sure, people hated ELEKTRA, give her a time to shine, because she’s cool. But there is no argument for Blade needing to prove he’s worthy! This doesn’t erase the existence of part TRINITY, but our memories somewhat have, and BLADE and BLADE II are generally revered as classics, clearly among the best, possibly the best comic book movies ever made. Your legacy was already rock solid, Blade. You didn’t need to come out looking old and doing a few moves that the camera doesn’t capture very clearly to earn that. It was already yours. Somebody is feeding you misinformation.
(I’m glad if Wesley got paid though. He deserves it.)
I’m never saying goodbye to Wesley Snipes as Blade, he is eternal. But I have a soft spot for the various sometimes great, often crappy Fox Marvel movies, and the X-Men series did sort of fizzle out unceremoniously, so I can appreciate giving some of them a wake like this. The end credits have a sincerely nostalgic montage of various X-Men movies, Reynolds as crappy X-MEN ORIGINS Deadpool, etc. I was a little confused though that they have multiple clips of the ill-fated other FANTASTIC FOUR with Michael B. Jordan, since (unless I missed them) there were no references to that in the movie. I guess that was a nice gesture.
Or maybe it’s a reminder that there’s a long history of this genre being a big grab bag mess. There is fun, there is greatness, there are a whole lot of bad choices, there are things I like even in the worst ones. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is far from the worst or the best. Maybe if everybody shat on it like they did ELEKTRA or MADAME WEB I would feel sorry for it and the best parts would stand out more. Anyway, I have purged my negativity. I won’t stress. I should get out my LOGAN blu-ray.
the end
My reviews of non-MCU Marvel movies:
Now that I look at it I’ve reviewed all but a handful of the non-MCU Marvel movies. There are maybe two I haven’t seen and a couple others I didn’t get around to writing about. So here are my reviews and notes about whether or not they connect to DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE.
DR. STRANGE (1978) – Not referenced here, I don’t think, although there’s a part about Cassandra Nova killing Dr. Strange or something that I didn’t get.
HOWARD THE DUCK (1986) – Not referenced
THE PUNISHER (1989)
THE PUNISHER (2004)
PUNISHER WAR ZONE (2008) – They mention the Punisher being dead (not specified which one)
CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990) – No respect for Pyun
NICK FURY: AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. – This was a TV movie but it’s more of a movie than Loki so he should’ve been in there, man
BLADE (1998)
BLADE II (2002)
BLADE: TRINITY (2004) – Present and accounted for.
X-MEN (2000)
X2 (2003)
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006)
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (2011)
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014)
X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2014)
DARK PHOENIX (2019)
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (2009)
THE WOLVERINE (2013)
LOGAN (2017)
SPIDER-MAN (2002)
SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)
SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007) – Already dealt with in SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
HULK (2003) – Not referenced? Shoulda brought back Nolte.
DAREDEVIL (2003) – dead
ELEKTRA (2005) – here
FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (2007) – represented
(I guess I didn’t review part 1.)
MAN-THING (2005) – not referenced
GHOST RIDER (2005)
GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (2007) – Apparently they considered it. Didn’t happen.
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012) – handled
(I never saw part 2)
FANTASTIC FOUR (2015) – clips mysteriously shown
DEADPOOL (2016)
(didn’t review sequel for some reason)
VENOM (2018) – still going
(I enjoyed but didn’t review the sequel)
MORBIUS
MADAME WEB – too soon
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE – leave them alone
I have not seen THE NEW MUTANTS. Yet.
August 20th, 2024 at 7:58 am
I kind of hated the first Deadpool movie. I don’t mind when films go meta, but it just seemed to me that the purpose of these movies is to kind of fluff up the viewer’s ego. They tell us, you are much smarter than these silly movies because you’re one of the good ones who laughs at and is in on the joke. And they are silly movies, but I don’t need Deadpool to tell me that. If I didn’t want to watch a silly movie, then I would watch some indie drama, a genre I also enjoy.
Also, I find Ryan Reynolds insufferable. And it doesn’t help that he is everywhere these days.
But, man, are they really trying to pull me back in by getting Jackman back as Wolverine and (SPOILERS) Blade too. Okay, Disney. Fine. I’ll probably check this out on streaming.