Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman starring in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine.’ (Jay Maidment © 2024 20th Century Studios/© and ™ 2024 MARVEL)
When Fox Studios released the first Deadpool film in 2016, it felt like an irreverently amusing cure to our collective comic-book-movie malaise. Wade Wilson, often known as Deadpool, was a foul-mouthed mercenary who shattered both his foes and the fourth wall with the same gonzo fury.
Deadpool repeatedly turned to the camera and blasted superhero movie clichés with such deadpan humour that you forgot you were watching a superhero film. And Ryan Reynolds, Hollywood’s snarkiest leading man, could have been created in a lab to play this vile vigilante. I enjoyed the film, but one was enough; by the time Deadpool 2 came out in 2018, all of that self-aware humour had begun to feel horribly self-satisfied.
We now have a third film, Deadpool & Wolverine, the result of recent film business intrigues. When Disney purchased Fox a few years ago, Deadpool and other mutant characters from the X-Men franchise became official members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This puts the new film in an almost intriguing bind. It attempts to mock its troubled corporate parents; one of Deadpool’s first lines is, “Marvel’s so stupid.” However, the movie must now adhere to the MCU’s narrative parameters. It attempts to have it both ways: brand extension camouflaged as a satire on brand extension.
It’s also an odd-couple comedy, pairing Deadpool with the most famous of the X-Men, Logan, or Wolverine. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as the mutant with unbreakable bones and retractable metal claws.
The pairing makes sense, and not just because they are both Canadian. In previous films, Deadpool frequently made Wolverine the off-screen target of his jokes. Deadpool and Wolverine are basically immortal, with bodies that can regenerate after being harmed. Both are haunted by past failures and are attempting to redeem themselves. Onscreen, the two have a wonderful, difficult connection, with Jackman’s sombre silences contrasting beautifully with Reynolds’ fast-paced performance.
I could tell you more about the story, but only at the risk of incurring the wrath of studio publicists who have asked critics not to discuss the plot or the movie’s many, many cameos. Let’s just say that the director Shawn Levy and his army of screenwriters bring the two leads together through various rifts in the multiverse. Yes, the multiverse, that ever-elastic comic-book conceit, with numerous Deadpools and Wolverines from various alternate realities popping up along the way.
I believe it’s safe to say that Matthew Macfadyen, most recently of Succession, plays a menacing multiverse bureaucrat, while Emma Corrin of The Crown plays a vicious monster in exile. It’s all thin, generic material, and the script’s numerous wink-wink references to other series and films, ranging from Back to the Future to Furiosa to The Great British Bake Off, don’t help it feel much fresher. And Levy, who previously directed Reynolds in the sci-fi comedies Free Guy and The Adam Project, lacks a strong sense of the Deadpool films’ splattery violence. The protagonists’ bone-crunching, crotch-stabbing killing sprees, complete with corn syrupy geysers of blood, are more tedious than exciting.
For all of its brutality, intense meta-humor, and an R-rated sensibility that defies the MCU’s normally PG-13 limits, Deadpool & Wolverine strives for honesty. Some of its cameos and plot twists are obviously intended to pay homage to Fox’s X-Men films from the early 2000s.
As a long-time X-Men fan, I’m not immune to the appeal of this approach; one casting choice, in particular, had me smile nearly in spite of myself. It’s not enough to make the film feel less like a self-cannibalizing plod, but I doubt many in the audience, who enjoy this type of cheap fan service, would mind. Say whatever you want about Marvel —I absolutely have, but it isn’t as foolish as Deadpool claims.
The film ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ will be released nationwide on July 26, 2024.