Deadpool & Wolverine battle superhero bullshit to a stalemate

The superhero Wade Wilson, better known as Deadpool and played in movies by Ryan Reynolds, has superpowers that range from fairly standard (like the ability to quickly heal and regenerate himself) to genuinely unusual (like his snarky ability to issue fourth-wall-breaking commentary on his own adventures). But his most valuable skill, at least on screen, may be his resilience in the face of superhero bullshit. The first two Deadpool movies occupied a weird little corner of the X-Men-centric universe built by 20th Century Fox, full of odds-and-ends characters like metallic mutant Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) sardonic superpowered student Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and an entire incarnation of the superteam X-Force (until they were mostly killed off on their first mission). Deadpool has turned these characters’ relative obscurity into a source of fun through sheer force of mischievous will—a will he clearly and metatextually shares with his performer, as Reynolds kicked around in no fewer than four previous comics adaptations (including one where he actually played Wade Wilson!) before finally finding his own signature superhero. Both character and actor flipped their also-ran status from liability to unlikely selling point.

But it’s hard to remain the scrappy underdog when your movies flirt with billion-dollar worldwide grosses—or when your parent-company studio gets swallowed up by Disney. So Deadpool & Wolverine is a trilogy-capper that doubles as its own corporate merger between the premier continuity monster of the 21st century and, well, if not the entire FoX-Men universe, then at least Deadpool’s R-rated brand of irreverence. Deadpool himself could succinctly explain the motivation behind this seemingly incongruous pairing: A flailing Marvel Cinematic Universe sensing that there was still money in the Reynolds version of Deadpool. 

The continuity monster demands more, though, and works overtime to fudge greater stakes: Over in his universe, Deadpool, now working a regular job after quitting the dangerous and degenerate merc game at the behest of Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), supposedly yearns to play a part in something bigger. (This is a bit of a stretch, given the fact that he spent Deadpool 2 securing his found family and saving a bunch of mutant kids from an abusive orphanage before messing with time itself in the movie’s jokey mid-credits scenes—not to mention his presumed open invitation to clean up his act and join the X-Men!) He gets his shot at big-time world-saving when he learns that the Time Variance Authority, the timeline managers previously seen in Marvel’s Loki TV series, plans to “prune” his world from existence, and endeavors to stop them. But he isn’t sure he can handle this task on his own, and seeks out Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) for help. 

Only this isn’t the exact same Wolverine who appeared in nine previous X-Men movies from the Fox administration, despite the presence of Jackman. The Wolverine we know died at the end of James Mangold’s moving, borderline despairing Logan. 

(If you have any questions about how this works given that Deadpool & Wolverine appears to be set in a relatively functional present while Logan took place in a semi-dystopian, mutant-light near-future that’s still at least five years away, please direct them to Kevin Feige. And while you have his ear, ask what the hell is happening in the early scene where Deadpool applies to join the Avengers in a completely different universe than the one he wants to live in—and does so before he meets anyone from the TVA.) 

Anyway, Deadpool goes rummaging around through alternate timelines to find a replacement Wolverine for a big, heroic team-up, putting them both in the path of dangerous exiled mutant Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin).

To Deadpool & Wolverine’s credit, its revival of Wolverine goes beyond cheap nostalgia and the temporary excuse to dress Jackman up like a bunch of different versions of the character from throughout comics history (though the latter is a lot of fun). It’s a payoff to a gag that’s run throughout the first two Deadpool movies, where Wade seems fixated on the possibility of meeting and bantering with the star attraction of the X-Men series. There’s even a kind of poignancy at work in the unspoken idea that Wade wants another shot at the gig that was first bungled back when both characters appeared in the chintzy X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Sure, Deadpool himself was subsequently redeemed by a pair of massive hits. But does any of it really count without Wolverine’s stab of approval? Maybe Deadpool can cobble together some kind of happy ending for his also-ran universe, and it’s appropriate that he’d see Jackman’s Wolverine as the key.

Sorting through the detritus of an abruptly curtailed franchise is the stuff of IP-choked nightmares—and also what Deadpool & Wolverine does best, almost excusing its characteristically junky look. The movie, nominally directed and co-written by Shawn Levy, levels up not by sending Wade Wilson to wisecrack alongside the Avengers du jour—he doesn’t really require their presence for that, anyway—but instead by giving him access to a bigger island of misfit-toy superheroes, stretching beyond his regular cast of characters. Which particular castoffs Deadpool and Wolverine encounter on their adventures shouldn’t be spoiled. Broadly speaking, though, the movie specializes in turning the oft-tedious business of branded cameos and geeky in-jokes into a bloody crossover farce of superpowered goof-arounds. Its best moments both pay affectionate tribute to pre-MCU character incarnations and clown on the whole concept of ooh-ing and ahh-ing over what amounts to a bunch of reissued action figures. Yes, the references and asides are absolutely relentless, with plenty of canned (if occasionally spiky) shots at the new parent company and parting shots at the old one, in a typically mixed hit-to-miss ratio. Levy also appears to have spent more time charging Illumination-level needledrops to the Disney clearances account than choreographing action sequences, which never rise above “amusingly bloody” and arrive at erratic, poorly paced intervals. But the movie provides ample evidence that sometimes messily rampaging through a comic-book universe is more fun than straight-faced world-building.

So Levy has the Deadpool end of things covered, at least. What the director of Free Guy and The Adam Project is absolutely not equipped to do, however, is tell a coherent and emotionally resonant story about Wolverine. Seemingly emboldened by the crowd-pleasing shamelessness of his previous Reynolds pictures, Levy and the other screenwriters affix a poorly explained tragic backstory to this “new” Wolverine, all just to create a watered-down knockoff of Logan. Mired in screenplay details that feel endlessly reworked, Jackman’s Wolverine has been refashioned as more of a foulmouthed crank than a laconic human weapon with a soul.

The charitable read is that Jackman plays the character in a different register to make it clear that this isn’t the exact same guy from the other movies. To some extent, that must be the goal; he wears Wolverine’s anguish closer to the surface, and physically keeps returning to a wide, crouched stance that’s more a pledge of comics-accurate fealty than a particular Jackman trademark. This fetishization of comics-matching goes beyond actorly choices, however, and actually starts to undermine Jackman’s talent, especially when the movie insists on bringing out the classic Wolverine mask. Jackman wears this damn thing for much of the movie’s final stretch, whiting out his eyes and muting his expressiveness, even as the movie insists it’s arriving at honest catharsis. It even inspires Deadpool to pull his punchlines, issuing multiple applause-baiting lines about how great it is to see a Wolverine embracing his classic yellow outfit and accompanying headgear. The babying of the fanboy audience curdles into outright denial; was there really unfinished business with Wolverine just because Jackman wore some different outfits in the multiple films where he perfectly distilled and played this character? Even if there was, that version of Wolverine happened. People can watch the movies, or not. Having Shawn Levy shadow-remake a few moments from Logan for Disney doesn’t tie up any loose ends, narratively or emotionally.

There are times when Deadpool & Wolverine seems to understand the futility of its own fixations. There’s something sweet about the way that Deadpool is essentially trying to keep Disney (via the TVA) from erasing his world (the Fox movies), something that’s at once impossible (again, those movies exist) and inevitable. Yet Deadpool & Wolverine ultimately endorses his left-field desire for conformity with tired, oft-stated MCU ideals. The other Deadpools approached their ample conventional turns in a sillier, more sidelong fashion, something that Reynolds no longer seems to fully trust. The result is lingering and unsatisfying uncertainty over whether this is a standalone novelty, a multiversal course correction, or a genuine send-off. Even its satire feels micromanaged. Wade Wilson can still bounce back with ease, but even in its diminished state, superhero bullshit remains a formidable foe.

Director: Shawn Levy
Writer: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy, Zeb Wells
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Matthew Macfadyen, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney
Release Date: July 26, 2024