There will be no spoilers in this review as there are plenty of surprises that will be used to great effect for those who care. Basic plot points will be covered, but nothing that wasn’t in the trailers.
When the first film in the Deadpool canon dropped in 2016, it felt a bit like a miracle that it actually got made. After the disaster that was Deadpool’s debut with Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), it seemed unlikely that we would ever see the Merc-with-the-Mouth on screen ever again, but Reynolds, slighted from the experience, begged to differ. Operating on a significantly smaller budget than other superhero epics of the time ($58 million, as opposed to Avengers: Age of Ultron’s (2015) $365 million), perhaps to account for the film’s insistence on an R-rating that would limit general audiences from attending, the passion project paid off. With good reviews and a return of $782 million, Ryan Reynolds’s Deadpool was cemented in the superhero canon. After a successful sequel in 2018, the purchase of 20th Century Fox by Disney meant that any subsequent follow-ups for Deadpool would revert to the in-house brand of Marvel Studios, where no films have ever breached the R-rating before. After lengthy negotiations about the film’s content, a new treasure trove of Marvel content to mine under the MCU, and the resurrection of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine once again, there were high expectations for what was next in the series.
And given the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, how Deadpool & Wolverine turned out tracks.
L-R: Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, and Randall Reeder as Buck 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
After saving those he loved from death via a time machine at the end of Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has hung up the Deadpool suit in pursuit of a normal life with his chosen family. When his birthday party is interrupted by agents of the Time Variance Authority, headed by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), he is told that his reality is on the brink of extinction. When Deadpool attempts to save his universe, he and Wolverine are banished by the TVA to a barren wasteland. They must traverse the wasteland to return to the TVA and save Wade’s reality before his loved ones are lost forever, all while dealing with Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), a brutal psychic warlord of the wasteland.
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Paradox in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
I wouldn’t even say that my description of the plot above really suffices in giving an accurate representation of the film, because so much of the film relies on the spoilers that come from it. Nothing is as it seems on paper, and Deadpool & Wolverine milks that cow within an inch of its life. Bereft of any real substance other than the film being a road trip film with the sassiest and angriest R-rated superheroes the world has ever seen, Shawn Levy’s (Real Steel Free Guy) threequel devolves itself into a parade of nostalgia, cameos, mostly dated humor, but also the occasional chuckle that the film then beats to death and then some. I’d be lying if I said that Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t have its moments; I even belly laughed at one specific joke, but it all comes together merely as a collection of moments, and not an actual film with film-like qualities. Even that one joke was then taken and pushed well beyond the limits of it being funny anymore, and the goodwill I was beginning to harbor for the entire thing was lost. While juvenile humor has its place in many regards, there’s the all-too-juvenile experience of taking one thing that made the adults in the room laugh, and carrying on for far too long on that single successful joke until no one in the room finds it funny anymore.
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
And frankly, if we’re going to be crass about it (it’s what Deadpool would want), it’s really just Cocomelon for Reddit edgelords whose humor never evolved past 2016. There is a distinct lack of evolution, I’ve found, with Reynolds’s Deadpool who feels so firmly planted in the Obama-era of pop culture, something that I know is still many people’s reality to this day with their CBS sitcoms and corporate country-pop music and pickleball, but for a character meant to always be at the forefront of sharp-wittedness, there is a genuinely tired element to this whole ordeal nowadays. And if we’re taking the crassness and turning it into something depressing, let’s just do it. I almost envy the target audience of this film for being able to find enjoyment in something so asinine and dated. I, too, wish I was the person I was in 2016, and enjoyed the same things I once did when I was younger, and wasn’t so fucking jaded at everything the world has thrown at me.
Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
I can look past a lot, though, if a film has good direction, and Deadpool & Wolverine has nothing of the sort. In fact, I’d go so far to say that this is genuinely one of the blandest, flattest, most ineptly shot and lit blockbusters I’ve seen for as long as I can remember. Every shot of this film is the cinematic equivalent of gray prison gruel, with a distinct lack of color, depth, or anything remotely resembling unique staging. Nothing is lit correctly, whether it be backlit sequences, underlit rooms that are simply dark for the sake of it, lacking any sort of mood that should be used by anyone worth their salt, or making anything look like it wasn’t shot on a single soundstage at Pinewood Studios. There isn’t a moment that feels genuinely authentic, nor is there a moment that takes advantage of the film’s reported (but not fully confirmed) $250,000,000 budget. Everything seems to be on complete autopilot and has the visual depth of a CW show, but at least those shitty CW DC shows lean into their low-budget hokiness. This looks horrendous even with Disney money.
Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
Every fight scene is simply a regurgitated sequence. I began to notice that there were similar fight scenes no more than 20 minutes apart from one another, with rarely any major differentiator between them other than the general setting, and whatever ‘80s – ‘00s pop song they’re using cheekily for literally every action sequence. Though, I will give them that they had a very good orchestral and choral arrangement of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” in the third act that I enjoyed. And it’s not even that it’s too lather-rinse-repeat for its own good, it just looks like shit.
L-R: Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
I’m not above superhero films at all, but I’m frankly sick of the assembly line nature that, specifically, Marvel Studios takes with their releases post-Avengers: Endgame (2019), which of course, Deadpool & Wolverine makes fun of, but when you are now proudly a part of the thing you’re lambasting so severely, and especially when you’re displaying the worst elements of that thing you’re roasting, everything becomes fruitless. When it was through 20th Century Fox and you had the distance of not being a part of the Feige Machine, it worked because you could laugh from the outside, but acting above the thing you now are gives off the vibe of a self-conscious adolescent trying to convince his bullies that he, too, finds the jokes made at his expense as funny as they do. It’s not, we know it’s not, and it’s honestly kind of embarrassing to watch as Reynolds digs himself in deeper and deeper. You simply can’t make the joke when you’ve become the joke.
L-R: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan and Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
Call me a hater if you please … I am! Not necessarily a hater of the MCU, or superhero films, or even of Deadpool, as I really quite liked the first two films in the series, I’m merely a hater of stagnant, lazy, corporate products cosplaying as some sort of edgy, self-aware takedown of the MCU when you literally are the MCU. It’s cinematic astroturfing, which isn’t a new thing by any means, but if you’re going to do it, the least you can do is evolve your humor to this decade, rely on more than cheap cameos, and actually shoot your film with a bit more panache than a car insurance commercial. Those are the things that can make self-parody work, but without that, we’re left with the thing you so cynically claim to be so different from. I’ll give it its flowers for the few moments I found a chuckle, and the one good laugh I got, but moments alone do not make a good movie.
In theaters July 26th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Marvel Studios Deadpool & Wolverine webpage.
Final Score: 1.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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