Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)

from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/movies/deadpool-and-wolverine-review.html

Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)

By Alissa Wilkinson
Published July 23, 2024

“Disney’s so stupid,” Deadpool declares trollishly at the beginning of “Deadpool & Wolverine.” It’s the sort of jab — in this case, at the studio distributing the film we’re watching — that we’ve grown used to from this dude, a potty-mouthed exterminator in a face-obscuring suit vaguely reminiscent of Spider-Man. Not quite a hero, not quite anything else, Deadpool is an answer to the conflicted but upstanding superheroes of 21st-century Hollywood. He kills messily, he makes a lot of inappropriate jokes and, in an industry that practically decrees a profit-boosting PG-13 rating, his movies are always rated R.

Despite first appearing in Marvel comics, Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds), a.k.a. Wade Wilson, also used to stand slightly outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But in the six years since his last big-screen appearance in “Deadpool 2,” the Merc with the Mouth has been shoehorned into the M.C.U., along with the X-Men, for reasons involving Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox. (Which was promptly renamed 20th Century Studios, and you can be sure Deadpool will joke about that too.)

Deadpool explains all this very quickly at the beginning of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” just to catch us up. He has a lot of expositional ground to cover, since he also has to clarify how this movie will avoid desecrating the memory of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a.k.a. Logan, who was laid to rest in the excellent eponymous swan song from 2017. “We’re not,” Deadpool announces. Deal with it.

The first two Deadpool movies set out to skewer the conventions of superhero cinema, with “Deadpool” (2016) scrapping conventional opening credits for alternate text jabbing at tropes: “A British Villain,” “A Hot Chick,” “A Moody Teen,” “A C.G.I. Character” and also some words we can’t print here. Deadpool broke the fourth wall constantly, remarking to the audience about what was happening or about to happen, as well as the paltry budget of the film and the silliness of him, a minor and ridiculous character, being in a movie at all.

But times sure have changed, and not just because those movies made a whole lot of money. Yes, “Deadpool & Wolverine” still features quips about residuals and digs at characters in DC’s rival comics universe, and a bunch of them made me chuckle. It still features Reynolds making fun of himself; it has some fun set pieces, clever sight gags, amusing surprises, left-field references and adoring pauses to admire Jackman’s biceps and abs.
More on ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’


Now, though, Deadpool has been dragged into the M.C.U. With that comes all kinds of new opportunities for goofy mash-ups, cameos and plotlines, such as Deadpool’s fervent and futile desire to join the Avengers. Most important in this case, the M.C.U.’s turn toward the multiverse in recent years — a move providing dizzying latitude to remix, reboot and jack up profits — gives “Deadpool & Wolverine,” directed by Shawn Levy, some narrative room to work with.

This is not an unmotivated crossover event. Wolverine (or sometimes just Jackman himself) has been an offscreen object of fun since the first “Deadpool,” someone to serve as the butt of jokes and jealousy. Deadpool and Wolverine share some key origin trauma, and they sometimes feel like two sides of the same damaged coin, with Deadpool covering his trauma with jokes while Wolverine glowers. They’re also both middle-aged guys — Reynolds is 47, Jackman is 55 — and the film’s many ironic needle drops, from Avril Lavigne and ’N Sync to Goo Goo Dolls, AC/DC and Madonna, seem calculated to scratch some itch in brains of a certain age. It seems natural for the duo to be in a movie together, plus it’s a great opportunity to yank two high earners onto the same screen.

But now that this is an M.C.U. film, there are mandates. The stakes have to be absurdly high, having to do with the destruction or salvation of whole universes. More important, there must be corporate synergy. Now “Deadpool” needs to not just jab at but explicitly tie into other M.C.U. properties, weaving itself into the tangled web of movies and shows that function as much as advertisements for one another as a coherent plot.

In this case, that means maximizing the multiverse, pulling in references to so many properties I wouldn’t dare to note them all. (You might want to re-familiarize yourself with the broad strokes of the TV show “Loki,” though.) As Marvel’s cinematic universe has grown ever larger, the role of fan service has ballooned, counting on the pleasure of cheering for a cameo or a dozen to give the people what they came for. But you wouldn’t want me to spoil your fun.

I could tell you all about what happens in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” its many twists and turns, its various themes and villains, but that would not really explain it. “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a “Deadpool” movie, which means it’s rude and irreverent, funny and disgusting, weird and a little sweet. Reynolds and Jackman are fun to watch, in part because their onscreen characters contrast so violently with their nice-guy personas offscreen. So much of what the M.C.U. offers feels churned out of the same factory, which makes anything with a distinct personality feel like a relief.

But in the end, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a movie about corporate mergers, about intellectual property, about the ways that the business of Hollywood battles the creative process. It is a film about how anything that was ever successful in Hollywood is made to repeat that same song and dance endlessly, how a bloated and risk-averse industry can’t let well enough alone, how nobody is ever really dead anymore, how the world is always ending but the story is never allowed to finish.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” devilishly plays on this, of course. It is watchable because it’s self-reflective. But now that the jabs are coming from inside the house, it hits different. On the one hand, “Disney’s so stupid.” On the other hand, Disney paid for this movie, and we pay them to watch it. This business makes suckers of us all.