"They're gonna make him do this till he's 90." My review of Deadpool & Wolverine
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in trouble post AVENTERS: ENDGAME, with each succeeding film from Disney/Marvel managing to alienate more fans, while not being able to build a compelling narrative or develop characters with whom audiences could get invested in. And the writing declined seriously, something I took note of in THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER, and seemed to reach bottom with ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Compelling stories had given way to snarky jokes and characters who often felt like parodies of their former selves. All the while, Disney/Marvel was acquiring the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four from 20th Century Fox, which turned a possibility into a certainty that the mutants and the First Family of Marvel would be united at last on the screen with the other great Marvel heroes.
It is certainly fitting that the first MCU film featuring the Marvel Mutant Universe would team up its most popular, with fans and at the box office, characters, thus we get DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, re-uniting Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the roles they have truly made their own.
What I liked about DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE:
It fully leans into letting Reynolds and Jackman commit totally to their iconic characters. Deadpool is the motor mouthed mutant killing machine with a joke for all situations, and Jackman is the surly Wolverine, hard-bitten and damaged by a violent past. These two characters are not a perfect match, and that generates great tension. Twice in the film, they really square off, and it is everything that fans could hope for.
Disney/Marvel wisely kept the film in the R rated territory staked out by the first two DEADPOOL films, which means plenty of foul language and graphic sex jokes, along with a lot of CGI gory violence. The humor is rude and crude, and the action comes fast and relentless, and though the film does slow down to get serious at a few points, it never seriously threatens the fun vibe the movie has going for it.
The plot, such as it is, is something of a cut and paste job, as Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool tries to adjust to life post DEADPOOL 2 only to discover by way of the Time Variant Authority that his particular earth and timeline is destined for destruction because its Wolverine has died (as seen in LOGAN). Determined not to let that happen, Deadpool sets out across the timelines to find another Wolverine to take the place of the one killed, happening upon a particularly dark and despondent one, who is very reluctantly pulled into the scheme, where ultimately both heroes wind up in the Void, a purgatory where the TVA throws cast off remnants from various timelines—which includes characters from various other Fox and New Line produced Marvel franchises, including some that never quite got off the ground. And there are some great in-jokes, especially at the expense of Fox, acknowledging that during the years it was putting out Marvel films, the stuff that was going on behind the scenes was every bit as dramatic as anything onscreen.
Superhero films rise and fall on the quality of their villains, and in this DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE more than meets the bar. The Void is ruled by Cassandra Nova, the Big Bad of the film, the mutant twin sister of Charles Xavier, who has near God level mental powers. Nova was the creation of Grant Morrison, and this incarnation does justice to Morrison’s vision. Emma Corrin really nails this character, and hopefully, she will turn up again to square off against the X-Men onscreen sometime in the future. The secondary villain is Mr. Paradox, a mid-level manager for the TVA, played by Matthew Macfayden—who will forever be Tom on SUCCESSION. He brings a lot to the film perfectly playing the kind of boss whose ambitions far exceed their competence.
The other great thing about DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is the cameos by a lot of characters from the Fox and New Line era, plus a few from the MCU’s glory days—it’s always good to see Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan. Of course a lot of this is just fan-service, but that beats the “subvert expectations” trope that has become too much of a thing in itself. And it really is a kick to see some of these actors back for an encore after all this time, and in the case of Channing Tatum, a look at what might have been. Chris Evans returns to the MCU, but not as the character you would think. Good to see X-23 again, along with appearances from some of the regulars from the first two Deadpool films, including the always beautiful Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Stefan Kapicic, and Karin Soni. And there is one cameo that is just way too good to spoil. For me it doesn’t quite rise to the level of SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, but that is because I am a huge Spidey fan to start with.
What I didn’t like about DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE:
Most of my problems are minor ones, like how they short changed the Juggernaut yet again in an X-Men film. There were some pertinent cameos from the Fox X-Men films that should have been here, but weren’t, though I understand some were filmed and then cut from the final print. The far too over used trope of the multiverse and alternate timelines rears its head yet again. Audiences have to be sick to death of this plot device because it totally lowers the stakes, where no resolution is final since if a main character dies, a replacement can just be plucked from another universe. Enough of this already.
My biggest fault would be that DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE does not really give us any guidance on where the MCU goes from here, or what role the mutants will play in it going forward. The director, Shawn Levy, who directed Reynolds in the okay comedy, FREE GUY, knows how to deliver a joke or two, or a couple of hundred, but Marvel fans want far more, and it’s doubtful that he’s the guy to deliver it. It’s going to take talent, vision, and confidence to bring the MCU back, and to successfully integrate the X-Men universe into it is going to be no small feat, and from what I’ve seen out of Disney/Marvel lately has not convinced me they can pull it off.
All in all, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE hits what it aims for, and is as good as it needs to be. Despite all the jokes at Fox’s expense, it bids farewell to that era with affection. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since an unknown Hugh Jackman became an instant icon by playing Wolverine in that first X-Men film, and he is still getting it done. “Disney brought him back. They're gonna make him do this till he's 90.”
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
It is certainly fitting that the first MCU film featuring the Marvel Mutant Universe would team up its most popular, with fans and at the box office, characters, thus we get DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, re-uniting Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the roles they have truly made their own.
What I liked about DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE:
It fully leans into letting Reynolds and Jackman commit totally to their iconic characters. Deadpool is the motor mouthed mutant killing machine with a joke for all situations, and Jackman is the surly Wolverine, hard-bitten and damaged by a violent past. These two characters are not a perfect match, and that generates great tension. Twice in the film, they really square off, and it is everything that fans could hope for.
Disney/Marvel wisely kept the film in the R rated territory staked out by the first two DEADPOOL films, which means plenty of foul language and graphic sex jokes, along with a lot of CGI gory violence. The humor is rude and crude, and the action comes fast and relentless, and though the film does slow down to get serious at a few points, it never seriously threatens the fun vibe the movie has going for it.
The plot, such as it is, is something of a cut and paste job, as Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool tries to adjust to life post DEADPOOL 2 only to discover by way of the Time Variant Authority that his particular earth and timeline is destined for destruction because its Wolverine has died (as seen in LOGAN). Determined not to let that happen, Deadpool sets out across the timelines to find another Wolverine to take the place of the one killed, happening upon a particularly dark and despondent one, who is very reluctantly pulled into the scheme, where ultimately both heroes wind up in the Void, a purgatory where the TVA throws cast off remnants from various timelines—which includes characters from various other Fox and New Line produced Marvel franchises, including some that never quite got off the ground. And there are some great in-jokes, especially at the expense of Fox, acknowledging that during the years it was putting out Marvel films, the stuff that was going on behind the scenes was every bit as dramatic as anything onscreen.
Superhero films rise and fall on the quality of their villains, and in this DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE more than meets the bar. The Void is ruled by Cassandra Nova, the Big Bad of the film, the mutant twin sister of Charles Xavier, who has near God level mental powers. Nova was the creation of Grant Morrison, and this incarnation does justice to Morrison’s vision. Emma Corrin really nails this character, and hopefully, she will turn up again to square off against the X-Men onscreen sometime in the future. The secondary villain is Mr. Paradox, a mid-level manager for the TVA, played by Matthew Macfayden—who will forever be Tom on SUCCESSION. He brings a lot to the film perfectly playing the kind of boss whose ambitions far exceed their competence.
The other great thing about DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is the cameos by a lot of characters from the Fox and New Line era, plus a few from the MCU’s glory days—it’s always good to see Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan. Of course a lot of this is just fan-service, but that beats the “subvert expectations” trope that has become too much of a thing in itself. And it really is a kick to see some of these actors back for an encore after all this time, and in the case of Channing Tatum, a look at what might have been. Chris Evans returns to the MCU, but not as the character you would think. Good to see X-23 again, along with appearances from some of the regulars from the first two Deadpool films, including the always beautiful Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Stefan Kapicic, and Karin Soni. And there is one cameo that is just way too good to spoil. For me it doesn’t quite rise to the level of SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, but that is because I am a huge Spidey fan to start with.
What I didn’t like about DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE:
Most of my problems are minor ones, like how they short changed the Juggernaut yet again in an X-Men film. There were some pertinent cameos from the Fox X-Men films that should have been here, but weren’t, though I understand some were filmed and then cut from the final print. The far too over used trope of the multiverse and alternate timelines rears its head yet again. Audiences have to be sick to death of this plot device because it totally lowers the stakes, where no resolution is final since if a main character dies, a replacement can just be plucked from another universe. Enough of this already.
My biggest fault would be that DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE does not really give us any guidance on where the MCU goes from here, or what role the mutants will play in it going forward. The director, Shawn Levy, who directed Reynolds in the okay comedy, FREE GUY, knows how to deliver a joke or two, or a couple of hundred, but Marvel fans want far more, and it’s doubtful that he’s the guy to deliver it. It’s going to take talent, vision, and confidence to bring the MCU back, and to successfully integrate the X-Men universe into it is going to be no small feat, and from what I’ve seen out of Disney/Marvel lately has not convinced me they can pull it off.
All in all, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE hits what it aims for, and is as good as it needs to be. Despite all the jokes at Fox’s expense, it bids farewell to that era with affection. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since an unknown Hugh Jackman became an instant icon by playing Wolverine in that first X-Men film, and he is still getting it done. “Disney brought him back. They're gonna make him do this till he's 90.”
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
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