“Welcome to the MCU. You’re joining at a bit of a low point.”

Deadpool versus Deadline Joseph: The King of Dreams (2000)

“Welcome to the MCU. You’re joining at a bit of a low point.”

Around the midpoint of Deadpool & Wolverine I had a rather chilling realisation during this exchange of dialogue between Elektra and Deadpool.

ELEKTRA: Every time one of us has gone up against her, they die. The Punisher, Quicksilver, Daredevil.”

DEADPOOL: “Daredevil? I’m so sorry.”

ELEKTRA: (with an indifferent shrug) “It’s fine.”

So let’s unpack this joke. Here is everything you, the viewer, need to know for this gag to land.

This is Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner.Garner first played this role over twenty years ago, in the critically reviled Daredevil, and then again in the practically unseen spin-off Elektra.In Daredevil, she was the love interest of the title character.Daredevil was played by Ben Affleck.Garner and Affleck married shortly after making that film.They subsequently underwent an extremely public and acrimonious divorce.Hence, Elektra is not particularly cut up about Daredevil dying.

And virtually every joke in this thing is that kind of inside baseball uber-specific nerd bullshit that seems positively tailormade to appeal to me, a 40 something male who had comics instead of friends growing up. And yet…this thing made €1.8 billion dollars. This is as mainstream as movies get now.

Super niche nerd culture is no longer niche. The war is over. Everyone is a massive nerd now.

Total domination.

And I now find myself in a very difficult position as a movie critic.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I laughed my ass off from start to finish.

And yet, when I read, say, Donald Clarke howling in sackcloth outside the sinful Gomorrah that is the modern movie industry, I can’t help but nod along.

This movie isn’t a movie. It’s heroin. It’s very good heroin. And I very much enjoyed it.

But…I should probably be ingesting food instead.

The concept of “Refuge in Audacity” has been kicking around since the first century A.D. and it probably, as an artform, reaches its apotheosis in the opening moments of this film.

Yes, obviously, Logan was the perfect send-off to Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine.

Agreed, there was no need to bring him back.

Glad we’re all on the same page; the only possible motivation to bring him back is pure, naked, mercantile greed by a creatively bankrupt corporation that can now only regurgitate and re-cannibalise its former glories like some great eldritch wyrm that Clive Barker would dream up after drinking tainted cough syrup.

But it’s one thing to admit that. It’s quite another to literally open the film with Deadpool desecrating Logan’s grave.

It is so fucking disgusting. So utterly depraved. So devoid of anything even remotely in conversation with common human decency and morality.

I think it might be art.

Jon Waters WISHES he could be this transgressive.

Deadpool is interrupted by the arrival of agents from the TVA, who of course were the time cops from the TV show Loki I DON’T FUCKING CARE and proceeds to dismember them using Logan’s literal corpse.

Deadpool, as is his idiom, then narrates to tell us that we have to go back to understand what’s happening here.

So after using Cable’s time doohickey to fix time and unfridge his girlfriend Wade Wilson then used it to visit the MCU (no I will not be calling it Earth 616 thank you very much) and get an interview for the Avengers with Happy Hogan. I have…um, like a billion fucking questions.

And I hate that I have a billion fucking questions because this movie runs on pure uncut “lol nothing matters” and if I try to actually engage with this thing on a narrative level it’ll just give me a wedgie and steal my lunch money.

But fine.

Wade and Vanessa’s relationship is apparently on the rocks despite him changing time to bring her back to life because he somehow feels inadequete and wants to prove to her that he matters. So he goes to ANOTHER FUCKING UNIVERSE. SOME HOW. TO JOIN A SUPERHERO TEAM. WHICH SHE HAS PROBABLY NEVER EVEN HEARD OF .

Like, say Happy Hogan gave him the job? What then? Is he going to fucking commute? Is Vanessa going to move to another universe? What is the actual…OW!

“Ha! Nice underwear NERD.”

Oh my aching nuts. In the present day, Wade is back in his own universe, working as a car salesman for Peter, split up from Vanessa because the writers just do not know what to do with these two in a relationship and is retired from his particular blend of sociopathic murder fuelled super-heroism. His surviving friends (and Shatterstar) throw him a surprise birthday party which is interrupted when Wade is abducted by the TVA and is brought into the presence of Mr Paradox who tells him that he’s been selected to be brought into the “Sacred Timeline”. Wade is cock-a-hoop but is shocked to learn that his universe is dying because it lost its “Anchor Being” (Logan) and that Mr. Paradox, not willing to let it just die peacefully in its sleep, is planning to put it down like TJ Miller’s career. Deadpool then goes on a murder quest to first exhume Logan’s corpse assuming that he’s actually still alive (in which case, why would the universe be dying?) and, when that fails, he goes on a multiversal quest to find a new Wolverine to replace his one.

It’s all creamy Grade A fan-service of the finest vintage. Patch. Comic’s Accurate Wolverine. Old Man Logan. John Byrne Logan. Age of Apocalypse Wolverine and, of course, the first filmed sighting of the legendary Cavillrine.

Marvel, make it happen and I will never give you another bad review.

Eventually he finds a Logan hanging out at a ~~lady’s cotillion~~ dive bar who is too drunk to resist his advances and takes his unconscious body back to the TVA. Said Logan is also apparently wearing the yellow Wolverine costume under his street clothes while drinking entire bottles of whiskey.

Fuck off, he’d be sweating himself to death!

Well whatever, we have Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in a comics accurate costume after twenty fucking years. Problem solved? No. Because, as Mr Paradox explains, you can’t just slot any Wolverine into your universe. Especially not this Wolverine. This is the worst Wolverine. Yes, this random Wolverine that Wade picked up is apparently the worst Wolverine in the entire multiverse.

Really?

Really?!

Wade realises that Paradox’s supervisors don’t know what mischief he’s getting up to, and so Paradox banishes both he and Logan to the Void, the universe where the TVA hides all the characters that are no longer making Disney money.

Logan is right pissed and he and Deadpool engage in a little light foreplay before they’re discovered by a dude that Deadpool assumes to be Captain America but actually turns out to be Johnny Storm aka the best thing about the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies.

So, you already know the second they arrive here that there’s going to be a Mad Max esque tribe of barbarians ruled over by a sinister leader and right on cue, the big death cars arrive driven by Pyro, Sabretooth and other mutants. Logan, Deadpool and Johnny Storm get captured and are brought before Cassandra Nova, who is Charles Xavier’s long lost twin.

“You mean “triplet” don’t you?”

“Eh?”

“You also have a brother? P. Xavier?”

“Oh yeah. How is Mummy’s Little Brownoser?”

“He lapsed into a coma after a long illness and your brother stole his body to use as a flesh suit.”

“BASTARD! I HAD DIBS!”

Cassandra, basically bald Mary Poppins gone to the dark side (and ain’t THAT a terrifying concept?) casually kills Johnny Storm with the Dark Willow special after Deadpool tells her that Johnny said some uncouth stuff about her. She then leaves Logan and Deadpool to be eaten by Alioth who was introduced in Loki I DON’T FUCKING CARE.

They escape, and run into “Nicepool” a supposedly nice variant of Deadpool who somehow gives off even more bad touch vibes than the regular one and is played by Ryan Reynolds’ real-life twin Gordon.

Nicepool gives them some advice, telling them that there’s a resistance group of heroes fighting against Cassandra and also a Deadpool Army that they don’t want smoke with. Wade tells Logan that if they can return to the TVA they can make Paradox fix his world so we got our quest. Nicepool also lends them his Honda Odyssey, a car whose modern design is perfect for quests and family adventures. From the redesigned grille and bumpers to the bold new 18 and 19 inch wheels and the LED headlights, the Honda Odyssey is the only choice for your family’s minivan needs.

“Oh what? The movie can whore itself out but I can’t? I have little mice to feed.”

After Logan realises that Deadpool was lying about being sure the TVA could fix his world, the two have a massive bloody battle in the Honda Odyssey, a car whose spacious interiors, easy cleaning upholstery and rugged Japanese design make it perfect for fights to the death.

They murder fuck each other into a deep sleep and then a mysterious figure comes and jacks their car. They wake up in the resistance base and meet the surviving members; Elektra, Blade and Gambit . So, little backstory. There was a plan to spin off an entire series of X-Men Origins movies after X-Men 3, of which X-Men Origins: Wolverine was merely the first. There was going to be a Magneto movie (much of which was later folded into First Class, )and a Gambit movie starring Channing Tatum which never left development hell and I think that’s probably for the best.

Good joke Gambit. Not good Gambit Gambit.

They also meet the last member of the team, Laura aka X-23. And aren’t we lucky that Dafne Keen was perfect to play the role as a kid and is still perfect to play the role as an adult? That rarely happens.

Anyway, Deadpool convinces the others to launch a big attack on Nova’s compound but Logan nopes out. Laura goes and talks with him and we find out just why he’s “the worst” Wolverine (actually we find out more during a scene he has with Cassandra Nova but I’m conflating the two because book edits are right up my ass and I need to finish this quick). Anyway, we find out the reason why he’s the worst Wolverine and…it’s really, really, really, really, really really, really, really dumb.

One night, when Logan was off getting pissed at the bar a group of ordinary humans showed up at the X-Mansion and killed all the X-Men. A group of X-Men, FYI, that included Cyclops…

Storm…

And uh…JEAN FUCKING GREY.

Yeah, they were all killed by a gang of random flatscans and THEN Logan went on a roaring rampage of revenge and apparently killed a lot more people than just the ones who killed his friends.

So that’s bullshit. That’s complete total bullshit. And yes, this is one of the few moments where the movie stabs at sincerity so it is fair to criticise. How would I fix it? Easy. In the story Old Man Logan a future Logan forswears violence because a supervillain messed with his senses and made him think that the X-Men were actually villains attacking the school and he massacred them all while they were too shocked to resist. In the comic it was Mysterio, which sucks, but what about if it was Cassandra Nova? Makes sense for her power set, it gives Logan a fantastic motive to be afraid of her and now Logan really is the worst Wolverine, the one who murdered the X-Men.

Anyway, the next morning the crew saddle up and head out in the Honda Odyssey, voted Best Car for Post-Apocalyptic Warfare by the American Car Association in 2020. Blade fires a bazooka which used to belong to one of the roughly 37 live-action Punishers and notes “there’s only one Blade. Only ever gonna be one Blade.”

*Sad trombone noise*

After a rather excellently choereographed fight (all the action in this movie kicks ass to be fair), Deadpool and Logan fight their way through and reach Cassandra. She quickly defeats Deadpool and gets inside Logan’s head and tries to enslave him, but wakes up to find Deadpool has clamped Juggernaut’s helmet to her head, cancelling out her powers. So now they’re at an impasse. They need Cassandra to use her powers to send them out of the Void, but if they take the helmet off she’ll kill them.

The situation is complicated when Pyro comes in and reveals that he’s been working for Paradox the whole time and shoots her. Logan punches him out but now Cassandra is dying and still promises that she’ll kill them if they take the helmet off.

Wolverine then gives her a speech about how he’s still an X-Man and he won’t kill her because he knows her brother and that’s not that Xavier would have wanted. And think how much more powerful this scene would be if they’d made the change I suggested above. I’m not saying I’m a better writer than these seasoned Hollywood professionals, I just think the evidence is compelling, that’s all.

Anyway, Cassandra actually does the honourable thing and uses a Doctor Strange ring to create a portal for them back to Deadpoool’s universe. She then wakes up Pyro and learns that Paradox betrayed her and decides to settle his hash but good.

Logan and Deadpool arrive and have to fight their way through an army of alternate Deadpool’s who just show up because. And we, finally, finally get to see a comic accurate full costume for Wolverine in liveaction.

Fucking glorious.

Cassandra arrives and takes control of Paradox’s Time Ripper, a device that he was planning on using to destroy Wade’s reality. Cassandra is all “you think too small”, and decides to erase all of the multiverse except for the Void which she will rule over as the Queen of Bald Hell.

But, by holding hands and with the power of Madonna, Logan and Deadpool are able to destroy the Time Ripper, killing Cassandra in the process. The TVA arrive and arrest Paradox and Logan is told that he can stay in Wade’s world and that they’ll see about rescuing the other heroes still trapped in the Void. And the movie ends with Logan now part of Deadpool’s circle of friends and Wade and Vanessa back together happily, until the next movie when she’ll probably be fired from a cannon into the sun or something.

***

Did I enjoy it? Yeah. Yeah, I did.

Did it make 1.3 billion dollars worldwide?

Indeed.

So that’s it? Crisis averted? The MCU is back on track?

No. Because this movie is The Sound of Music.

Just as the dying musical genre was given a temporary reprieve in the sixties by the massive success of The Sound of Music, so the moribund MCU has been given a temporary flush of good health by Deadpool & Wolverine. What it is not is a bold new way forward or a foundation for a new direction for the MCU. You can’t build a royal court around a jester. And you can’t live on fan-service and nostalgia alone. Soon enough, you run out of things that people are nostalgic for. And then? Then you start getting real desperate.

Strap in, everyone.

Scoring

Adaptation: 09/25

I’ll be honest, I fucking DESPISE continuity clean-up masquerading as big event stories. All of them. Yes, even Crisis on Infinite Earths. Overrated as fuck. And the problem with this kind of ultra meta narrative is that it’s really, really hard for me to suspend disbelief and actually care about the characters. It’s superb fan-service, and often pretty great comedy, but not a good story.

Our Heroic Heroes: 23/25

Hugh Jackman was born to play Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds was born to play Deadpool. That hasn’t changed.

Our Nefarious Villain: 20/25

Cassandra Nova is one of the most terrifyingly evil villains in comics and Emma Corrin absolutely does her justice.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 23/25

Fine. Fine! When Snipes walked in as Blade I came all over the theatre. The screen. The front rows. The back rows. I jizzed over every one of God’s creatures in that cinema. Multiple times. I soaked every inch of the place. Is that what you want me to say?!

“Jesus Christ, NO!”

The Stinger

After an actually, honest to God touching montage of the pre-MCU Marvel movies set to Good Riddance by Green Day, we cut to Deadpool in the TVA, angrily decrying the allegations that he got Johnny Storm killed, and proceeds to show us unseen footage of Johnny saying…exactly everything that ‘pool said he did. Oh, fun fact. I was going to title this review: “Cassandra Nova. A megalomaniacal, psychotic asshole. A finger licking dead-inside pixie slab of third rate dime-store nut-milk. And I’ll tell you what she can do. She can lick my goddamn cinnamon ring clean and kick rocks all the way to bald hell. In fact, I don’t give a shit if she removes all my skin and pops me like some nightmarish blood balloon. If the last thing I do in this godforsaken cum-gutter existence is light that fuck-box on fire, I still won’t die happy! That’s right, Wade. I won’t be happy until I’ve urinated on her freshly barbecued corpse and husk-fucked the charred remains while gargling Juggernaut’s juggernuts. And you can quote me.”

Bur unfortunately, WordPress’ limit on title length is a little bitch. And you can quote me.

And the audience went…

God Chris Evans is so good at comedy.

Department of Duplication Department

After a long shuttering the Department of Duplication Department has been temporarily re-opened and HOLY SHIT business is booming.

Gambit, previously played by Taylor Kitsch is now played by Channing Tatum.

Henry Cavill plays a new version of Wolverine alongside Hugh Jackman (and will replace him if Marvel know what’s good for them).

Tyler Mane reprises his role as Sabretooth after being replaced by Liev Schreiber.

Toad is now played by Daniel Medina Ramos, replacing Ray Park and Evan Jonigkeit.

Azazel is now Eduardo Munoz replacing Jason Flemyng.

Callisto swops Dania Ramirez for Chloe Kibble.

Juggernaut is played by Aaron W. Reed after being played by Vinnie Jones and a load of computer trickery.

Lady Deathstrike was played by Kelly Hu and is now played by Jade Lye.

Psylocke, who may or may not have been played by Meiling Melancon (it’s complicated) in The Last Stand, by an unidentified child actress in X-Men Origins and in Apocalypse by Olivia Munn (yes, I’d forgotten as well) is now played by Ayesha Hussain.

Blob is now Mike Waters, and no longer Kevin Durand or Giant Ouiment.

Bullseye is now played Curtis Small, replacing Wilson Bethel from the Netflix Daredevil and Colin Farrell in the movie.

And for those that care, Arclight, who was previously played by Omahyra Mota is now played by Jessica Walker.

I…think I may have severe OCD.

How worried is Guinan right now?

Guinan was killed by New Mutants. I feel sometimes you people don’t pay attention to the lore.

Wait, Magneto is how old?

Magneto was apparently killed by Cassandra Nova so it’s kind of a moot point.

Mutant Heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors.

Shatterstar is back and alive with absolutely no explanation which, if you’re going to do that to me, at least explain why.

Hey, was that Stan Lee?

That was Stan Lee, on the side of a bus advertising “Stanlee Steamer” the cleaning company.