*Disclaimer: I wrote the following review the Monday after seeing Deadpool & Wolverine opening night and gave it one or two revisions afterward. I realize that it's rather nitpicky and overly negative, but I'm the kind of broken person who can't not post my opinions about these sorts of things on the internet. Read at your own risk.
I was never going to love Deadpool and Wolverine as much as a lot of people. I find Deadpool, especially the movie version, to be tiring. A long time ago, I commented on a Thunderbolts run that featured deadpool being perfect, because I can take about 20% of a comic book featuring Deadpool per month. A full 2 hour movie every few years seems about right, as long as you don't factor in the hype cycle that comes before and armchair analysis that follows. Of course for the latter, I'm part of the problem, but what are you going to do?
I also don't hold Hugh Jackman in as high of a regard as many people do. He's a fine Wolverine, but especially in his last few films, he's not the kind of guy who is going to get underestimated. He's this 8 foot tall guy with impossible muscles. Wolverine should be about 5 foot nothing and built like a decently in shape guy, but he shouldn't be able to scare you off with a look the way Jackman's portrayal does. I still enjoy his take on the character, but these little hangups mean I'd really like to see someone else get the chance. For me, he isn't linked to the character the way that Chris Evans or Robert Downey Junior are linked to Captain America and Iron Man.
To make matters worse, I actually really liked Logan. I had criticisms. It was too violent, and I was afraid that its success would teach studios the wrong lesson that people just want hyper violent R rated super hero films, which happened to a degree but not as bad as I thought it would. Still, Logan was an interesting take on the character, and adapted an idea from one of my all time favorite Wolverine stories. Plus it introduced X-23, a favorite character of mine. And it did something comic books rarely do. It gave us an ending for a major character.
But I felt obligated to see the movie. This was the first movie that was going to intermingle the MCU and the Fox Universe, and early reviews had warned me to watch out for spoilers, so I saw it opening night. I got off work at six and raced through a drive thru before arriving at the theater just in time for the 6:30 showing. The crowd was great. Not since I saw an advanced screening of Venom years ago have I been in a theater full of fans this excited. It definitely made me enjoy the film more than I would otherwise.
The opening fight scene with Deadpool fighting while doing the Bye Bye Bye dance was pretty great. That sequence alone made the film worth watching. Unfortunately, what followed for a while was a collection of jokes that didn't land or weren't funny six months ago when I saw the trailer. And of course there was no heart to any of it. I guess the Avengers scene with Happy Hogan was pretty good, but felt like I could have been watching an SNL sketch, a Funny or Die video on youtube, or at best a DVD special feature. Not something worth going to the movies for.
But pretty quickly we get into the bit with the TVA, where the guy from Succession is going to destroy Deadpool's world, which we now establish is definitely the world from the X-Men movies and the world from Logan, something that was unclear previously. Personally I had it in my head-cannon that Logan was its own continuity what with taking place in the future and all that. Then again, maybe it did, because the events of Logan definitely took place in present day in this timeline.
This leads to the macguffin of Deadpool finding a new Wolverine. We get a great sequence of Deadpool jumping from world to world and seeing different versions of Wolverine. Starting with a very bad CGI of a short Wolverine, played off as a joke. But then going through a number of great versions of the character, including Age of Apocalypse, Old Man Logan, first appearance fighting The Hulk, and Wolverine sitting at a bar with the blue and yellow suit under his clothes.
Just an aside about Wolverine's costume in this movie. It's not comic accurate. It's somewhere between the leather suit he wore in the X-Men movies and the hockey pad looking suits that the MCU and Arrowverse gravitate toward. There wouldn't be anything wrong with this except that the film is so self-congratulatory about finally putting Wolverine in a costume.
Something about Disney, probably the most dominant company in the film industry, criticizing the works of a company that they spent years trying to acquire until they were eventually successful rubs me the wrong way. This was the same company who stopped creatives from making new mutants in the comics and canceled the Fantastic Four book out of spite. We talk a lot about punching up versus punching down when discussing comedy, and this really felt like punching down.
If they just gave him a costume without commenting on it, it would have been all upside. And yeah, I know that Deadpool is all about meta commentary and stuff, but that's something where I personally think less is more. The She-Hulk show for example I thought did a good job with it. But on top of everything, there was something different about Deadpool speaking as a representative of Fox in the earlier movies, being self-aware and maybe poking fun at the more successful company. At this point, he's gone from the underdog where everyone involved had to fight to get the movie made to the guy at the top of the food chain laughing at those less fortunate.
So anyway, back to the film. Wolverine and Deadpool are sent to that place from the first season of Loki and we get a string of cameos. First, we see Chris Evans, who makes us think he's Steve Rogers, but turns out to be Johnny Storm from the old Fantastic Four movies. It was a legitimately great moment and totally caught me off guard. Immediately I was like “Okay so it's going to be this type of movie.” There are a bunch of random X-Men actors, including Sabertooth, who Wolverine beheads. It's an intentionally underwhelming fight, but that doesn't make it clever.
Also, there was a long fight between Wolverine and Deadpool earlier and Deadpool convinced Wolverine to help him because the TVA might be able to fix this big ominous mistake or something. The movie doesn't really care about the plot. Why should we?
We meet Cassandra Nova, the villain of the piece, who is Professor Xavier's evil twin. She's an interesting idea, but in a film full of cameos, it feels like they couldn't find a villain for this role. And we don't really get enough time with her to make her feel especially important.
Logan and Wade escape her and run into Nicepool and Dogpool, a couple of Deadpool varients... Nicepool loans them a Honda Odyssey and they go off on their way until they have another forgettable and overly long fight sequence. It does end with a closeup on the Coexist bumper sticker on the Honda Odyssey, which I like.
And we get to the resistance base to find that the resistance consists of Electra and Blade, played by Jennifer Garner and Wesley Snipes, Gambit played by Channing Tatum, and X-23 aka Laura. This scene is pretty exemplary of the movie. It is all fan service. The actors try, but are given very little to work with. Perhaps the most disappointing part of the film is a moment between Laura and Logan where Logan tells her about how he got his team killed. This would have been a great framing device for a flashback to show us something about this version of Logan's world, maybe justifying his name being in the title of the film, but we needed 3 extended scenes of Wolverine and Deadpool fighting each other so we didn't have time for emotional growth. Laura's line telling him “You were always the wrong guy” should have been the most powerful line in the movie, but it made me feel nothing.
And in spite of everything, Logan ends up showing up to the fight with Cassandra Nova where the cameos bravely sacrifice themselves to get Juggernaut's helmet and stop Cassandra. Except not really, because they somehow survive. There's even a little bit where Cassandra gets into Deadpool's head. Another missed opportunity for character growth.
Jumping back to Logan's sad backstory, he's supposed to be the worst Wolverine in the entire multiverse just because he got drunk and came home to his friends all being dead? Wolverine is the last surviving X-Man in basically every timeline that depicts a “terrible future” in every version of the X-Men, including the one in Logan. Make him responsible for a genocide or something. Or don't make the guy from succession say he's the worst Wolverine. If this is about self-growth and getting past your mistakes, then make Wolverine say it about himself.
The final act involves more fan service. Logan puts on his mask for the first time, which is really cool, but looks weird because of his facial hair sticking out. They fight the Deadpool Corps, which is a group of 100 or so varients of Deadpool, including a lady, a power ranger, a samurai, a floating head, and about 90 dudes that have no distinguishing characteristics.
And the finale involves one or both of them sacrificing themselves and then when they work together they survive. This should have been totally my jam. Self-sacrifice, inspiring heroism, good over evil, etc. But I felt nothing.
There were definitely parts of the film that I loved, and a lot of the comedy worked for me. Unfortunately, none of the emotional beats hit, the plot was just non-existent. I didn't even bring up the idea of an Anchor Being or the clip of deadpool dying in Thor's arms that they kept referencing. At the end of the day, I can only be shocked by seeing Jennifer Garner once, and after Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, The Flash, and the Arrowverse all showed that you can bring back actors to play characters they played before, it doesn't hit as hard as it has in the past, especially if you don't do it as well.
Into the Spiderverse told a story using the multiverse, but it wasn't about the easter eggs and cameos. It was about the story. The sequel increased the scope and definitely had some cameos and Easter Eggs, but was still a Spider-Man story at heart. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness had Sam Raimi's voice behind it, and while it had fan service of introducing the x-men and Fantastic Four, it also killed them off and had almost a slasher film vibe. Crisis on Infinite Earths in the Arrowverse shows was closer to a gimmick, but the cameos were on a scale that hadn't really been done before. Both The Flash and No Way Home limited their crossover characters and really let you spend time with them.
Deadpool & Wolverine succeeds at being funny and is full of fun easter eggs. James Mangold, the director of Logan, recently had a quote taken out of context and misinterpreted about multiverses being the death of storytelling. If you put the quote in a little more context, he was talking about why he didn't cast Joaquin Phoenix in his upcoming Bob Dylan movie, establishing a shared Walk the Line Universe. And he brought up the fact that if you fill your films with a mix of previous continuity and easter eggs, it makes the experience of watching a film a mental exercise at the expense of the emotional impact of the story. I don't totally agree with this sentiment, but if ever there was a film that proved it, it is Deadpool & Wolverine.
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