Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Rated R and Marvel is super proud of that.  While the f-bombs are akin to what we've seen with other Deadpool movies, Deadpool & Wolverine just amps up how much violence and gore there is.  I mean, the other ones are violent.  This one is priding itself on the gore going through the roof.  There are sex and drug references all through the film, but this movie is tamer in terms of sex and drugs.  The movie is trying to offend on a certain level, so keep all of that in mind when taking children to see the newest R-rated MCU film.  

DIRECTOR: Shawn Levy

Be forewarned!  I'm not the biggest Deadpool fan in the world.  Things that I think are true: 1) Ryan Reynolds is very funny and a perfect Deadpool.  2)  These movies are fun and incredibly watchable.  3) Ultimately, these movies are fine. Like, I get it.  The jokes are funny.  But the whole meta thing sometimes gets to be a bit much.  I absolutely think that these movies should exist and I always have a pretty good time at these movies, but I'm never going to be part of the Deadpool Parade.  So keep all of that in mind when I'm not absolutely in love with Deadpool & Wolverine. 

I remember a time when there were three MCU movies in the theater at the same time.  A lot has changed since then.  Disney has limited MCU films to apparently one per year.  The crazy part is that the only MCU movie we're getting in 2024 is an R-rated MCU movie that I can't take my kids to. Sure, we got a couple of TV shows.  Heck, we got Loki season 2, and that's some of the best stuff that the MCU has made.  (By the way, for all of the cameos in this movie, how is Owen Wilson not in this film?)  As the only MCU movie this year, there's a lot on this movie's shoulders.  Part of it comes from the idea that I want the meta-narrative to be pushed forward.  Now, I'm in the minority (which has been confirmed by Deadpool & Wolverine itself) that actually really likes the Multiverse Saga.  I think Marvel, for the most part, has kept up its tradition of excellence.  But on top of needing to continue the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, Deadpool & Wolverine is also the movie that is responsible for bringing Hugh Jackman out of Wolverine retirement for a movie that should, by all intents and purposes, be the ultimate Wolverine movie.   There's a lot on this movie's shoulders.

While that responsibility falls on Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and Kevin Feige, I don't know if it lived up to that expectation.  This movie got sold hard.  Like, really hard.  Like, it was going to be some top tier Marvel according to them.  I will say, it does exactly what it should, but it should not have been lauded as this great return to greatness for Marvel.  Really, Deadpool & Wolverine is a great Deadpool movie and an even better Wolverine movie, but it isn't objectively one of those movies that is going to change things.  We've been waiting for mutants.  Mutants still kind of only exist in another timeline. We've been waiting for Deadpool and Wolverine to join the main canon.  That still isn't true.  Instead, we have this as a finale to a different universe that has nothing to do with main MCU canon.

As a fond farewell to the 20th Century Fox movies, this movie absolutely slaps.  It's such a lovely goodbye to an effort that pulled off a proto-MCU before Marvel Studios formalized what is considered the Sacred Timeline.  I don't think anyone would deny that first and foremost, this movie is a roast of what came before it.  Deadpool movies are silly.  They're meant to be silly.  But these are jokes told with love.  After all, Feige cut his teeth on these movies.  He learned what it meant to make quality superhero movies.  And, sure, the 20th Century Fox Marvel movies have probably been more miss than hit.  But these were movies that were made with an intention to bring quality storytelling to the big screen.  As much as we kind of giggle in Deadpool & Wolverine, I was genuinely happy to see some of the characters that showed up from non-MCU films. 

Honestly, there's a top-tier movie in here if you really trimmed it down.  When the movie takes itself with a modicum of seriousness, there's a pretty solid film.  A lot of that comes from MVP Hugh Jackman, who hasn't lost a step as Wolverine. Sweet mercy, I was ready to give him a little bit of a pass when it came to this character.  Sure, he's done it a million times before.  But I've been watching the press circuit with goofy, giggly Hugh Jackman, seemingly giddy to be hanging out with Ryan Reynolds, and I forgot that the guy knew how to give old knifehands so much pathos. Honestly, the dude delivers on every single beat that he's in.  He never breaks character.  I know that we had an R-Rated Wolverine in Logan before, but somehow he never got lost in the campiness that is a Deadpool movie.  Part of me was going to be disappointed that this wasn't the Wolverine from the X-Men movies.  I don't know why that bothered me.  Maybe because I invested so much into that character that seeing someone who had the same actor, but a different story seemed disingenuous.  But honestly, Jackman made me really like this Wolverine.  He's a little bit of a "What If...", but I didn't mind that at all.  The movie works with what we have with this character.  I cannot stress this enough: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in this movie fit like a glove.  He seemed like a young man doing it all over again.

But that leaves me with the rest of the movie.  I can't stress this enough.  This movie is incredibly funny.  It absolutely nails what Deadpool is all about.  But if a Deadpool movie is a balancing act between diagetic storytelling and meta jokes, this movie might be going too far into the meta world of the MCU. We all get it.  Deadpool is aware of the world of comic books.  He's aware that he's in a movie.  That's fun.  But this was some inside baseball stuff that went a little too far.  There were a lot of moments where I could feel myself being totally insufferable and explaining a lot of the jokes to my wife.  Having to explain Blade: Trinity jokes was almost a step too far.  That's kind of the problem with Deadpool though.  Deadpool desperately wants to do both.  He wants to be a satire of the comic book movie character while simultaneously being the quintessential comic book movie character.  I don't know if Deadpool really grew in the ways that I wanted him to go with this movie.  Considering that this was the movie that everyone seems to really like, I found myself a little tired of this deep dive into the cinematic history of Marvel movies.

But again, it's all well and good.  There's a very good chance that I'll end up owning this movie on Blu-ray.  I'll watch it a few times.  I'll have a good time each time I watch it.  Seriously, it's that fun.  But in terms of actual comic book storytelling, I got really bored with the Void.  The Void was slightly tiring on the few episodes of Loki that we got.  Having a big budget tentpole movie take place almost entirely in the Void seemed like a bridge too far.  The MCU really hadn't advanced that much because of this film.  It kind of felt like another inconsequential side story, despite the fact that it opened the doors to a lot of potential superheroes showing up in a potential future Avengers film.  I wanted a "Can you believe that they changed everything?" and really ended up with "I suppose that you could use these elements later on."   

It's good, not great.  Hugh Jackman?  Great.  The movie as a whole?  Fun, but okay.