Review: Deadpool & Wolverine

Deadpool & Wolverine scene. Courtesy of Jay Maidment/20th Century/Marvel Studios

Released: July 2024

Director: Shawn Levy

Reviewer rating: 4/10

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has an identity crisis, but this isn’t news to most. In fact, it’s been widely reported on. The overwhelming amount of new projects, a lack of clear direction, a decline of noticeable artistic intent, and an inability to offer anything new or different have all been well discussed symptoms of the dreaded “superhero fatigue” that’s led to the gradual decaying of the most formidable cinematic titan of the 2010s. 

Every now and again they manage another hit (“Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”), but for anyone paying attention to the general attitude towards Disney’s continued efforts to keep their most lucrative gravy train pushing forward on the tracks, the boundless adoration they received during the franchise’s prime has been turning more towards doubt and apprehension as the bubble comes dangerously close to bursting (which, don’t worry, Deadpool in all his wit and wisdom cheekily acknowledges).

Marvel was on top of the world in 2019, when all three of their releases that year made over $1 billion, and “Avengers Endgame,” the ultimate payoff of over ten years of interconnected plotting and buildup, briefly became the highest grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation). But what goes up must come down, and the almost incomprehensible scale of crossover climaxing “Endgame” achieved was the jump off point for most average audience members. 

In Marvel’s increasingly desperate attempts to stay at the center of the cultural conversation, upping the ante of the team-up event film they helped popularize and following in the footsteps of the runaway success “Into the Spider-Verse,” they made the decision to start integrating stories from outside their established universe with “No Way Home,” pulling in characters from the two standalone Spider-Man series of Sam Raimi and Marc Webb. Though now, instead of dragging and dropping from across the multiverse while keeping the central narrative intact, the all consuming black hole of corporate synergy has tried to incongruently shove a whole separate franchise into the threads of this overstuffed loom.

Enter: “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the third film in the “Deadpool” series, itself a part of the former 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men” franchise, along with the most recent entry into Disney’s MCU and their attempt at easing the fan favorite, patently successful iteration of the character developed by Ryan Reynolds in the previous two films without resetting continuity. To do that involves the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a multidimensional police force that keeps all of spacetime and its infinite realities in check, who have selected Deadpool, Wade Wilson (Reynolds), to join the Avengers and prove that he “really matters.” 

Though that comes with a catch: the timeline he comes from, and where all his friends and loved ones still live, is about to be erased by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), a rogue TVA agent hellbent on having it “mercy killed” after its millennial long unwinding was triggered by the death of Wolverine, James “Logan” Howlett (Hugh Jackman), at the end of “Logan”… in the future. Confusing, I know. Deadpool then abandons the TVA to find an alternate Wolverine in a last ditch effort to save his timeline from imminent destruction, but the one he does get his hands on has been left disillusioned after some mysterious tragedy, and the two must work out their differences if Wade doesn’t want all he knows to cease existing.

If all that sounds like a lot, the classic comic book expository passages render it all in a straight forward and easy to grasp manner, if aggressively so. All that matters is that this is a Deadpool movie and, besides the presence of the TVA in the story (introduced in the Disney+ series “Loki”) and some more references to Disney, it’s largely the same experience as the preceding entries, meaning all the same shortcomings with little net positives. 

For starters, the comedic writing continues to be incredibly one note and repetitive, and the 5(!!) credited writers follow pretty much the exact same conventions of the last two films. Deadpool (or others) will either A) simply state an expletive B) say or imply something sexual C) make some on the nose topical/pop culture reference D) point out common narrative tropes/principles or E) smugly insult the movie itself to try and negate any criticism. 

Deadpool and Wolverine get dropped in a desert wasteland? He’ll relate the film to “Mad Max,” and even name-drop the recently released “Furiosa.” A character alludes to their yet to be revealed backstory? Deadpool will make sure to clarify that will come at the end of the second act, since this is a movie, and he will remind you that you are watching one. Deadpool sees a Honda Odyssey, announces this to the audience, and complains about how bad it is, which is meant to be funny because that’s a car from the real world. “Logan” offered a very moving and fitting end to Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine, and him returning for this film (possibly) dampens the power of that story? Don’t worry, Deadpool is aware of this, so it doesn’t matter if that’s exactly what he does. 

The humor in the film is so tired and low effort, Deadpool at one point literally asks, “he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he,” the epitome of artificial witty writing that people use as a jab against Marvel and its disciples. To make matters worse, in a misguided ploy to freshen up his catalog, Reynolds spouts buzzwords like “feminist,” “woke,” or “canceled” with zero intelligence of how to use them in a meaningful way. If that kind of stuff is entertaining to you, fair enough. It’s what carried the first two “Deadpools” to a combined gross of over $1.5 billion. But these aren’t jokes, just inappropriate phrases and obvious statements delivered with Reynolds’ nasally snark. There was exactly one actually clever, constructed joke that made me so much as chuckle, with every other quip either bouncing right off me or sending shockwaves through my body because of how lazy and predictable they were. 

Any possible remedy to the lack of cleverness in the writing isn’t found in the rest of the film. Deadpool wants to reference the “Mad Max” films, which have become legendary due to George Miller’s formal ingenuity and singular creativity in world-building and design, but does this film feature an ounce of that same talent? No, there’s a single fairly interesting location in this multiverse trash heap dubbed “The Void”, where the TVA sends any undesirables hindering the flow of time, constructed from the weathered carcass of a giant sized Ant-Man. Though even this set feels cramped and can’t shake the appearance of a sound stage, and none of the costumes are anywhere near as imaginative as even the least visible background extra from Miller’s films. Besides, it’s not a stretch to claim that director Shawn Levy (“Free Guy,” “The Adam Project”) isn’t exactly a visual maestro. 

His shooting style isn’t only absent of personality, there isn’t any consideration to speak of. Nearly every scene is composed solely of handheld mediums and close-ups, with shot/reverse shot editing in place of the slightest bit of staging or blocking, and the same flat lighting and bland color palette Marvel has completely embraced at this point. 

At least some of the action is decent (which has always been the “Deadpool” films’ semi-reliable strength), but even that comes with a caveat. 

The initial sequence that accompanies the opening credits, where Deadpool dispatches a legion of TVA agents with an… unconventional weapon, is conceptually interesting, the two obligatory bouts with his reluctant adamantium-clawed partner in crime are competently assembled and feature some amusingly gnarly attacks that the hard R-rating allows, which constitute the majority of the thought put into the film, and a single shot side scrolling massacre of Deadpool and Wolverine against a battalion of Deadpool variants is very slick and clean. However, there’s a truly horrendous sequence about eighty minutes in that’s an absolute mess of shaky cam and hack job editing bereft of rhythm.

Dragging back Jackman as Wolverine could have worked if Levy and co. came up with a good reason to have him, but they were seemingly content with simply putting him in a comic accurate costume and hastily slapped together some material for him with all the care of a high schooler starting their final paper the night before it’s due. “Logan” is pointed to quite often, with its musical theme appearing a few times, and even clips of its most impactful moments played back for audiences to remember how much they liked it. This positive memory is all “Deadpool & Wolverine” relies on to invest audiences in the character, since the Wolverine featured here isn’t even the same one Jackman played between 2000 and 2017. We’re just meant to look at his face and recognize it as the one we’ve seen before in better movies, while he spends most of his screen time looking angry and telling Deadpool to shut up. Any meager shot it does take at developing this new version comes too few and far between, despite Jackman’s clear love for the character shining through the thinness of the script.

Though Logan isn’t the only familiar face to be plastered on screen to goad an applause from the audience, as “Deadpool & Wolverine” follows in the shameless tradition of “The Flash” in parading a series of cheap cameos from decades old films. But hey, Deadpool is aware of how gratuitous they’re being, so it’s all good, right? No, laziness is laziness, even when it’s admitted to. When will we see the end of studios misappropriating iconography with no regard for what those icons represent, or trying to capture the spirit of where they originate? At least in “No Way Home” the characters had some inherent connection to the Spider-Man mythos and were naturally integrated into the narrative, and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” turned its Illuminati of fan casting and legacy characters into a series of violent gags upon their deaths (along with having the feeling of being made by a distinct artist and not produced on a conveyor belt). There’s little about the specific cameos in this film, or how they’re utilized, that warrant their appearance other than “because we’ve seen them before.”

The narrative itself also has little to offer for those left unimpressed by the shallow fan service. This has the villain problem that many superhero films have; all bark and no bite, a showy megalomaniac personality with barely any depth behind it. Macfadyen is chewing up the scenery as the sadistically bureaucratic Paradox, but his motivation ends at being apathetic, which isn’t the most compelling for an antagonist. Plus, anyone who actually took the time to watch the two seasons of “Loki” will know the TVA has been restructured to maintain instead of destroy branching universes. 

Paradox mentions this, saying he doesn’t care for the change of heart in his superiors, but it begs the question of why suddenly reverse a status quo that was so recently changed? What’s the point of this endless glut of content if there’s no effort to adhere to it and excuses are made to contradict previous entries? There is another villain the two heroes contend with, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), a powerful telekinetic and telepathic mutant and the formidable ruler of The Void. Corrin too is having fun by crafting a creepy and sinister screen presence, but the character itself is similarly lost in the mix. Her most memorable aspect is the freaky way she reads people’s minds by inserting her fingers into their heads, the tips protruding out the other side, an admittedly inspired visual.

The calculated franchise plotting is so rigorous and exhausting, following a tiring pattern of re-establish status quo at the beginning of scene, explaining why characters must move to the next scene, mixing in a constant onslaught of “jokes,” moving to the next scene, possibly insert action beat, rinse and repeat. The dialogue is all mechanical and unnatural, serving the sole purpose of maintaining the relentless forward momentum of the plot, lest it be apparent how empty the film is beyond that. The one or two moments it does slow down for a shot at emotional resonance, formulaic choices are made to force an unearned response. 

The most insultingly manipulative trick comes in the middle of the climax, where a montage of scenes from earlier in the film, scenes that should still be fresh in the minds of audience members, are shown to emphasize just how important the current scene is. If the film had done its job up to this point, we wouldn’t need to be reminded of what we just watched for this cathartic release to have a significant impact. But the film is not memorableand does not leave you with anything to feel besides the momentary dopamine rush from being pandered to that dissipates as soon as the lights of the theater lobby wash away most of the previous two hours. 

There isn’t anything wrong with enjoying a film such as this. The inevitable defense that it was “made for the true fans” isn’t incorrect, but for anyone not approaching it from that diehard perspective, and who’s interested in it as a film first and fan service second, won’t find much to be satisfied by.