★★★
If you thought Deadpool and Wolverine would exercise an iota of patience before pulling out its show pony – Hugh Jackman’s return to his X-Men origins – then you were wrong. Shaun Levy’s trio are only seconds away from the action when Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool wields the shovel with which he will dig up old man Logan’s grave. It’s a delightfully tasteless opening to an often tasteless and delightful film. Funny, brash and nonchalantly bloody, Except, wait, the body inside has wasted away. Only the skeleton remains. The bare bones of past glory. It seems appropriate and, for once, not ironic. For all the gags caused here at Marvel’s expense, this Merc has none of the answers for long-term rejuvenation.
Certainly, many problems have been present in almost every MCU release since End of Game to impregnate, to permeate Deadpool and Wolverine. Jokes about overlong runtimes, frivolous cameos, and stupid plot holes hardly make a movie shorter, sharper, or smarter. There’s no denying that a large majority of the gags land – and land hard – but there’s an aftertaste, compounded by a sense of excess cine-literacy. When Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool addresses Wolverine (Jackman) whom he joins “at a slightly lower point”, he is not wrong. It’s funny that the joke is, the more the film recalls its topicality, the more you have to wonder who or what the audience is laughing at. The carcass ? You don’t need to know the box office receipts of Marvels to have heard about the era’s past.
And yet, Deadpool knows the fate of the studio’s biggest recent failures. It’s his thing. He is the hero best known for punching a glory hole through the fourth wall with a wink, before finally ripping it to shreds. Here it’s skillfully, if not cleverly, done and uses plenty of side dividers. Highlights include the disappearance of a Marvel legend, apparently for its budgetary demands, and the wicked image of a giant 20th Century Fox logo, half-buried in the cosmic cesspool of the film’s Mad Max riffing, in where much of the action takes place. This is the first X-Men film produced by Disney and there is no room for pity. Within minutes, Reynolds announced his character as “Marvel Jesus.”
However, first, the film finds Deadpool in retirement, a rejection from Avengers stalwart Hsppy Hogan (Jon Favreau), leaving him down and depressed. Notions of what it actually means to matter in this world turn out to be a surprisingly effective emotional avenue. With his costume in ruins, the unmasked Wade now works for the same car dealership that his best friend and number one cheerleader Peter (Rob Delaney) thrives at. It’s Peter who keeps the old red suit. He’s the only one who thinks Wade has unfinished business with Deadpool. Only him, of course, until TVA bigwig Mr. Paradox (a decorator and surprisingly camp Matthew Macfadyen) has Wade kidnapped from his own birthday party as part of a recruiting drive Loki-style.
Paradox was tasked with shutting down Wade’s reality, his timeline variant. Logan’s death has stripped the timeline of its anchor and implosion is inevitable. Wade, having none of it, vows to fight back, finding an alternate Logan from an alternate timeline, but ultimately sending them both into TVA’s inter-dimensional garbage pit – they call it “the Empty “. From there, the plot follows in line with that of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, with all the ups and downs that entails. Or Deadpool and Wolverine benefits from the same unlimited possibilities as Quantumania, he suffers from the same feeling of weightlessness. The stakes are as low as the humor is flippant. Indeed, when everything takes place in a non-reality and you have no doubt that your heroes will survive, there can be no danger.
Deadpool and Wolverine there is also a risk of leaning towards complacency. A viewer is unlikely to enter the film from a vacuum, but a lack of contextual understanding would render large swaths of the dialogue and action completely incomprehensible. The cameos, Easter eggs, and jokes are so densely populated that the film almost fails to function on its own and on its own terms. This isn’t the kind of freewheeling character study that you’ll emerge from with a more intimate understanding of and relationship with the central duo. Thelma and Louise escape the void only fleetingly, more self-aware than when they arrived, no matter how much fun they had in the process.
This is all very good. Deadpool and Wolverine will fly with the right audience, which overall is still pretty massive. And yet, it’s fun with conditions. Deadpool is no longer an outlier in the MCU, and while it’s wise to redefine the franchise in his not-too-serious image, there’s also a risk. A closing credits homage to the Fox years exposes both the softer underbelly of snark and a continued fixation on looking back. When Reynolds teases Jackman that Disney will have him working until he’s 90, it’s another joke that rings too true. Just look at Dick Van Dyke.
T.S.