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From the very first scene, Wade Wilson is squatting in the grave of Wolverine and the X-Men cinematic universe he helped build. This is not a metaphor. The film literally opens with Ryan Reynolds’ crimson-clad dynamo six feet deep in the hole Hugh Jackman’s superhero was buried beneath at the end of Logan, desperate to resurrect the past—or at least exhume the corpse of it for a gag.
It is not a metaphor, and yet it happily invites one all the same while watching Deadpool & Wolverine, the third fourth-wall-knocking laugher starring Reynolds and an endless barrage of dick jokes. Often funny ones too. Marketed as a long-overdue buddy comedy about the most popular (and lucrative) characters in Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s respective oeuvres, Deadpool & Wolverine is indeed quite giggle-inducing when it slouches back into the iconography of its leads and watches what happens when you stuff two short tempers in a Honda Odyssey for an extended road trip. (Hint: those stains are never going to come out.)
However, the movie seeks to do a number of other things at the same time as well, including be yet another swan song for the Fox era X-Men movies while also standing tall as the next chapter in the eye-watering 34-movies-and-counting Marvel Cinematic Universe. It feels the simultaneous weight of being an ending and a beginning, human centipede-ing itself between the already creaky continuity left by two decades of Fox X-Men movies and the even more impenetrable multiverse-canon of the post-Endgame MCU. Deadpool being Deadpool allows Reynolds—who is also a co-writer and producer on the film—to have some fun at Disney’s expense. More than once he turns at the camera and mocks the timey-wimey nonsense Marvel finds itself in nowadays, even consoling Jackman that he’s finally made it to the MCU “at a bit of a low point.”
The knowing chuckle from the audience does not blunt the truth in that one-liner though, and Deadpool & Wolverine’s attempt to address it leads the movie to falling in the traps that have bedeviled so many recent MCU movies: Deadpool & Wolverine ultimately becomes a long, long, long parade of fan-servicing cameos and a Swiss cheese, hang-dog plotline that turns itself into knots in order to justify every last walk-on wink from the past 25 years. Any emotional heft, such as it is, comes from nods to older, better movies, including the remains of Logan’s heart that Deadpool might yet find buried, as well his own more whole self left by memories of halcyon days in Deadpool and Deadpool 2.
Still, there is a genuinely crowd-pleasing comedy here, and it comes whenever all the TVA talking heads and villainous exposition prattle is dropped for long stretches, and Reynolds and Jackman just get to bicker like an immortal The Odd Couple. Only Felix and Oscar now have claws and a bloodlust that never breaks.
The setup that makes that possible is again due to the TVA (or Time Variance Authority). They’re the inter-dimensional bureaucrats from the Disney+ series Loki. One especially efficient pencil-pusher there, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfayden), has apparently dubbed the timeline where all the Fox X-Men movies exist as ripe for demolition. Why should this world carry on now that its beloved Wolverine is dead? So Paradox has gone rogue and plans to destroy it in a plot-friendly 72 hours. That gives him just enough time to offer Reynolds’ loquacious Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, a one-way ticket out and into the “sacred timeline” where the rest of the MCU heroes reside.
Instead Wade is justifiably outraged that some empty suits are going to say everyone he knows—including his beloved Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), cab driver Dopinder (Karan Soni), and sweet, sweet sugar bear Peter (Rob Delaney), all back for about five minutes of screen time—do not deserve to exist. There is something even faintly delicious about the film criticizing media executives deciding on a whim which universe or storyline “counts.” The movie brushes past that though to get to its real goal: Wade going rogue and stealing TVA technology to find a new Wolverine for his timeline, ultimately settling on a yellow-clad loser Logan (Jackman) who might have gotten his whole X-Men team killed in his own timeline (it’s vague). But when attempting to bring this especially broody mutie into the Fox-Verse, Deadpool and Wolverine find themselves inadvertently condemned to the Void: a desert wasteland between time and space filled with nerd-friendly cameos and one tyrannical warlord, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin).
Deadpool & Wolverine is neither coy or oblivious about where its greatest strengths remain. They’re right there in the title. While the film is far from the strongest entry in either the Deadpool or Wolverine franchises, it’s also far from the worst. Director Shawn Levy has built his career on making serviceable star vehicle comedies, including for Reynolds (Free Guy) and Jackman (Real Steel). He dutifully sets them up to look good in Deadpool & Wolverine too, even as especially in Jackman’s case it’s almost a victory lap.
The concept of an Old Man Logan filled with regret and waiting to die alone was more or less where we found him in the last two Wolverine movies, and it’s where we find him here. But there’s a looseness to Jackman this go-round, and not just because he’s finally wearing the yellow spandex he eschewed in the original X-Men films. This is a Wolverine played by an actor with nothing left to prove, and he’s only too happy to be the grumpy straight man opposite Reynolds, who three films deep has never looked more comfortably flippant.
Seemingly born with a preternatural gift for the ironic one-liner, Reynolds knows how to sell the arched eyebrow, even when it’s hidden by a mask. Whether it’s turning to the camera to make a crack about Jackman in The Music Man or the actor breaking character to acknowledge Disney will have them doing these roles until they’re 90, Deadpool remains the eerily perfect vehicle for Reynolds’ specific brand of humor.
Nevertheless, the emotional core that made the previous Deadpool movies unexpectedly sweet, especially the first one, is largely absent in Deadpool & Wolverine. There is the aforementioned ticking clock about saving “the only nine people in the world I care about,” but those nine people are in the film for fewer minutes than an army of Deadpool variants that audiences have already seen hinted at in the trailers. Any emotional resonance comes from how much audiences remember the older movies, which makes the choice to replay the ending scene of Logan several times throughout Deadpool & Wolverine a bold, if not entirely wise decision. The threequel happily desecrates that too—the final Deadpool 3 trailer already revealed one of the biggest cameos in the film from that tearjerker—but it never approaches the grace of Jackman’s previous swan song, even as Deadpool & Wolverine contorts itself into being an extended postscript for it.
To be fair, though, this was always meant to be a comedy and when it’s funny, it had my audience cackling. Fans with especially long memories of superhero movies made outside of the MCU will be rewarded by some perversely deep cuts. It just might have gone down a lot smoother if it wasn’t so enamored with multiverses, lore, and laborious world-building. The movie is gregarious when Reynolds and Jackman are stuck in a car together. When they’re fighting warlords on a desert wasteland that Reynolds smirks “feels very Mad Maxian,” less so. But then, it does no one any favors to remind viewers what a George Miller movie looks like when you’re in the hands of the director of Night at the Museum. Indeed, Deadpool & Wolverine is the flattest and most graywashed of any Deadpool or Wolverine flick.
Deadpool & Wolverine is a serviceable cut of pure, unadulterated fan service. In fact, you’ll risk an overdose while watching. It will be a great night at the movies with fellow Marvel faithful getting one last fond farewell to the X-Men movies that were. But it’s not the movie you’re going to remember them, or anything else, by.
Deadpool & Wolverine opens in theaters on Friday, July 26. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.
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