The Self-Satisfied DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE Has Laughs Aplenty But Is Slightly Less Than Specturb

Now playing at every multiplex in the multiverse:

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
(Dir. Shawn Levy, 2024)

Here it is – the long-awaited MCU entry #34 in which the merc with the mouth meets Mutate #9601 in the balls-out bromance for the ages. That is, the iconic characters, the ironic Deadpool, and the angry Wolverine - portrayed respectively by Ryan Reynolds, and Hugh Jackman - team up for what’s being billed as a “multiversal meta comedy,” and as the only Marvel movie being released in 2024, it has a lot riding on it.

 

This is something this heavily self-referential, and self-satirical sure-to-be summer blockbuster calls attention to a lot. Deadpool even snarks, “The multiverse? It’s just been miss after miss after miss…” at one point as the super twosome get deeper into their adventure, which I’m gonna to try to describe without too much detail. Also, I’m not gonna spoil all the cameos, and supposed surprises in store for those that are way into this sort of thing.

 

This is because it’s a purposely convoluted maze of scenarios involving Deadpool’s dying timeline, which he has to try to save via Wolverine as he’s the timeline’s anchor being, but, of course, he died at the end of LOGAN. No matter, our wise-cracking ant-hero locates, through a wacky montage, a Logan variant, who he presents to Mr. Paradox (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen seemingly channeling Tim Curry, or maybe Richard E. Grant), but he’s deemed the “worst Wolverine” so they are cast into the Void, where most of the movie plays out.

 

The Void is a funny visual concept as it’s a ginormous desert wasteland littered with the relics of disintegrated timelines with the weathered 20th Century Fox logo half buried in the sand, and it’s the setting for Deadpool and Wolverine’s big brawl, which is deftly choreographed, but lacking stakes as they both are regenerative creatures and can withstand major gashes and stabs.

 

From there the movie takes its cues from such inspirations as PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, MIDNIGHT RUN, and 48 HOURS to give us the gruff buddy road trip through encounters with Professor X’s twin sister, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) in her lair that happens to be in the suit and skeleton of Ant-Man’s corpse (“Paul Rudd finally aged,” Deadpool quips); and dozens and dozens of Deadpool variants, which our titular duo battle in a highly stylized slo-mo sequence set to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” 

 

This is to all stop the destruction of all timelines by Mr. Paradox, or maybe the MCU themselves as this movie seems to be admitting through all the witty asides that the franchise has been majorly stumbling since all that Infinity stone hullabaloo ended with Iron Man dying ‘n all. 

 

It’s true that the MCU has suffered through some subpar entries as of late, and this film shows it’s fun to dance on the graves of the franchise failures, but a lot of the inside jokes, and quick quips didn’t land with me as hard as some of the other folks at the press screening I attended. Maybe I should have boned up by watching previous X-MEN and DEADPOOL movies. 

 

But that’s just the thing – according to the many lists of “what to watch before you see DEADPOOL 3,” that have recently appeared online, there are like ten movies to see before you can get every reference or call-back in this movie. This is one of the reasons there’s been such Marvel malaise of late; with all the interlocking movies, and series – only the hardcore can keep up to properly appreciate these multi-layered efforts.

 

Lately, I’ve been trying to get a new portmanteau going: specturb – a combination of spectacular, and superb. As in “the INSIDE OUT sequel is simply specturb” (which it is). As much as I think fans will dig DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, and will largely find it hilarious, I found it slightly less than specturb. It lives from laugh to laugh, but its self-satisfied sense of self-satire made me smirk more than actually chuckle.

 

However, for its entertainment value (it’s fun sized!), especially on the scale of post ENDGAME MCU, this is a winner overall, and I bet this weekend’s audiences will eat up Reynolds and Jackman’s not-so-odd coupling, and will ask for seconds.

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DEADPOOL 2: Very Familiar Formula, But Funny Enough

Now playing at a multiplex near everybody:

DEADPOOL 2 (Dir. David Leitch, 2018) 

Ah, Deadpool. You remember Deadpool, right? C’mon, you know him – he’s Marvel’s most meta character whose wise-cracks, crude antics, and bloody kills carry him, and us, through another familiar round of explosive action sequences.

And that’s what we’ve got in this follow-up to his 2016 debut, which I then called “the most hilarious Marvel movie yet.” This sequel doesn’t top the original, but it stands nicely beside it as it contains roughly the same amount of genuine laughs.

Ryan Reynolds, who also co-wrote and co-executive produced, again brings his extreme snark to the quipping anti-hero - anti-hero because he ends up killing more people than he saves – who we first become re-acquainted with as he attempts suicide via lying a top several big barrels of fuel and flicking a cigarette in the air to fall into one of them and blow himself to bits - which he does.

Of course, this being Deadpool, we know he survives this, but before we see his fate, Reynold’s Wade Willis (Deadpool’s real name - keep up!), tells us through voice-over that six weeks earlier he was on top of the world going on globe-trotting missions, and planning to have a family with his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), but (Spoiler!) she’s killed by some goon, and Deadpool loses his mojo big time.

A James Bondian credits sequence, or joke credit sequence, as no real names are displayed only lines like “Starring somebody who obviously didn’t want to share the spotlight,” follows which amusingly features a perfectly overwrought power anthem called “Ashes,” sung by Céline Dion (that’s right).

After that, Deadpool sulks in misery around his friends from the first one - taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni), and bartender Weasel (T.J. Miller), but is given a new chance by the also returning Colossus (a CGI-ed Stefan Kapicic) to become a member of the X-Men, but as a trainee as he keeps getting reminded, mostly by, again another returning character, Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who now has a girlfriend, Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna).

On Deadool’s first day on the job, he encounters a 14-year-old boy (Julian Dennison) named Russell who calls himself “Firefist” and is threatening to burn down his orphanage, the Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation, because he was abused by the Headmaster (Eddie Marsan at his ghastliest). At the stand-off, Deadpool breaks the X-Men’s rule of not killing anyone, and is captured along with Russell and taken to a prison for mutants called “The Icebox.” 

Meanwhile, in a very TERMINATOR-esque scenario, a mercenary mutant named Cable (Josh Brolin) from the future travels to the present to avenge the death of his wife and kid who he traces as being the work of Russell/Fire Fist. After a massive, chaotic prison break setpiece, Deadpool realizes his calling is to protect the kid from Cable, and, with Weasel’s help, recruits a crew to get him out of prison.

The team, which Deadpool dubs “X-Force” despite its derivativeness, that they assemble includes Terry Crews as Bedlam, who can manipulate electrical energy; Lewis Tam as Shatterstar, a really arrogant alien; Zazie Beetz as Domino, who says her power is being lucky; Bill Skarsgard as Zeitgeist, whose super power is spewing acidic bile; Vanisher, who’s invisible so they don’t know if he’s really there or not; and Rob Delaney as Peter, who has no powers, but saw the ad and thought it’d be fun.

A big over-the-top, and all-over-the-place sequence (which sort of reminded me of MACGRUBER) involving the X-Force assaulting a prison truck, transporting Russell, and other mutants, introduces (Spoiler?) Juggernaut, a giant ogre that was first introduced in “X-Men” comics in the ‘60s. Juggernaut, who is credited as being played by “Himself,” goes up against Colosus in the third act which takes place at the Essex House, where Deadpool bargains with Cable for 30 seconds to talk Russell out of killing the headmaster. 

Yes, a lot of these plot points, and a lot of the jokes, can be seen coming, but the film, directed by stuntman/filmmaker David Leitch who co-directed JOHN WICK, moves fast through them with a high ratio of gags that land hilariously. Of all of the many one-liners, I think I liked “I was fighting this caped badass, until I found out that his mom is also named Martha” the best. 

Despite its satiric trappings, Reynolds actually gets to effectively flex some dramatic chops a few times in scenes involving his lost love. Brolin puts in another strong stoic performance as Cable, coming right on the heels of his stand-out work in AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, which is referenced here in a Thanos joke because of course it is.

DEADPOOL 2 is another round of more of the same. More riffing on WOLVERINE, more mockery of genre conventions (“tell me they got that in slow motion”) and the competition (“So dark. Are you sure you’re not from the DC Universe?”), more self-criticism (Deadpool calls out “lazy writing” more than once), and more ironic song cues including Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” and “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” from “Annie” playing during scenes of stylish violence. There’s even another jab at GREEN LANTERN, something Reynolds will likely be making fun of for the rest of his life.

But because the movie is consistently funny throughout I can let all this familiarity slide, and I bet audiences can too.

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DEADPOOL: Marvel’s Most Meta & Most Hilarious Movie

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

DEADPOOL (Dir. An Overpaid Tool, 2016)

In its first few minutes, in which we swirl around the chaotic imagery of a frozen bridge-set action scene involving a car crash, Marvel’s latest superhero movie declares its intentions by way of an ultra satirical take on the standard self-serious opening credit sequence that we’ve all been through a billion times.

That is, the shiny text that glides through the freeze-framed craziness doesn’t relay any actual names, just snarky labels such as that the film stars “God’s Perfect Idiot,” “A Hot Chick,” “A British Villain,” “A CGI Character,” “A Moody Teen,” was “Produced by: Asshats,” and most amusingly “Written By: The Real Heroes Here.”

Now, I must confess that I am fairly comics illiterate and had not heard of the Deadpool character, who I understand is a super anti-hero (or a anti-superhero?), until rather recently. This is despite the fact that the character, or his alter ego Wade Wilson, appeared in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, also played by Ryan Reynolds.

But Reynolds himself has stressed that the character in WOLVERINE is “not the Deadpool we are representing in this film, in any way shape or form.” So DEADPOOL, based on the Marvel comics character that first appeared in the early ‘90s, is its own origin story told by its wisecracking, fourth wall breaking protagonist, making it the most meta Marvel movie yet.

Reynold’s Deadpool, while still caught up in the mayhem on the bridge from the opening scene, stops time to tell us that his tale starts off as “love story.”

In flashbacks we see Wade, a Special Forces operative turned mercenary, fall for Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin), a prostitute with a heart of gold, but, after some racy sex scene snippets, a diagnosis that he has terminal cancer gets in the way of their relationship’s development. Wade leaves Vanessa to seek treatment, and takes part in an questionable experiment that turns out to be a series of torture techniques conducted by our “British Villain,” Ajax/Francis Freeman (Ed Skrein), and his assistant Angel Dust (Gina Carano).

Wade goes through this ordeal thinking that it will turn him into a superhero – “Please don't make the super-suit green... or animated!” – but it leaves him deformed and mutated. However, he does have the power of regeneration so there’s that.

With the help of his best friend bartender, Weasel (T.J. Miller), and a montage, Wade names himself after a bar bet on his life, suits up as a masked crime-fighting vigilante, and sets his sights on hunting down Ajax and getting him to cure his hideous condition that has rendered him, in his words, a “butter face” (you know, “A girl with an exceptionally hot body but an exceptionally ugly face. ‘Everything but-her-face is attractive.’” – Urban Dictionary). Not sure I really had to quote that definition, but there you have it.

Joining Wade/Deadpool’s fight is X-Men mutant Collosus (Stefan Kapicic), and a new character, (well, new to me) Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who are funny enough, but don’t really add a lot to the proceedings.

The hard R-rated DEADPOOL is more than a laugh-a-minute affair; it’s more like a plethora o’ laughs-a-minute from the opening shot to the final stinger (seriously, stay to the bitter end).

Screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese really give meta-joke meisters Phil Lord and Chris Miller (THE LEGO MOVIE, the 21 JUMP STREET movie series, The Last Man on Earth) a run for their money here.

Reynolds, who’s one of the film’s producers, redeems himself for the superhero fail that was GREEN LANTERN, with his displays of quick-on-the-draw wit, and martial arts skills that he has obviously done some deep training to attain. He just may have put in the greatest comic lead man performance in a superhero movie ever (it might be a tie with Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man though).

First-time director Tim Miller, who hails from an animation/visual effects background (SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD and various video games), provides exciting bursts of full blown filmmaking here. It’s a damn fine debut for somebody who’s credited as “some douche” and “an overpaid tool” in the aforementioned credits.

The superhero origin story formula is still present, but it’s re-invigorated by the ultra irreverent handling of the usual elements here. Film fans are most likely aware of the “Honest Trailers” that the site Screen Junkies has produced, in which a beloved movie gets a factual dressing down. DEADPOOL functions as its own Honest Trailer that takes itself apart. Such moments like when Reynold’s Deadpool notes inside of a flashback: “Fourth wall break inside a fourth wall break - that's like 16 walls!” attest to that.

Marvel’s superhero movies are essentially comedies, but the foul-mouthed, crude, raunchy, and violent as f*** DEADPOOL takes the self awareness factor to the next level. It’s the most hilarious Marvel movie yet, even though it’s not really a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (it's a Marvel property but it isn’t owned by Disney, so it’s part of Fox’s X-Men universe), and a welcome breather from franchise fatique. Nice to finally meet you, Deadpool. Here’s hoping you don’t wear out your winning welcome.

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