Ryan Reynolds, left, as Deadpool/Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in a scene in Deadpool & Wolverine.Jay Maidment/Disney
Deadpool & Wolverine
Directed by Shawn Levy
Written by Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and Emma Corrin
Classification 14A; 127 minutes
Opens in theatres July 26
The cinematic equivalent of a Grade 5 essay summarizing Walt Disney Co.’s latest Q4 report, Deadpool & Wolverine is a head-shaking, eye-gouging, tongue-severing affair in intellectual property juvenilia.
And while that might sound like an insult, it is actually the highest possible compliment that I can offer the film using its own particular artistic language – a brutally coarse vernacular as vulgar as it is vacant. Meet the biggest butt-crack blockbuster of the year – an ugly but hypnotic hit that wipes one empty-headed superhero era away while leaving the fresh stains of a far more aggressively tainted one.
Life beyond Deadpool: Ryan Reynolds’ five best performances
Set a few years after the events of 2018′s Deadpool 2, whose knotty time-travel machinations and lumbering set pieces seem like the most intricately engineered and meticulously choreographed affairs compared to this go-round, the new film finds wise-cracking Canadian anti-hero Wade Wilson, a.k.a. mutant assassin Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), trying to pull his life together. Again.
It turns out that not even two previous movies about Wade going through the exact same redemption arc – we already know what happens when a merc with a mouth finds something bigger than himself to care about – can satisfy the ravenous franchise desires of Reynolds and Co., experts in draining even the most emaciated of cash cows.
Here, the filmmaking team – which includes returning screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, plus new-to-the-franchise director Shawn Levy – are tasked with uniting two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s biggest brands, the Avengers on one side and the X-Men on the other, who have been kept apart for decades because of myriad copyright dramas. And if the two must be smooshed together, what better X-Man to make the corporate synergy magic happen than Wolverine, the adamantium-clawed mutant so legendarily played by Hugh Jackman? And even though his character was killed off with great gusto in 2017′s Logan, when has death ever proved an immovable stumbling block for superhero sagas?
Which is how this third Deadpool movie coaxes audiences into once again cheering for a relentlessly smarmy killer who is so convinced that he’s god’s gift to comedy that the film practically begs for a live-audience laugh track. Instead, Levy offers a dozen wham-bam needle drops, each deployed in a bid to drown out any questions audiences might have about what, exactly, we’re watching.
And you will have many queries. Even the hardest core of Marvel fans – those who have mainlined every episode of the Disney+ series Loki, and have deep levels of knowledge about the X-Men movies made under 20th Century Fox before the studio was swallowed up by the Mouse House – will flee to Wikipedia after watching the film, so dependent is the story on the margins of multiverses. For everyone else, just know that the key to Deadpool’s salvation rests this time in finding and recruiting fellow Canuck superhero Wolverine to his cause. (But not the Wolverine who died in Logan, because that character existed in a different universe and … hey, just forget it.)
Standing in Deadpool’s way are two new adversaries, each very British and each played by a performer who seems like they would rather be – and deserves to be – absolutely anywhere else. First up is Mr. Paradox (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen), who leads an interuniverse agency called the Time Variance Authority that never even made much sense when it was explored for two full seasons on Loki. Then there’s Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the twin sister of Professor X, who … wait, where are you going?
The film's saving grace is Jackman, who still possesses the raw fury and immense pain of one of Marvel’s greatest creations as Wolverine.Jay Maidment/Disney
Here’s the thing: Reynolds and his team know exactly what they’re doing by remixing the many million details of Marvel lore. There are great, gigantic sums of money to be made in smashing a bunch of action figures against the other in the sandbox of the multiplex. But there is a difference between tossing out references and making a movie that is genuinely funny, thrilling, energetic and innovative. At nearly every turn, Deadpool & Wolverine aspires to work in direct opposition to such goals. And it assumes – is in fact banking on – that audiences won’t give a damn so long as they get a few funny cameos and Easter eggs.
There’s also a certain malice in not even trying. Levy, who already flattened Reynolds’ charm with such backwardly impressive ambivalence in 2022′s The Adam Project, simply does not know how to stage a proper action scene. Or a casual dialogue scene. Really, scenes in general are his big problem.
But worse is the script which, given that it was co-written by Levy and Reynolds, leaves no party innocent. Alternating between moments in which Deadpool either delivers a barrage of oh-brother gags (he’s both pansexual and anti-woke!) or gets into bloody brawls with Wolverine (none of which are staged with an ounce of practical conviction or spatial recognition), the screenplay feels like the feverish byproduct of an all-nighter pulled off on the very first day back from an industry-crippling writers’ strike. Reynolds’ gee-ain’t-I-a-stinker performance, cranked up to 11 and then given a crude Canadian exchange rate, only exacerbates the aggravation.
The only thing that saves Deadpool & Wolverine is, appropriately enough, the hero who Deadpool himself seeks out. Almost a quarter-century deep into playing the same character, Jackman still possesses the raw fury and immense pain of one of Marvel’s greatest creations. Even though this film is intent on robbing the actor of the graceful exit that he gave Wolverine in Logan – Levy and Reynolds seem to revel in urinating atop of that movie’s grave in a fashion that’s not so much subversive as it is simply crass – Jackman delivers the necessary emotional grounding to actually make us care if the dude gets stabbed a thousand times.
Then again, this could just be me empathizing with what Jackman is asked to do on-screen, which alternates between telling Reynolds to shut the hell up or punching him in the testicles. Now that’s a hero who we can all get behind.