Superhero movies don’t have Marvel’s history in film is long, complicated, and a virtual multiverse of questionable copyright and licensing deals, all competing with each other and jostling for position until the one true God of IP—some call him “Kevin”—had enough divine influence at Disney to bring it all together under one umbrella. The deal between Marvel Studios and Sony for Spider-Man has been mutually beneficial for both companies. More importantly, it’s a boon to fans who have been dying to see the webslinger mingle with the MCU’s MVPs. Ever since the House of Mouse absorbed 20th Century Fox, which jumped into the superhero business early, those same diehards have been salivating at the thought of the Avengers, et al. trading quips and punches with the mutants on the other side of the IP lanes.
Ryan Reynolds knows it. And Deadpool, the Marvel character he’s played in three movies and two different franchises, is happy to tell you, dear viewer, that he knows Ryan Reynolds knows it, because God forbid the sarcastic fan-favorite character breaks the fourth wall for five seconds. In the comics, the smart-aleck alter ego of X-Men assassin Wade Wilson was known for being horribly disfigured, skilled with weapons, impossible to kill, and even more impossible to silence. He had an incredible ability to heal quickly, but his true superpower was an extreme irreverence—toward the good guys, the bad guys, the people who wrote and drew his comic book stories, the entire medium. The nickname “the loudmouth mercenary” was well-deserved.
Deadpool was already hugely popular among X-philes by the time Reynolds set up a revamped cinematic version with a solo film in 2016 (less is said about the character’s 2009 essay). X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The best). It was a perfect blend of self-mocking actor, self-aware comic book cult character, and a genre bordering on self-parody. Audiences were either familiar with superhero movies, tired of their ubiquity, or a combination of the two. The Deadpool movies were able to deliver the usual blockbuster success while commenting on how predictable and ridiculous these multiplex monoliths can be. They didn’t insult the audience’s intelligence but were able to continue to coddle them. Reynolds indulged in his trademark irony-soaked persona. The studio had a license to sell T-shirts and print money. It was all over except the crossover. That, and pairing him with another equally beloved antihero.
Yes, Deadpool and Wolverine introduces these two former outsiders into the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, signaling a bold new step toward full superhero-property synergy. It’s still filled with all the ultraviolence, shock humor, and nihilism you’ve come to expect from Reynolds’ side franchise, but now the slack-jawed mercenary can legally quote Thor and Kevin Feige in his asides. And it resurrects Hugh Jackman’s Logan, who you may know as Wolverine, for one last(?) round of what Deadpool calls “the fun, the mayhem, the residue.” Still the alpha mutant in the X-Men movies, this retractable-claw brawler pushed the boundaries of superhero comics in the ’80s and became the poster boy for the masculine mood of superhero movies in the early 2000s. Jackman retired the character after the X-Men series came out in 2017. Logan, It’s still the benchmark for superhero movies that aspire to be more than the sum of their punches and punches. But thanks to the multiverse, as well as what the actor called unfinished business and what we can assume is a nice end-of-the-movie deal, the mutant and the man who played him are back. We can already hear the fanboys screaming in ecstasy before falling onto their fainting couches.
In fact, Wolverine is still nothing more than a sack of bones covered in admantium, which is a slight obstacle since Deadpool needs that living X-man. Once upon a time, Wilson auditioned to join the Avengers. No matter which peripheral MCU mainstay interviewed him; he didn’t get the job. Six years later, Wilson has hung up his alter ego’s costume and is selling cars for a living. Then a bureaucrat from the TVA – that’s the Time Variance Authority, you know, from the Loki A TV series called Paradox (Matthew McFayden) summons Wade. They tie up loose ends and, since Logan, the “anchor being” of his world, sacrificed himself, they end this particular reality. Enough is enough. “The multiverse doesn’t need a babysitter,” he says. “It needs a mercy killer.”
But hey, if Wilson wants to get back into the Deadpool costume and insult and/or kill people in the “sacred timeline,” aka Earth-616, aka the Feigeverse, come on! He likes the idea of finally being able to befriend the Avengers, but can’t let his friends and loved ones perish. Armed with a device that allows him to jump from one world to another, he sets out to find a Logan… any of them Logan—who is still alive and well. He eventually chooses one that looks a lot like the one we meet at the beginning of X-Men (2000), but more drunk and depressed. This version is apparently the “worst Logan,” but it should keep the Deadpool timeline from dying out. Except Paradox still plans to wipe the slate clean and sends both heroes to the “trash” – a no-man’s land where, judging by the 20th Century Fox logo half-buried in the sand, is where intellectual property dreams and failed franchises go to die.
Hugh Jackman in “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Jay Maidment/20th Century Studios
At this point, we’ve already seen Deadpool slaughter people while dancing to N’Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye” (the kitschy needles are strong in this track) and seen Reynolds do his “am I not scum?!” routine ad nauseam. A montage of alt-Wolvies gives you a glimpse into the history of a character whose real-world notoriety is matched only by Batman and Spider-Man, while references to things like “the John Byrne era” are dropped for the real heads. Deadpool isn’t just an opportunity for Marvel to poke fun at itself or for Reynolds to lob spitballs at an industry he’s an integral part of; the character is truly the identity of superhero movies as a whole, relentlessly teasing clichés and rolling its eyes at the dark revisionism that turned antiheroes like Wolverine into teen idols. The fact that the mercenary does all this with Van Wilder’s voice and in an otherwise typical superhero movie is impressive, but not as impressive as the franchise’s creators think. It’s manufactured subversion.
Once Deadpool and Wolverine The film enters the garbage heap zone, but it embraces the already meta aspects of the series to an absurd degree and never looks back. Reynolds, director Shawn Levy, and their co-writers Rhett Reese, Zeb Wells, and Paul Wernick conceived this collaboration as part R-rated buddy comedy and part road movie, with the title characters stopping every now and then to slash, stab, shoot, and beat each other up. But it’s actually the most elaborate inside joke ever conceived in a superhero movie, so intent on turning its internal island of misfit toys into an excuse for visual gags and surprise cameos (some you know, some we won’t spoil) that it starts to tunnel into its own asshole. (Given how anal-obsessed Deadpool is, we assume he’d appreciate the wording.) Even Emma Corrin’s resident supervillain exists in relation to the worldbuilding that’s been established. It all comes down to a deep understanding of not just superhero movies, but the culture they’ve spawned and served. You’re either overjoyed when a decades-old, dead-in-development project gets a special mention here, or you just don’t get it.
Other movies based on the multiverse like Spider-Man: No Way Home And The flash They took advantage of the “anything goes” mindset by mixing and matching past and present incarnations of characters, timelines, reboots and resets. D&W doubles this idea in a way that eliminates everything but the answers to questions and the nostalgia. Given that Levy and Reynolds also made Free man (2021), a similarly IP-obsessed comedy that mistook brand recognition for actual creativity, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is, however, a disappointment, and no amount of end-of-act scenes or sentimentality surrounding Jackman sporting the scowl and claws again can erase the feeling of having been cheated. The Deadpool movies were once a much-needed counterpoint to all those very serious MCU sagas. This one still acts as the rude class clown in the back row, but now it’s just white noise dressed in red, yellow, and black.
Speaking of sentimentality: There’s a post-credits scene, as usual, but while the cast and crew list rolls by, you also get a montage of never-before-seen footage from Fox’s superhero production, ranging from the very first X-Men The movie is a prime example of the Fantastic Four’s failure. It’s set to Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” for maximum melancholy, and after two hours of sarcasm, gory gags, and punch lines from the Lords about pegging and pedophile scout leaders, the movie wants you to savor every emotion. It’s cheap, but also revealing. We’ve seen one organization try to wipe out a timeline and fail. Watch this long eulogy goodbye to Fox’s old superhero stable as it’s absorbed into a larger one, and you’ll see another organization do the same thing and succeed.