When Fox Studios released the first movie back in 2016, it played like an irreverently funny antidote to our collective comic-book-movie fatigue. Wade Wilson, or Deadpool, was a foul-mouthed mercenary who obliterated his enemies and the fourth wall with the same gonzo energy.
Again and again, Deadpool turned to the camera and mocked the clich茅s of the superhero movie with such deadpan wit, you almost forgot you were watching a superhero movie. And , Hollywood鈥檚 snarkiest leading man, might have been engineered in a lab to play this vulgar vigilante. I liked the movie well enough, though one was plenty; by the time rolled around in 2018, all that self-aware humor had started to seem awfully self-satisfied.
Now we have a third movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, which came about through some recent movie-industry machinations. When a few years ago, Deadpool, along with other mutant characters from the X-Men series, officially joined the franchise juggernaut known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That puts the new movie in an almost interesting bind. It tries to poke fun at its tortured corporate parentage; one of the first things Deadpool says is 鈥淢arvel鈥檚 so stupid.鈥� But now the movie also has to fit into the narrative parameters of the MCU. It tries to have it both ways: brand extension disguised as a satire of brand extension.
It鈥檚 also an odd-couple comedy, pairing Deadpool with the most famous of the X-Men: Logan, or Wolverine, the mutant with the unbreakable bones and the retractable metal claws, played as ever by a bulked-up .
The combo makes sense, and not just because both characters are Canadian. In earlier movies, Deadpool often made Wolverine the off-screen butt of his jokes. Both Deadpool and Wolverine are essentially immortal, their bodies capable of self-regenerating after being wounded. Both are tormented by past failures and are trying to redeem themselves. Onscreen, the two have a good, thorny chemistry, with Jackman鈥檚 brooding silences contrasting nicely with Reynolds鈥� mile-a-minute delivery.
I could tell you more about the story, but only at the risk of incurring the wrath of studio publicists who have asked critics not to discuss the plot or the movie鈥檚 many, many cameos. Let鈥檚 just say that the director Shawn Levy and his army of screenwriters bring the two leads together through various rifts in the multiverse. Yes, the multiverse, that ever-elastic comic-book conceit, with numerous Deadpools and Wolverines from various alternate realities popping up along the way.
I suppose it鈥檚 safe to mention that , lately of , plays some kind of sinister multiverse bureaucrat, while Emma Corrin, of , plays a nasty villain in exile. It鈥檚 all thin, derivative stuff, and the script鈥檚 various wink-wink nods to other shows and movies, from Back to the Future to to , don鈥檛 make it feel much fresher. And Levy, who previously directed Reynolds in the sci-fi comedies Free Guy and , doesn鈥檛 have much feel for the splattery violence that is a staple of the Deadpool movies. There鈥檚 more tedium than excitement in the characters鈥� bone-crunching, crotch-stabbing killing sprees, complete with corn-syrupy geysers of blood.
For all its carnage, its strenuous meta-humor and an R-rated sensibility that tests the generally PG-13 confines of the MCU, Deadpool & Wolverine does strive for sincerity at times. Some of its cameos and plot turns are clearly designed to pay tribute to Fox鈥檚 X-Men films from the early 2000s.
As a longtime X-Men fan myself, I鈥檓 not entirely immune to the charms of this approach; there鈥檚 one casting choice, in particular, that made me smile, almost in spite of myself. It鈥檚 not enough to make the movie feel like less of a self-cannibalizing slog, though I suspect that many in the audience, who live for this kind of glib fan service, won鈥檛 mind. Say what you will about Marvel 鈥� I certainly have 鈥� but it isn鈥檛 nearly as stupid as Deadpool says it is.
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