Late into “Deadpool & Wolverine,” Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) makes a plea to the camera, surrounded by hundreds of other Deadpools from a myriad of different universes. A lady Deadpool, a Scottish Deadpool, a baby Deadpool – you get the drift.
Our Deadpool pleads with the other Deadpools, with the audience, with Kevin Feige himself, to press pause on all of this multiverse nonsense within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Stop trying to make the multiverse happen! It’s not gonna happen! We’ve hit a low point in the MCU, and the multiverse very well may be the culprit, so why not just cut it out already?
He’s not wrong. And if by this point, the entirety of “Deadpool & Wolverine’s” flimsy plot has depended on the existence of the multiverse, who cares, right?
Since his first standalone film in 2016, Deadpool has taken the attitude of “who cares” and run with it, breaking the fourth wall to make fun of everything under the sun, including and especially superhero movies. The whole endeavor is really a stroke of evil genius on Reynolds’ and the rest of the creators’ part. They’ve created a movie world where Deadpool can crack jokes about the Marvel Cinematic Universe as he desperately tries to become an Avenger, a world where they can poke fun at the mainstream while still sitting comfortably within its ranks. It’s modern nerd movie culture in a nutshell – an inability to accept the thing you love is now at the height of popularity.
By design, there’s a lot of this sort of irony baked into “Deadpool & Wolverine.” But the movie is also trying to do something a little more earnest than its predecessors, trying to make a case for the importance of caring about those who have been discarded and forgotten. That storyline rests on the shoulders of the second half of the film’s title, and Hugh Jackman’s reprisal of the Wolverine character is nothing to scoff at. But “Deadpool & Wolverine” banks on your connection to all of the movies that came before it, a cobbled together mess of emotional cash-ins and references. Did it make me laugh sometimes? Sure. But a good movie needs to exist on its own terms.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” depends more on 2017’s “Logan” than it does on any of the other “Deadpool” movies. At the beginning of the film, we learn that Wolverine’s death at the end of “Logan” caused a rift in the universe that would eventually lead it to deteriorate. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), a disgruntled middle manager with the Time Variance Authority (something that will only be familiar to you if you’ve seen multiple other MCU television shows and movies), is fed up with waiting for the universe to end and creates something called a time ripper in order to speed up the process, but not before offering Deadpool the chance to get out of dodge and join “The Sacred Timeline” and become an Avenger. Deadpool declines and decides to try and save his universe by finding another Wolverine to take the place of the one they lost.
It’s difficult to really articulate just how thin the plot that hustles this movie along is, but all of this is just an excuse to bring Wolverine back after his bittersweet and fitting end in “Logan.” And if “Deadpool & Wolverine” does one thing well, it’s to remind us just how good Jackman is in the role, even when the movie around him doesn’t quite hold up. There’s a moment late in the film between him and someone from his past that, despite stilted dialogue, crackles as one of the film’s better scenes that doesn’t revolve around action. With it, Jackman proves that he might still be the best actor to bring a superhero to life, able to ground the character in something deeply broken and tender while bringing a theatrical energy and physicality to the more cartoonish moments.
But it’s difficult to say whether the success of that scene comes from its own merit or from an assumption that the audience has a connection to the film “Logan.” This is really the problem with most of the film – most superhero movies in general these days – and “Deadpool & Wolverine” is not exempt from it just because Ryan Reynolds takes the time to stare directly into the camera and acknowledge the ridiculousness of it all.
Most of the jokes and nearly every emotional beat necessitate some greater knowledge of pop culture, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or of the actors’ personal lives. If you get it, it can be funny. But even then, the threads start to get very thin, very fast. And those threads are all “Deadpool & Wolverine” has going for it. The action sequences are enjoyable – it’s hard to have a bad time when Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” starts playing – but there’s nothing particularly special about the way the film looks or moves. One of the main sets, known as the Void, is designed to look like a rip off of 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.” But that reference only succeeds in making you think about a much better film instead of staying locked into the one you’re watching. And that’s the rub with basing so much of your story on other films or internet jokes – half the audience won’t get it. And the half that does might let out a chuckle, but also might start to wish they were watching something else.
