“Deadpool & Wolverine” (2024) Review
Or should I say “Much ado about nothing…”
Deadpool & Wolverine opens up with Deadpool himself explaining that superheroes with regenerative powers can’t die. That they can come back from everything with the right motivation. Then proceeds to pull out the corpse of Wolverine from “Logan”. No longer alive, and far from coming back, but this hero's skeleton is still useful to Deadpool. He can use every piece for extreme violence, filled with digital blood that looks worse than strawberry jelly, or for violence that ends up becoming a crude sex joke that my friends might’ve made five or six years ago. Deadpool will never hide what he or this film is. The opening scene, set to *NSYNC’s hit “Bye Bye Bye”, is the thesis statement for the film and the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’m not sure there is a healing factor that can bring back any of this to the level of excitement it once had, but they sure will use every bone to milk the same stuff we’re used to until we finally leave the room.
Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t an awful movie by any means. Still, with the five writers on the film (Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, & Shawn Levy) the film never feels like it has anything to say more than “Man, superhero movies are exhausting right?” This one very much is. Trying to have its cake and eat it too by having Deadpool goof his way to saving the whole world this time around, and feeling like he means more than just being a bounty hunter and then the “worst” Wolverine redeeming himself by saving a world he destroyed before. However, Deadpool never seems to grow an inch within himself making the self-sacrifice feel like just one more gag in the book. Wolverine’s tragic history is not shown much at all, but only explained via dialog and a wonderful performance by Hugh Jackman (who has played this role since the first X-Men film). There is not much an audience member can sink their teeth into that isn’t just the fat on a thin piece of steak.
The movie tries to garner sympathy or weaponize nostalgia with the cameos of what was or what could’ve been (I will not spoil any of these here for the sake of civility), but for a long-time comic book and just movie fan myself, these felt like dirt being kicked in my eye. These were parodies and cheap gags from these films. One, maybe two worked alright within the context of the film, but most reminded me of a better time with movies with a bit more flair or a bit more of an original personality. Even if these movies were not the highest art, they stood out from the other films of their ilk. Shawn Levy, the director, can’t seem to find a look that makes this film fit within either the Deadpool movies that came before or the MCU that the movie is falling within. It lands in the middle making everything look bland, sterile, and staged. Which, for some reason, the movie draws attention to the inferiority of the look by comparing itself to other films with excellent art direction and style (Mad Max for one).
Levy also can’t compete with the directors that came before within this franchise. Tim Miller & David Leitch coming from visual effects backgrounds knew how to form a scene with characters who weren’t real. They knew how to shoot action that was completely unnatural and still bring it to a sense of reality. There is a moment with Wolverine, masked up, leaps from a bus. For some reason, they felt the need to fully make him CGI in the scene. As he stands next to Deadpool, he looks more like the animation in a character selection screen in a fighting game, than a real human. That is the key flaw of the whole movie. It feels like it’s missing a soul. That the human element of the movie is so diminished by “giving what the fans want”, that it ends with no real point to it. It’s flashy, bloody, “comic accurate”, and has more jokes per minute than a lot of comedies right now, but it doesn’t feel like there was much thought given to any of it.
When the movie ended and I checked my phone, I was hit with the announcement of RDJ joining the MCU again as Victor Von Doom. Doom is maybe the biggest Marvel villain played by an actor who was the soul of the original MCU. This is on top of the announcement that he will be directed by the Russo Brothers, the ones who closed that chapter with him in it. Ones that tried to do their own thing, but each iteration of film they made after felt more soulless than the next. It’s hard to have much hope for the future of these films. Which is a bummer for me. I do believe they can be amazing blockbusters and even occasionally, really wonderful films. I could go through this movie piece by piece, breaking down the moments I did enjoy and the moments that drove me mad, but it would end up just being an Ouroboros in review form.
Ryan Reynolds (who I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned until this moment) said in his interview on the show “Hot Ones” promoting this film, that the story in the film has to matter to get the audience to buy in. That they’re desensitized to spectacle. It seems that he thought this is what they were doing in this film, but being confused with nostalgia, fourth wall breaking, and the formula that seemed to work before, does not add up to the story. It adds up to spectacle. Is Deadpool & Wolverine the worst in the superhero genre? Not really. Everyone I saw it with had a blast. I had a few laughs and saw some cool stuff. The movie is just a case study for the current state of it all and it doesn’t fill me with much hope or excitement. — 5/10
