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Review: ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Sees the MCU’s Rotting Corpse on Display
Shawn Levy drives another nail into the MCU’s coffin
At the moment, Marvel are desperate for perhaps the first time since their cinematic universe started with Iron Man in 2008. Since Avengers: Endgame, they’ve had no momentum and have clearly been struggling to pull in the profits (and the passion from fans) that they have been hoping for. This desperation has led them to interesting places — they coaxed Robert Downey Jr. back into the fold only a few years after his escape (which seemed a positive escape to him, if his great performance in Oppenheimer is anything to go by) along with the Russo brothers. They also put their eggs, temporarily, into one big basket — Deadpool & Wolverine.
Desperately drawing out Hugh Jackman, who actually gives the best performance (by some distance) in the film, and placing him alongside Ryan Reynolds in another limp multiverse film in which the two must reluctantly work together to save the universe really ought to be the moment that kills the MCU (alongside the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World, which looks terrible). But, oddly, the film has received favourable reviews and shows high box office promise despite its stunning mediocrity. There is one good scene in Deadpool & Wolverine — one! — and the rest of the film sees director Shawn Levy (of… Free Guy… I should’ve known better than to see this after all!) spin his wheels in Marvel mud.
In all ways, this third Deadpool film does nothing to distance itself from its two predecessors. Once again, we have a fourth wall breaking, meta, vulgar action comedy which sees the titular character team up with other unlikely heroes (this time, a group of mostly early 2000s Marvel rejects, most of whom nobody wanted to see return to the big screen and who aren’t funny enough to function even within ‘the void’) in the name of redeeming himself for being an anti-hero. There’s nothing new there, and this time the jokes are especially grating and out of touch, feeling dated even now, a week after the film was tossed into cinemas. The film is, ironically, everything that it mocks, making both the structure and the jokes about that structure pointless.
