Deadpool & Wolverine

When Disney bought 20th Century Fox back in 2018, there was genuine concern over the future of Deadpool. It’s not that Disney was opposed to superhero movies, having bought Marvel years earlier and turned its cinematic universe into a lucrative cornerstone of their then-thriving media empire. But Disney had gotten away from making R-rated movies, having unceremoniously phased out its more adult-oriented Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures labels. The last R-rated movie Disney had put in theaters was 2013’s forgettable Julian Assange biopic The Fifth Estate.

Of course, it now seems obvious that today’s Disney puts a much higher value on brands and profits than remaining inoffensive towards families. Not only does the third Deadpool movie open wide this week at the height of the summer moviegoing season, but it does so as a full-fledged member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that once dominant web of movies whose grip on the public’s passion has weakened in recent years. To ensure that this threequel was not suspcetible to the usual diminishing returns but instead arrived as a genuine must-see tentpole, another icon gets resurrected, something the title Deadpool & Wolverine makes abundantly clear.

There was the distinct air of closure in 2017’s critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated Logan, which presented itself as the final time that Hugh Jackman would sprout blades from his knuckles and get ferocious as the X-Men standout Wolverine. That Jackman would return in the role he has played on film nine times since getting cast in the fall of 1999 now seems both inevitable and serendipitous. It’s been eight and a half years since the first Deadpool movie lit up the box office, which may not sound like very long until you realize a 5th grader trying to sneak into that movie probably just completed his or her first year of college. Whereas Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise have challenged our understanding of franchise expiration dates over the year, Deadpool has had an in-the-moment hipness that seems highly at risk of aging or softening.

The portrayer of the wise-cracking title character, a producer of all three movies and writer on both sequels, Ryan Reynolds has made a concerted effort to only reprise his most iconic and lucrative movie role in relevant and grandiose fashion. Hence, the arrival of Jackman, whose 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine gave us our first and dramatically different taste of Reynolds in the role. Reynolds also appears to be the reason why his Free Guy and The Adam Project director Shawn Levy joins the fray here as director, writer, and producer.

Levy’s first thirty years of work do not inspire the most hope. He got his start in children’s television and he has never shed his family film sensibilities. Those sensibilities have been a commercial asset, which Levy used in directing the three Night at the Museum films and the sequel-spawning Steve Martin performers Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther. Levy’s one prior R-rated credit was the forgettable 2014 Shiva dramedy This Is Where I Leave You. His experience in genre fare has been limited to the aforementioned Reynolds movies, Jackman’s Real Steel and Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”

While it would be reasonable to assume that having Levy at the helm would give us a gentler, more family-friendly version of Deadpool, the opening scenes of Deadpool & Wolverine shatter that notion, as Wade Wilson exhumes the skeleton of Logan and then uses him as shield and weapon against some upset and armed agents of the Time Variance Authority. This bloody graveyard massacre, the backdrop for some creative opening credits, is set to *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye.” The prologue runs a little too long and doesn’t get quite as many laughs out of its ironic juxtaposition as it expects. Perhaps that is the right way to kick things off because both of those sentiments can be applied to the film at large.

Deadpool & Wolverine is messy and, at 127 minutes with credits, a tad overlong. It’s also a lot of fun and decidedly unlike any other tentpole entertainment that Hollywood is putting out these days.

While it would seem like there is a limit to the amount of line-crossing, outrageous action comedy you can endure before it grows familiar and stale, Reynolds, Levy, and Rhett Reese, picking up his third screenplay credit in the franchise, do a good job of pushing the envelope and subverting expectations. This franchise has never been the poster child for efficient storytelling, repeatedly opting to play with linearity and break the fourth wall. It once again embraces those traits with a plot that sees Time Variance agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) giving the virtually immortal Deadpool the task of ending his universe’s timeline, which has been doomed since the death of its “Anchor Being.”

Instead, the Merc with a Mouth, rejected by the Avengers and unfulfilled with his job as a minivan salesman, goes looking to other universes for a suitable replacement for that Anchor Being. Cue the montage of amusing Wolverine variants set to a classic Huey Lewis and the News jam. One is short and especially hirsute. One is played by an actor recently dumped by DC (which, believe it or not, is not Reynolds’ repeat co-star Dwayne Johnson). Eventually, Deadpool settles on a sad and alcoholic Wolverine who is tortured by the guilt of letting down his entire world (but still dresses in the bright yellow and blue outfit of comic books and cartoons). Deadpool promises the chance to fix things in this Wolverine’s universe if Wolverine would just do him the small favor of helping him save the universe.

This setup gives us what is surely the most expensive buddy comedy ever made, with a reported cost of $250 million (more than four times the original film’s $58 M, ignoring inflation). Levy has likened his threequel to arguably the two greatest buddy comedies ever made and certainly the best of his teenage years, Midnight Run and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. You certainly detect the influences of those late-’80s gems here structurally. But at no point in those films did Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin or Steve Martin and John Candy unleash an array of bullets or slice one another up. We get that imagery in two big, violent set pieces here, the more amusing and restrained of which is set within the confines of a Honda Odyssey and set primarily to the sound of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s Grease duet “You’re the One That I Want.”

Reynolds and company once again ask some familiar pop tunes to help do some heavy lifting here, forgoing DMX this time out but relying repeatedly and prominently on Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.” We’ve seen this approach taken to disastrous results as recently as Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle, but Deadpool & Wolverine mostly gets away with it, thanks to some spirited editing and knowing which nostalgia buttons to push.

This threequel works better as a comedy than an action movie, which is a minor but foreseeable letdown after seasoned stunt coordinator David Leitch upped the ante as the director of Deadpool 2. That middle movie represents the apex of the franchise in my book, although the general populace seems to slightly favor the original film. Either way, you should not be disappointed here. Our hero’s signature irreverence leads to throwaway asides landing the biggest laughs. Some of those come at the expense of the MCU and even of Jackman’s career and personal life. The running gag about the actor playing Wolverine until he’s 90 is particularly amusing and on-point.

Another one of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s strengths is in its sly and subversive use of cameos. Deadpool 2 was more or less the gold standard of unexpected cameos, from Brad Pitt’s 1½-second appearance as Vanisher to the unnoticed room full of X-Men. With Deadpool joining the ranks of the MCU, you expect the bar to be raised again and in some ways it might be. The press has been instructed not to spoil cameos in our reviews and I can appreciate that because not knowing who will show up is definitely a part of the series’ appeal. At the same time, it is one of the features that will be most discussed as the film presumably sits atop the box office for the remainder of summer. As there are no guidelines to spoiling who doesn’t appear here, I can confirm that Taylor Swift does not play Lady Deadpool as was widely speculated. There are also no members of the Ocean’s Eleven gang this time out. And, despite the tasteful redemption granted to somewhat forgotten heroes of yore, I can tell you that T.J. Miller’s Weasel is not one of them.

The Deadpool franchise’s nod-wink perspective on all things MCU is only slightly different from the transparently commercial breadcrumbing that the PG-13 Marvel tentpoles engage in. But it somehow feels fundamentally different and not like Kevin Feige and Bob Iger figuring out how to pump up their revenues and Disney+ subscriber counts. With a quickly-rising reported net worth of $350 million, Reynolds is even wealthier than Feige and should have shed his everyman appeal by now, but charisma and self-deprecating snark go a long way to keeping him relatable. Reynolds’ status as a major star can probably be charted back to 2009, that summer that gave us both his Wolverine debut and The Proposal. In the fifteen years since, he’s had a number of flops (most notably, Green Lantern and R.I.P.D.) and not many resounding hits outside of Deadpool. And yet, savvy business deals and a gentle social media touch to documenting his celebrity family’s life with a mix of sarcasm and sincerity have kept him as trusted and likable as anyone in entertainment.

From Jennifer Aniston to Quentin Tarantino, many have noticed and lamented the disappearance of movie stars in today’s industry. Reynolds can stand both in favor and in opposition of that argument, his persona and success inextricably linked to Deadpool. If this movie performs as expected and cracks the one billion worldwide club as only Inside Out 2 has this year, we’ll likely see more of Reynolds and more of Deadpool, whose branding of himself as “Marvel Jesus” will read more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than a joke that would have outraged past generations.