The greatest trick the "hero" known as Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) ever pulled was convincing the world his films are different from the other superhero movies. Now, the mask has come fully off to lay bare the ugly truth.
Hiding under the veneer of subversiveness that is just a cover for its creative bankruptcy, Deadpool & Wolverine is one of the most tiresome, tepid and tacky superhero movies yet. Deadpool is now fully in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, allowing for plenty of mostly superficial surprise appearances by old characters, but this all just proves to be dead weight. Helmed by Shawn Levy, who worked with Reynolds on 2022's The Adam Project, you can feel the director floundering about, trying and failing to inject energy into a lifeless experience. It's a sad excuse for a road movie that, despite all the knowing jokes it makes about how bad Marvel movies have gotten lately, is close to the painfully low lows of 2023's abysmal Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
The story is that Deadpool has essentially retired yet must put the suit back on when his world comes under threat from a looming cataclysmic event surrounding goings-on at the Time Variance Authority. If you didn't do what is now essentially homework, this organization was central to the so-so series Loki and is now how this latest film brings various timelines/worlds together. Specifically, Deadpool must team up with Logan, aka Wolverine. Played once more by Hugh Jackman (who is still great as an alternate version of the character despite how terrible everything else is), they'll set off through a new realm for fights and shenanigans that all fall completely flat.
Credit where credit is due, the film finds a fitting metaphor right out the gate. Things start with that rascal Deadpool digging up a rotting corpse of a familiar face and repeatedly using it to smash some generic baddies in an attempt to (unsuccessfully) assuage any fears viewers might have that the MCU in general is in its braindead zombie phase.
Without giving away the gag, this is how the film initially establishes it couldn't care less about how the story of Wolverine came to a graceful end in James Mangold's infinitely better and more thoughtful 2017 film Logan. Though this is the high point of Deadpool & Wolverine (one it chases for the next two hours), it establishes how the movie will never be mistaken for having even one remotely creative thought in its head. It's all well and good to flip the bird to the past as well as those who hold it up as something sacrosanct that can't ever be touched. You just better have something spectacular of your own up your sleeve. Deadpool & Wolverine never finds any personality.
Not only does it just try to continually rehash the same jokes over and over, but it's also desperately digging up corpse after corpse of old characters to try to give this new film life. Most of them don't work at all. The one that does just makes you wish you were watching a movie with them rather than whatever this reheated sludge is supposed to be. The action outside of the opening is generally lackluster and the excuse for a story that essentially plays as poorly written fanfiction. The only saving grace is Jackman, who still has the juice, whereas Reynolds, operating on autopilot at this point, makes plenty of jokes about how his superior co-star is going to be made to do this until he dies, all of which represent the film's greatest flaw.
Where the prior Deadpool movies skewered superhero movies and how much they feel like corporate-driven products, Deadpool & Wolverine feels exactly like what it is making fun of. No matter how much it jokes about how depressing it is to imagine Marvel dragging a talented actor like Jackman out to do these often miserable movies every decade or so until he dies, seeing the final result here shows we're already there.
But hey, it persistently winks at you about it! They're shoveling superhero slop, but they're in on the joke with us, so it can't really be bad...right? ...right?
Just sit back, consume the latest product, laugh at how empty it is, and then do it all over again!
The greatest joke of the whole thing is that Deadpool & Wolverine might very well be the movie that indeed saves Marvel. It won't be from itself by finding some actual new ground and trying something different. No, it will be by providing just enough of a cover for what is the glorified equivalent of a corporate rebrand. As this film reveals, there will always be plenty more corpses they're shameless enough to dig up when everything else runs dry. That's the Marvel guarantee.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Directed by Shawn Levy
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman
