"Deadpool & Wolverine" - A breath of stale air

Josh
Sep 8, 2024
5 min read

Shawn Levy (2024)

Wait... you dig on multiverses?

With the rise of, sorry, plague of movies that are desperately trying to form their own multiverse either to correct poor choices from overpaid executives or to create Reddit/Twitter wojak reactions from fans as they point at IPs they recognise all in one frame, Deadpool & Wolverine is a breath of stale air. I say stale air because I don’t think D&W does anything extraordinary compared to its contemporaries, but like Spider-Man: No way home, it had fun with the concept. Fun that went beyond creating moments “stans” can point a clap at, cough cough Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness cough cough. So, while watching this movie I wasn’t breathing in the air of the dead horse known as the Multiverse, I was instead pleased to breathe the air of stale warm experience that was Deadpool & Wolverine.

With history repeating itself, back in 2016 the original Deadpool came on the silver screen during the height of superhero movies. Marvel was starting phase 3 with Captain America: Civil War and the on screen debut of Doctor Strange. While DC pathetically kicked off their first cross over movie with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the miserable Suicide Squad (And although not a live action, DC’s film division was also in hot water with the hated and disrespectful animated adaptation of The Killing Joke). Meanwhile Fox had pushed X-men: Apocalypse out to public view like a ghoulish mother shoving their unenthusiastic child on stage at a beauty pageant. So a mixed year full of mild, bad and ugly for superhero movies. But then an ugly burnt up merc with a mouth swore his way into everyone's hearts, becoming one of the most profitable R rated movies of all time earning $782.6 Million. At the time, this was a refreshing ‘new’ look at the genre in a lake of predictable safe mediocrity. This movie took a chance with a relatively out there and unknown vulgar hero but then in the sequel, for me it felt very safe. It was just the same thing again, so honestly, seeing a Deadpool movie taking place in the MCU I wasn’t very excited for this. The last Marvel movie I had seen was Spider-Man: No way Home but nothing else surrounding it.

But… like it’s 2016 predecessor, this movie came out at the right time. But now in an ocean of stale, played out superhero movies using a predictable formula chasing trends. This year's trend being multiverses. And with that, what I found the most entertaining about D&W are there in-side jokes at the expense of the studios, complex corporate mergers and political behind the scene crap from within these multimillion dollar conglomerates. However, like back in 2016, for me a lot of the joke's didn’t really land for me as some of the fourth wall breaks were pretty predictable and bland at times. Despite this, the buddy cop dynamic between Ryan Reynolds and Australia’s very own Hugh Jackman kept me pretty well engaged.

Even in this goofy pop-culture fuelled romp our two leads still managed to have relatable arcs. The setup is Deadpool wants to do something that matters to help win back his ex (Morena Baccarin) so he tries out for the Avengers. Upon rejection, he gets called into The Time Variance Authority aka TVA (Seen in the TV show Loki) as he’s shown his timeline dying due to the death of the Wolverine, from Logan. Which is a good way to not piss on the grave of the perfect ending to the character, as Logan feels like the end of an era. Rightfully compared to Unforgiven (1992) that "ended" the western genre. Alongside that, this is how I see Avengers: End Game, the end of the cinematic universe. So Deadpool in his attempt to matter and put his friends and families needs before his own, goes on a hunt to replace their worlds Logan with another one. Picking a Logan from a timeline where he’s a loser, someone who destroyed his world, someone who needs to let go of his past mistakes and become a selfless hero. Being a loser is a common theme amongst almost all of our characters in this film. As the TVA sends Deadpool and Wolverine into a dimension called The Void where we see all these forgotten properties. From old failed Marvel characters to forgotten X-men characters. Seeing these people did put a smile on my face and you can’t help but smirk at the willingness of these actors to come back as a punchline. But even though the meta narrative is a joke, their characters still have an important role in the plot and are treated seriously. During some of these reveals of characters you can feel the ‘please clap’ pause, which if you’re not watching this with an engaged audience it feels extremely awkward and sucks the flow from the scene. Scenes that felt more reminiscent of the last Reynolds and Levy joint Free Guy.

With all these characters, gags or not, they all get a moment to shine within the action. Which has to be the most fun part of the movie. Whether it’s a creative fight between Deadpool and Wolverine in a Kia or an OldBoy hallway inspired action scene, these series of movies have never had a boring action scene. As they have more leverage with the amount of the violence, they just keep pushing the fights to new places. Sadly, when they have a large-scale fight with all the losers, the camera work was pretty horrendous compared to the clean action scenes that came before. The camera was swinging all over the place while shaking, not really focusing on any specific character or moment so I wasn’t sure what to look at and just got lost in the scene. Sadly a moment that no pop-song could’ve saved. So, like the previous film, this one isn’t ashamed to play licensed music, which almost acts as a joke in itself. As we’ll be watching a sad scene and as “I’m with You” by Avril Lavigne starts playing you have a chuckle and say to yourself, “of course”. And I imagine for a lot of the younger audience, this movie could be their first exposure to some of these songs. Artists like Madonna, as looking at the YouTube music video for ‘Like a Prayer’ has the comment section blowing up the D&W references. As well*Nsync have updated the title of “Bye Bye Bye” on both Spotify and YouTube to include “Deadpool &Wolverine”. Whilst any original score seems to fall to the wayside as nothing stands out to me that isn’t an existing song.

As I’m writing this out, I am pretty keen to watch this movie again as it's got the perfect amount of everything to make it enjoyable. It’s got the perfect amount of plot to hang gags on, perfect amount of motivation for our characters to care about them and perfect fun in each action scene. I’m sure a hardcore fan will pick up on more gags and references than me, so I can’t deny that it’s a crowd pleasing movie. Following the subjective phrase "fan service done right" as it doesn’t feel like references take priority over the plot, but instead a lot of them need for the plot. It’s a movie that is like a good puzzle. Not like a complex 2000 piece renaissance painting but a tight 500 piece puzzle. Where everything fits into place nicely, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and at the end you pull back and see a satisfying, crude, gory and entertaining image.