Deadpool & Wolverine
DISNEY
The opening moments of Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine show promise. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) digs up Logan’s (Hugh Jackman) corpse from his timeline and begins to beat Time Variance Authority (TVA) agents to a pulp with his Adamantium-filled skull. Through the music of *NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye, Deadpool proudly breaks the fourth wall to announce that the film will go all out with the R-rated profanity and blood-filled violence the character is known for.
To Levy’s credit, he and cinematographer George Richmond craft an effective action sequence that immediately signals the shift in tone for the Marvel Cinematic Universe while also deftly utilizing space for exciting stereoscopic effects (including frequent IMAX 3D ‘frame breaks’ throughout the film). The action is blunt and often darkly funny, particularly through one moment in which a TVA agent mentions that Wolverine was the only good thing that has ever come out of Canada.
But that effective kill gets immediately hampered by Reynolds’ Deadpool doing a Will Smith slap joke, saying, “Keep my country’s name out your f–ing mouth!” This dated joke is a bad omen for what’s to come, as the TVA arrests Wade and plucks him out of his timeline. There, he enters TVA headquarters and meets agent Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who allows Wade to join Earth-616, the main timeline of the MCU, with a chance to redeem himself as a hero or, as the Merc with a Mouth puts it, “Marvel Jesus.”
But there’s one catch: his timeline is slowly perishing as a result of the death of Wolverine in James Mangold’s Logan. He was the timeline’s “anchor-being,” but now that he has sacrificed himself, Wade’s universe has no reason to exist. When Deadpool eventually realizes what Paradox is asking him, he takes his TemPad to find another version of Wolverine to ensure his timeline is preserved…but the one he chose is the worst ever, who let his entire universe down.
As a result, Paradox prunes Wade and Logan to The Void, where they look to escape and return to their original timelines. There, they meet Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), who wants to utilize Paradox’s “Time-Ripper” to prune every single timeline until only The Void stays. While Deadpool and a variant of Wolverine have massive differences, they must learn to put them aside to defeat Nova before she destroys the fabric of the entire universe.
As it was set up in Loki, in The Void, you never know who will show up. This allows Levy and co-writers Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Zeb Wells to have fun with the multiverse concept and pop up as many cameos as their $200 million budget allows. There’s only one problem: none of the appearances have any weight or emotional value to the movie.
They only exist for the audience to point and clap at the screen because they know who Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner, who was revealed to be a part of the cast last year) is. They do have fun with one specific cameo and subvert initial audience expectations, but there’s nothing bleaker than having a movie driven solely by the appearance of characters other than the titular protagonists on screen. It will be difficult to discuss the film without spoiling a thing – though anything revealed by the trades before the movie’s release and the trailers is fair game – especially regarding cameos that were not revealed in any of its promotional materials, but all that can be said about Deadpool & Wolverine is that it is a cynical exercise in corporate worship and brand synergy, and ugly-looking, soulless blockbuster that has opened the door for the worst, most desperate era of the MCU thus far.
A lot can be said about The Multiverse Saga and its shortcomings, but Spider-Man: No Way Home was the perfect example of how to utilize characters who were not in the MCU so they impact the protagonists' emotional journey. After spending time with Peter 1 (Tobey Maguire) and Peter 2 (Andrew Garfield), Earth-616’s Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has drastically changed and has learned to accept himself and his own insecurities in the wake of Aunt May’s (Marisa Tomei) tragic passing. His actions in attempting to help multiversal villains had drastic consequences, and he will never be the same Spider-Man he was before this occurred.
Since Deadpool & Wolverine is set in The Void, the emotional attachment to Wade and Logan’s arc does not exist. They are stuck in an environment with little to no consequence to the actual universe. Sure, Alioth (“from Loki, Season 1, Episode Five?” Ha. Ha.) will eat them alive, but it won’t impact the MCU timeline, nor will it make the stakes feel personal and important, unlike in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Of course, the big bad wants to end all universes, but Nova’s motivations are so paper-thin that they immediately fall apart, as they are never developed in the movie. Why does she want to do this? Who knows, but it’s the only way the film can bring emotional stakes into the mix. Otherwise, they’re fighting inside a purgatory that no one outside of that world (except for Loki and Sylvie) knows exists.
With Deadpool not being a character who develops emotionally, one needs a strong ‘anchor-being’ to teach him how to grow as a hero. While uninspired and incredibly desperate, getting Jackman to return as Wolverine could’ve been an interesting team-up. The two have always discussed how they had always wanted a proper crossover after the disastrous X-Men: Origins - Wolverine. And even with Logan’s ending having given the character a perfect send-off, bringing him back through the multiverse wouldn’t have been a problem if their partnership was interesting.
But it isn’t. Jackman’s portrayal of the character is even more uninspired than in Gavin Hood’s Origins flick. There’s no emotional depth to his Wolverine since he’s from another universe and has gone through an arc that the audience has never seen. As a result, his take on the character feels distant and never in tune with Reynolds’ loud-mouthed, fast-talking Deadpool. Of course, it’d be lying to say that there aren’t moments that work, but they are so few and far between that it almost feels as if there is no reason for Logan to be here other than to see him wear his iconic yellow suit Jackman never had the chance to wear for over twenty years.
In fact, Logan is sidelined for most of the film doing virtually nothing of interest, until he gets a quasi-poignant fireside chat with Laura/X-23 (Dafne Keen) to remind him of his purpose in the universe. And while Keen’s portrayal of Laura has not lost a touch, she’s speaking to an entirely different Logan. The scene has, thus, no depth as in Mangold’s Logan, since they have no formal connection with the two. She’s only there to serve fans who want her to continue playing X-23 in the MCU, which unfortunately negatively impacts her turn in Logan. It reduces a complex, layered breakout turn and never evolves her beyond the 2017 film’s heartbreaking final scene to appease people like BluRayAngel and Supes who can’t live without seeing characters brought back in a Reddit-like fan theory, the biggest and most egregious example of character assassination in recent memory.
While Mangold and cinematographer John Mathieson adopted a compelling lens to capture not only its gnarly R-rated action, but moments of quiet meditation with Logan and Laura, Levy and Richmond (who, mind you, also shot Argylle) sludgily capture Deadpool & Wolverine with no artistic flair and style. Yes, the opening sequence was fun thanks to its frame-breaking 3D, but the same can’t be said for the rest of the movie. Compared to how striking The Void looked in the first season of Loki (brilliantly shot by Autumn Durald Arkapaw), Levy and Richmond paint the wasteland with zero color and depth of field.
Some will argue that The Void is meant to be colorless, but, again, look at Loki. The Void was captured as a colorless, soulless world, devoid of reason and meaning. However, it had an artistic eye to it. The wasteland felt palpable and lived-in, and the greenish tint on the lens, before Alioth exacted its attack, made it look intriguing. None of this is found in Deadpool & Wolverine. Everything looks chintzy and cheap – even the sidescrolling climax that occurs near its end on the fakest set you’ve ever seen since Sidney J. Furie’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Nothing feels tangible and kinetic. Actors phone it in, go through the motions and hope people point and clap at the screen because they know who X actor is, and what they’re playing. There isn’t anything bleaker than this.
The action scenes aren’t great either. The big ‘versus’ battle between Deadpool and Wolverine has been teased to no end on its trailers, but the choreography is uninspired and unimpressively staged. With the film looking so cheap, none of the other ‘big setpieces’ also hit, with the team-up between Deadpool, Wolverine, and “The Others” (the film’s biggest cameos) haphazardly edited and never allowing us to see anything they do. Big, badass movements are shakily captured, and most of the scene’s impressive kills cut away from the violence. There’s no excuse to do this when your film is R-rated, and Deadpool 2’s David Leitch gave a blueprint on how its playful action should be shot and staged.
Say whatever you want about the sequel, but Leitch (and cinematographer Jonathan Sela) know how to shoot action and give it energy. In that film, the Domino (Zazie Beetz) sequence was the film’s centerpiece. The practical stunts didn’t disappoint, the gnarliest moments felt cathartic, and the colors giving each frame texture and life made it look like a movie. There isn’t a single image from Deadpool & Wolverine that looks like a serious blockbuster: it’s all artificial and poorly-conceived.
You would think that the scene in which Wolverine wears his iconic mask for the first time would be a moment to remember, exactly how Captain America (Chris Evans) weld Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) hammer in Avengers: Endgame. That shot is still etched in this critic’s memory, and the moment of thunderous applause that came with it. When Wolverine ultimately wears his mask and begins to exact a bloody killing spree, the moment is so poorly conceived that it almost feels as if the movie is stopping for a beat or two to let the audience clap before the sidescrolling action setpiece begins.
There’s lots of blood and eye-popping 3D, but it doesn’t stop the scene from falling completely flat on its face. This isn’t our Wolverine. It’s someone else. Seeing him wear a suit the actual Wolverine didn’t wear for twenty years seems criminal, especially seeing it captured so unimpressively, with a CGI mask that’ll never match the practical quality of a suit. It may make some audience members feel something, but it’ll never replicate the emotional poignancy of Logan, or even X-Men ’97, Marvel Studios’ last project and arguably the greatest comic-to-screen adaptation of mutants.
After X-Men ’97, Deadpool & Wolverine unfortunately lands with a thud. Its worthless, cynical cameos are no substitute for a decent story, which the film does not have. But most critics who are currently lapping this movie up are only talking about how insane the cameos are. Sure, it’s fun to see a certain actor subvert audience expectations, but remove them from the picture, and what do you have? An ugly-looking, poorly-conceived Marvel piece of ‘content’ with zero story, emotional attachement, or any form of justification drawn for Jackman’s Wolverine return. It’s all about unwarranted nostalgia and BluRayAngel fan theories come to life, with no depth or intelligence.
To even think that an average adult would eat this gobbledygook up is deeply insulting, and our moviegoing society deserves so much better than such listless fluff that’s only designed to make people point and clap at the screen because they know who a cameo is. Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t cinema, and no amount of whining from MCU stans will make this critic (who, by the way, is still a massive Marvel fan) think otherwise.