I think it’s a pretty fair to say that the moment Marvel Studios started fucking around with the multiverse, their product of colourful superhero stories generously laced with wise cracks, heart and an ever growing continuity, stopped becoming plain old movies and instead morphed into gargantuan feel-good experiences that shamelessly deals in staggeringly complex fan service, meta humour and a desire to realize more of its fan’s dreams than John Cena’s charity work. Believe this or not, this isn’t a complaint – but it is a perfect time for Deadpool to enter the MCU at a time when it seemingly needs him most.
But with Kevin Feige and his shadowy Disney overlords giving the franchise permission to retain its R rating after swallowing Twentieth Century Fox whole like Galactus with a case of the munchies, is there one task that even Ryan Reynolds’ charisma can’t overcome – the resurrection of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine after the near perfect ending of Logan?
After his bout of time hopping antics that closed out the events of Deadpool 2, we rejoin the scarred visage of Wade Wilson after a noticable rejection has left him at a worryingly low point. After taking that knock back extraordinarily hard, we find the man who would be Deadpool selling automobiles at a car dealership with his buddy Peter after hanging up his red suit and donning a rather obvious looking hairpiece. His private life has seemingly taken a beating too and even though his friends show up to celebrate his birthday, Wade has obviously given up on his dreams of his particular brand of off-beat heroism.
Enter the TVA – Remember them? The time cops from the Loki show? – who whisk the Merc With A Mope away to their headquarters that exists out of time in order to make him a deal. It seems that Wade’s universe has lost its “anchor being” and thus is doomed to eventual disaster as the timeline decays, but while Wade has been selected to aid them, he naturally exceeds his role, steals a TemPad and sets off into the Multiverse to find a replacement anchor being for universe. The anchor being, by the way, is Wolverine.
Wade finally settles on a Wolverine who has lost everything (except his love for hard liquor) and attempts to get him back to the TVA only to end up in the Void, a dimension at the end of time where the flotsam and jettson of dead timelines end up, awaiting to be consumed by a reality-eating cloud monster named Alioth. Here, the misfiring and feuding duo of Deadpool and Wolverine have to contend with friends and foes both new and familiar and bring down dystopian despot Cassandra Nova if they’re ever going to get back to save Wade’s universe.
Oh, and there’s cameos. Like, lots of cameos.
If any character was born to traverse the self referential nightmare that is the multiverse, it’s surely Deadpool, a character so attuned to meta humour he frequently breaks the fourth wall with the ease that most find when we break wind – and so it’s suspiciously prevalent that Disney managed to snag his rights just as the gargantuan MCU seemed to be struggling the most. It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a little off its game since the world unifying victory lap of Endgame, but with issues spreading from casting, scripts and even that all-important box office, the merry Marvel marching band is in need of a Spider-Man: No Way Home sized hit. Well wouldn’t you know it, Deadpool & Wolverine may actually be that hit chiefly that’s to the fact that it takes the influx of Spideys from the final forty minutes from that massive crowd pleaser and literally stretches it to two hours in length. No, seriously, I truly don’t think you can actually how many cameos, in-jokes, shock guest spots and bizarre plot twists are in this movie, but Ryan Reynolds is obviously thrilled he gets to turn his famous potty mouth loose on a far bigger canvas.
You see, D&W not only is the third Deadpool movie, it’s a third Deadpool movie which just so happens to be bankrolled by Disney who have stunningly allowed the movie to be as foul mouthed and violent as the red-suited scamp ever was. If Reynolds’ trademark brand of adolescent, verbal diarrhoea has always left you cold, or that the intricacies of this late-stage MCU is far too complicated to bother will, this film doesn’t even try to change your mind, however, to fans that have been sitting on the fence, Deadpool’s third coming is something of a unhinged treat that offers as an official final farewell to the clutch of Marvel offerings that came from Fox ever since the superhero genre broke big. In fact, ironically, you very may find yourself welling up when reminiscing about a bunch of movies that by and large weren’t that good (select X-Men titles aside), but the movie is on a vastly moving mission to give as many random characters from marvel movies past (and even a few that were never even made) the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man treatment by attempting to finish their stories or arcs left over from decades prior. The confounding thing is that it actually fucking works and while it causes the movie to plateau a little in the middle and gives us yet another single serving villain in the shape of Emma Corrin’s slapheaded psycho, Cassandra Nova, the jaw-dropping cameos actually add to the plot (such as it is) instead of being used solely for a cheap pop or cheeky joke.
However, the biggest problem Deadpool & Wolverine has to hurdle is the resurrection of the latter of the pair which was actually something of a concern when you consider how artful a send off Logan truly was. However, not only does the movie hilariously treat that moment with epic levels of disrespect (I won’t say much, but grave desecration instantly comes to mind), but Hugh Jackman’s return actually comes with a lot more attached that a long overdue, comic accurate costume for the clawed one. Aside from getting to play a plethora of Wolverine variants, he manages to offer up yet another tragic angle for the beleaguered berzerker and his grumpy, short-tempered attitude plays beautifully with Reynolds’ hyper verbal mania and when the friendship breaks down (and it does – frequently) the ultra violent blood spraying goes far beyond anything the MCU has done before.
So, is the MCU saved then? Well, it certainly isn’t fucked, judging by how much pure fun is wrung out of the concept, but I do wonder exactly how much enjoyment can be gleaned from viewers who have no idea about the minutiae of comic book movie making lore or various deep cuts drawn from the pages of of Marvel’s back catalogue? I mean beyond N*Sync dance routines and various gags about molestation. However, I do know that minutiae, and as a result, I found Deadpool & Wolverine to be a big, gaping slice of Marvel mania that serves as a strangely moving tribute for a period in time when CBMs were still trying to find their way.
Yes there’s probably too many of those deep cuts for the average viewer, but deep cuts tend to be Logan and Wade’s speciality. Well, that and dick jokes. Lots of dick jokes.
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