MANILA, Philippines – Standing in line for Deadpool & Wolverine, surrounded by excited influencers, cosplayers, and fans, a friend asked me, “How excited are you about this movie?
I pursed my lips, held up a hand, and shook it while saying, “Eeeeeeeeeh.”
I think it’s fair for me, and for most viewers, to approach this with a fair amount of cautious optimism. The buzz around it is, it’s a make-or-break not only for all these various configurations of studio mergers, but for Hollywood as a whole. It seems these days we can’t just be focused on the merits of a film, but the business and struggles around it are part of the film’s context and discourse.
What’s surprising is that as a text (and meta-text if we want to be wonky about it), Deadpool & Wolverine embraces all these multiple layers, making them part of the narrative and even characters’ lines. Any kind of meta-textual, breaking the fourth wall, winking constantly to the audience project runs a risk of being too cute, too self-referential, and too much about itself.
It’s a challenge in the writing, in the performances, and in an audience’s willingness to play along with the games, and the games within games that the text sets up. All that’s an overblown way to say that Deadpool & Wolverine plays in its very own meta-playground while pulling in the MCU, Fox’s Marvel-related efforts, and even the business concerns around it all.
The movie walks a tone tightrope, having to be funny, irreverent, and over the top, while still delivering meaningful story and tugging at heartstrings.
But before it does all that, it throws down a kind of conceptual gauntlet. In the opening action sequence, Ryan Reynolds’s Deadpool uses a skeleton to disfigure and maim a very NPC-horde of enemies, in a balletic explosion of gratuitous violence and all to the tune and timing of one of the catchiest boyband hits of all time. Basically, if you are willing to put up with that scene, then you know whether this movie is for you or not. Either buy in, or walk out.
I, and the rest of the audience I was with, bought in.
The story’s main conflict and character drama is around Deadpool not being “a world-saving type” and how he struggles both with the idea and attempts to actually be a world-saver. The movie front-loads a lot of snark and sarcasm because that’s to be expected, but as it progresses, there’s some real balance struck between fourth wall-breaking snark and actual emotional resonance.
I won’t reveal any plot points or anything like that because part of the movie’s joy is surprising you with its appearances and reveals.
What I can say is that it takes a very familiar form, that of the buddy road trip. I couldn’t help but sit back and think of Ready to Rumble, Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, or even Dude Where’s My Car, where characters move from one setting and set piece to the next while working through issues and trying other accomplish some kind of quest.
And surprisingly this seemingly flimsy frame works. It gives space for Reynolds to riff off of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who we are informed early on enough is not a version that we have encountered in the million other movies in which Jackman has played the character.
It’s kind of amazing to watch Jackman riff so effortlessly with Reynolds. You can tell these guys are playing around, but also that they are delivering something for viewers and fans. Another point to think about. This movie leans hard into fan service. And unlike other movies that might give a little nod for the fans, this embraces every possibly opportunity for fan service.
I personally think it toes the line, like it just barely stays in bounds. Had it gone just inches further and it would’ve been tasteless. But it surprises with that balance. Adding to the balance is how it serves essentially as the movie that allows the MCU and Fox Marvel movies to finally crossover. By this point, we all have multiverse fatigue, if not overall superhero fatigue. There’s waaaaaaay too much MCU lore and baggage to deal with. And if you’ve been following the trailers you know that this movie has been connecting heavily with the Loki series.
But in more good surprise, you don’t need to do a review and deep dive on the lore to enjoy this movie. We’re even given just enough tastefully placed flashbacks that we don’t need to watch the older work or YouTube recaps of them.
There are moments when I wasn’t sure it was heading in the right direction. And it’s unwieldy road trip format means that there’s some slack and it isn’t a tight, straight narrative. But it manages to work and succeed at so many things that on an overall level it’s a really fun movie.
One thing that a lot of superhero movies struggle with is their main villain. Count this as the third
non-spoiler surprise so far in this review: this movie delivers two great villains. We all know by now how good Matthew McFadyen is. Here he is used as a shameless exposition device as well as an unscrupulous and ambitious TVA agent. And he is great. Even more of a revelation is Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova. Nova is one of the most powerful and threatening enemies in the X-Men rogues’ gallery, and Corrin brings all the malice and terror in her performance.
Deadpool & Wolverine delivers on so many levels that it’s hard to hold its faults against it. There’s just so much good stuff here that I think even those who have superhero fatigue will be able to have fun. There’s some risk of playing too much to the fans, and I will say that you don’t need some encyclopedic knowledge of the various lores this movie intertwines, but it helps to know that this is drawing from all those “histories” to deliver something that’s so weirdly meta while being simultaneously earnest.
Deadpool & Wolverine starts out playing it cool, but by the end, it wears its heart on its sleeve. That’s disarming and there’s little more I can say now than not only did it excite me, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching this a few more times. – Rappler.com