Some Rational Thoughts on Deadpool & Wolverine

My brain couldn’t stop after Marvel's latest. Don't worry, I spoil everything.

Leaving my local IMAX the other night after seeing Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool’s long-threatened entrance into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there was a line outside the men’s room. In Ryan Reynold’s America? I thought in horror. Nearly everyone in line had a Deadpool shirt, and I realized with dread that so many boys men came out of my 7pm Deadpool & Wolverine showing that they overcrowded the men’s restroom. At this point, I started rethinking everything in my life that brought me here.

Look, I’m not above this shit; if it sounds like I think otherwise, allow me to set the record straight. There are plenty of examples proving I have always loved and will always love superheroes. Hell, I wrote this in a Batman shirt! But the last few years have proved a breaking point, with Deadpool & Wolverine the most recent peak. So, here’s an off-the-cuff, stream of consciousness post (more or less). My sincerest apologies to you, the innocents.

I spent a lot of Deadpool & Wolverine’s (admittedly not unentertaining) runtime asking, “who is this for?” It should be for me. I’m, by all accounts, a red-blooded American millennial male who likes irony. I grew up on superhero movies, in part the 20^th Century Fox X-Men films released from 2000-2020. I obsess over the machinations of Hollywood decision-making, ruminate every franchise film announced, and have a comic book collection that embarrasses my girlfriend. Shouldn’t Deadpool & Wolverine, a movie mocking the ins-and-outs of the last 30 years of the superhero genre as viewed through the X-Men films, most of which I saw in theaters and many I like if not outright love, be for me?

And yet it isn’t. At all. Now, I’m slightly to blame. I’ve found Deadpool’s shtick – snarky, base, self-aware, dripping in dated pop culture, “I’m in on the joke and make it faster than you so I can do whatever I want” – increasingly tiresome. Part of that is the Deadpoolification of this industry, movie stars, and blockbusters’ sense of humor. When everything tries to be like this (even its purveyor, Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds), it’s off-putting.

Not helping the situation is the recent onslaught of middling superhero media. As a kid – even a teenager – all I wanted were movies starring my favorite spandex-clad crime-fighters, movies that kept coming out and made millions and millions of dollars. As an adult, I got so much of what I wanted I’m sick of it. I’m zapped dry by an industry seemingly content feeding me shlock. I can and do still champion this shit – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse overflowed with personality, meaning, and joy and The Batman, if derivative, was created in a lab for an audience of me – but the gems are rarer.

Nonetheless, the MCU, the single biggest cog in the superhero machine, has, after 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, been in a rut, releasing mediocre, meaningless movies. While they were never the pinnacle of artistry, all Marvel seems to care about of late is rewarding nerds like me for knowing fringe comic book lore and obscure Hollywood filmmaking development all while gassing us up for the next episode of their TV series, which is sometimes a literal TV show. Gradually, Marvel is lesser than the sum of its parts; I’m probably warmer on individual projects than this post suggests while still being underwhelmed, exhausted, and occasionally insulted by the current state of the MCU experiment. Maybe I shouldn’t engage anymore, but here I stand, a glutton for punishment.

Enter Deadpool & Wolverine, a movie I have barely addressed directly. But the above – inaccessible, incoherent, slightly angry, less funny than it thinks it is – is not too dissimilar from my experience watching Deadpool & Wolverine. The film is directed by Shawn Levy, an effective if juiceless journeyman devoid of razzle-dazzle (kind of a “big yikes!” if your best movie is Night at the Museum or Big Fat Liar). In the film, Deadpool finally joins the Avengers in the MCU. Except, jk, it’s actually about the X-Men movies and other forgotten, unloved relics predating Marvel’s dynastic rule? Sure. Whatever. Describing its unintelligible plot would make you (rightfully) send me to the loony bin. Suffice it to say Deadpool runs afoul of various universes and crosses paths with familiar, neglected heroes from movie superherodom’s past, all with the wit and whim of a 14-year old who just learned what pegging is.

It’s not inaccurate to label Deadpool & Wolverine craven, soulless, and dumb. Practically written by and for Reddit, there is no real emotional or artistic core to the film, even as it cynically gestures at Deadpool caring about his friends and wanting to be part of a team that matters – something that, for those of you keeping score at home, was Deadpool’s exact arc in Deadpool and Deadpool 2. (Where have I gone wrong that I’m lamenting the friggin Merc with a Mouth’s subpar dramaturgy?) Rather, this is little more than an exercise in corporate brand management.

A phrase repeated in criticism, even the positive kind, of Deadpool & Wolverine, is of a snake eating its own tail, something particularly felt in the film’s extensive supporting roster pulling from the deep, dark recesses of superhero movies no one remembers, some of which never actually existed: Channing Tatum really was going to have that cartoonish accent; the internet wants Henry Cavill to be Wolverine; Chris Evans returns as that famous superhero (but not the one you like). The complete list of cameos is downright nauseating.

The greater struggle is the film’s treatment of these cameos. While I suppose it’s nice, say, Jennifer Garner got that bag, does anyone really have fondness for her role as Elektra from the movie Elektra? By every metric, it’s famously reviled and unsuccessful. But Deadpool & Wolverine acts as if I should lose my shit at Garner’s return – yet my crowd, though clearly into the movie, was pretty muted in its response. There is a severe, endemic “What are we doing here?” energy Deadpool & Wolverine cannot shake. (I truly mean no disrespect to Jenny.)

Lest I forget the biggest nostalgia play of all, the return of Hugh Jackman, the titular & Wolverine. He retired in 2017’s Logan but is back, technically as a different version of the character. Beyond his costume and fighting style, this interpretation is largely indistinguishable from Jackman’s previous nine performances. Fortunately (or unfortunately, I haven’t decided), Jackman is the standout of the film. Too compelling a screen presence, Jackman, through his Wolverine’s unique brand of magnetic animalism, wrings surprising pathos from the script (credited to five writers, including Reynolds and Levy).

Deadpool & Wolverine is problematically reminiscent of Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film I largely like despite it being a similarly cowardly if rollercoaster-y bit of nostalgia bait. Also drowning in cameos significant to millennials, No Way Home at least had the decency to weave those returning faces into its main character’s emotional journey. Here, I’m reminded nostalgia’s Greek root words are “nostos,” meaning “returning home,” and “algos,” tellingly meaning “pain.” I’ve forcibly returned to my nerd home a lot lately, and I’m starting to feel some pain.

That said, I’m not angry at Deadpool & Wolverine in a way where I’d despair my beloved medium of film was a grave mistake – that is ire reserved for something like The Flash, an act of wanton criminality that belongs in jail, not unlike its star. Like I said, I’m not above this shit: There is undeniable fun here. Though it has no role beyond reminding me of a thing I know, Deadpool massacres soldiers set to my beloved “Bye Bye Bye” while recreating the music video’s choreography (performed by dancer Nick Pauley, credited as Dancepool). The film isn’t unfunny, and some jabs at its actors’ personal lives delighted me. Its action was amusingly cartoonish if meaningless (because everyone’s invulnerable).

So who is Deadpool & Wolverine for? I’m still unsure. Maybe it’s for the X-Men actors, who received an unexpectedly touching tribute during the end credits which I guess is nice? I thought a lot about my girlfriend’s kid brother who’s 12; through no fault of his own, he was raised agnostic to most pop culture not starring Sonic the Hedgehog. Because I cannot be stopped, I’ve broadened his horizons, showing him, among other things, several superhero movies, some in the MCU.

I don’t know if I’ll ever show him Deadpool & Wolverine – I certainly won’t do it eagerly, as I’ll have much to explain: the intricacies of the Disney/Fox merger and how it’s funny; that Wesley Snipes was Blade 20 years ago and hated his costar, Ryan Reynolds, but they’re together again and how it’s funny; that when my girlfriend’s brother was negative nine years old, Jennifer Garner starred in Daredevil with Ben Affleck and they were married but now they’re not and how it’s funny; and more. If Deadpool & Wolverine is the nadir of artistry in cinema, which it might be, it’s at least marginally entertaining. I can’t say, however, I want to watch it or anything like it ever again.