Dear Deadpool & Wolverine, It’s Not You, It’s Me
The biggest problem with being a fan of something is that you tend to have expectations that, if not met, affect your appreciation of any of its adaptations. So, in the interest of full transparency, I have to come clean: I’m a huge X-Men fan, and I hate Wolverine.
Not Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, that guy is great; but the character Wolverine himself. The guy in the comics whose popularity exploded so much that he practically became bigger than the X-Men. As Deadpool would tell him, "You were the X-Man." (No, actually, Nathaniel Grey was the X-Man, but I’m nerding out now, so I’ll stop so you keep on reading). I’m also not the biggest fan of Deadpool because I was actually a fan of Deathstroke, the DC Comics character he was based on, even if creator Rob Liefeld would never admit it. Let’s get all that comic geek cred and inherent bias out of the way so we can talk about Deadpool & Wolverine.
Let's Talk About Deadpool & Wolverine
People will watch Deadpool & Wolverine regardless of what anyone says because, well, it’s freaking Deadpool and Wolverine. Between the natural excitement people have for these two popular characters and the extensive promotional campaign that marketing savant Ryan Reynolds himself has been directly involved in, the last thing anyone needs to convince them to head to the theaters is the opinion of a comic geek with an avowed dislike for the characters—which is a terrific thing because Deadpool & Wolverine is actually really pretty great. It is, in fact, so much fun that for the whole two hours of the film and its lingering afterglow, I forgot I hated Wolverine.
In some ways, it’s easy to get away with Deadpool because of his ability to break the fourth wall. A lot of the gags are self-referential, and the jokes get better the more you know about pop culture, such as a joke about bones in the human body and Gossip Girl (which stars Ryan Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively, just in case you didn’t already know). And the gags just keep coming, like an unstoppable berserker barrage of semiautomatic gunfire. The entire film is basically a string of gags, expletives, and sexual innuendo, which makes it extremely funny and, if you’re not ready for it, extremely offensive. The pegging joke in the trailers is just a teaser for a constant slew of mostly one-sided homoerotic overtones that’s only remotely okay because Deadpool is doing it to Wolverine, who just shrugs it off. It’s hilarious but also definitely counts as sexual harassment if Wolverine had been a woman. The writers—who include Reynolds and director Shawn Levy—know this, of course, which is why they reference it early on with one of the TVA employees making a call to HR after Deadpool makes some lewd comments. The TVA, of course, is the Time Variance Authority from the Disney+ series Loki.
If you haven’t watched Loki, don’t worry, I gotchu. The Time Variance Authority is an organization that exists outside of time and space and is responsible for overseeing the various timelines, or multiverses, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The TVA kidnaps Deadpool from his timeline and offers him a place in the "Sacred Timeline," which is basically where almost everything that has happened in the MCU, uh, happened. It comes with a catch, however, as rogue TVA agent Paradox (Matthew Macfayden) tells him that Deadpool’s timeline is destined to die because it has lost its "anchor being," a character of such importance that if that person dies, the universe will eventually cease to exist. As it happens, the anchor being of Deadpool’s universe is Logan, the Wolverine, who segues into a side-splitting, timeline-hopping montage of Deadpool looking for a replacement Wolverine. Fans of the comic will lose their minds during this sequence, and it is one of the many thoughtful touches that make Deadpool & Wolverine such a perfect film for geeking out.
Warning: Nerd paragraph ahead. This begs the question, of course, that if an anchor being is so important to a timeline, how can they die so easily? Well, maybe not easily in the case of Wolverine, but eventually. At best, even in the comics, Wolverine’s healing factor can keep him alive for over 200 years. Considering a universe lasts over a hundred trillion years, having an anchor being that exists for less than a blip in that time makes absolutely no sense. Furthermore, according to Paradox, the universe dying takes a few thousand years, which is definitely an extremely short time compared to the universe’s actual lifespan, but it’s such a long time by human reckoning that it shouldn’t matter. But Paradox is so impatient that he wants to prune Deadpool’s universe immediately, which again makes completely zero sense when you consider that the TVA exists outside of space and time, and whether a timeline lasts one or a hundred trillion years is irrelevant because they see all of it. But I suppose that’s why he’s called Mr. Paradox—because he keeps contradicting himself. Besides, if he had just jumped ahead a few hundred years into the future of Deadpool’s timeline and pruned it then, after all of Deadpool’s friends had died, the entire movie wouldn’t have happened, we would have no Deadpool & Wolverine, and we would all be sad.
So the lesson here is, don’t ask questions. If the plot is dumb, which it absolutely is, it’s because Deadpool is a purposely dumb character nobody is supposed to take seriously. The drama and gravity is Wolverine’s job. Wolverine’s sad sack seriousness contrasts with Deadpool’s irreverence and incessant wisecracking, and it’s a total riot. It’s the perfect buddy cop formula with the added bonus of having two people with a rapid healing factor so they can keep punching, slicing, slashing, and stabbing each other over and over again like slapstick. It’s extremely violent and graphic, particularly the opening sequence where Deadpool faces off against a mob of TVA agents while dancing to NSYNC’s "Bye Bye Bye." Deadpool was machine gunning for the MCU’s first R rating, and boy, did they hit that target. The higher-ups drew the line at cocaine use, and even that became a gag.
But never mind the graphic violence, the sexual innuendoes, and the nonsensical plot, let’s talk about Emma Corin as Cassandra Nova, the film’s latest, shiniest big bad. Taken from the pages of the X-Men, Cassandra Nova is Charles Xavier’s unknown twin who was supposedly so evil that Xavier killed her in the womb before she could even be born, but whose psychic essence was so powerful she managed to survive. She makes her home in the Void where the TVA dumps all its refuse, a proverbial and literal sandbox where she—and consequently Disney—can play with all the IPs that used to belong to 20th Century Fox. There’s no greater deus ex machina than a reality where anything goes, where Deadpool’s fourth wall breaking is just another gag in a wasteland filled with broken fourth walls. It is in this hellish landscape where Cassandra is queen, and what a queen she is.
If I have any other complaint about Deadpool & Wolverine, it would be that Cassandra Nova doesn’t get enough screen time. Two idiots beating each other up is fun, but all the violence and bloodbath can get old pretty quickly. Emma Corin’s Cassandra Nova has the potential to be one of the scariest villains in the MCU, and the fact that she’s relegated to an inconsequential space outside of space and time is an absolute shame because she’s an even better bad guy than Jonathan Majors’ Kang. Corin is absolute perfection; the visual of her fingers poking through flesh is taken right out of the pages of the comics, and it’s glorious.
It’s now been over a couple of days since I saw Deadpool & Wolverine, and the high from the movie is just a little more than a tingle in my nutsies. I still don’t like Wolverine, but I definitely no longer hate him. I begrudgingly admit and embrace his appeal, not in a sexually harassing kind of way like Deadpool, and put the credit squarely on Hugh Jackman’s unparalleled performance as the clawed Canuck. When Deadpool jokes that Disney would be having Hugh reprise his role until he’s 90, you almost want it to be true until you remember that it wasn’t as fun when they did it with Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones or Han Solo. That said, Hugh Jackman is so ridiculously ripped at 55 that his name should actually be spelled Jacked Man.
Deadpool & Wolverine, past all the gags and cameos, is a love letter to 20th Century Fox (and even a little bit of New Line Cinema) and its contribution to the superhero movie genre. There are fewer cameos than I expected, but a lot more than I needed or deserved. One particular cameo is less of a throwback than a what-could’ve-been, and it was probably the biggest surprise of all. The more you know about the stuff that happens behind the scenes, the more you know about this actor’s or that actress’ life from the tabloids, TMZ, or TikTok, the more you’ll laugh at all the jokes crammed into Deadpool & Wolverine. The capstone just might be a bittersweet mid-credits montage that plays to Green Day’s "Good Riddance." It’s a thank you to all the good times we’ve shared as fans of all the Marvel films, Disney’s way of closing the door on some of the movies from the past but leaving it unlocked. As a fan of the X-Men, Deadpool & Wolverine wasn’t the film I expected or wanted, which left me with a certain melancholy and longing. But that’s just me. Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.
Because despite my disappointment, Deadpool & Wolverine is still one of the most enjoyable movies of the year. It’s definitely something unpredictable, but in the end is right. Thank you, Disney and 20th Century Fox; I had the time of my life.
