Deadpool & Wolverine Review: A Rehashed Snooze!

Marvel has hit a low in the era since Avengers: Endgame, a supposed wrap up of the iconic characters we loved from the comics and grew to love onscreen since 2008. Although not every film has been a bust after Endgame (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), Deadpool’s third film Deadpool & Wolverine was an exciting announcement that would bring together two of our favorite heroes.

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Deadpool’s first two films had major success for its raunchiness for a Marvel film and showcasing Ryan Reynolds’ ability to use his own, sometimes one track, acting to embody Deadpool’s persona. X-Men fans could now marvel at Wolverine’s return after his best film, Logan, released in 2017. With everything going for it, it is amazing how dreadfully Marvel was able to take the great hand it was dealt and throw it all away on a cheap money grab with zero heart, soul, and little laughs. Deadpool & Wolverine is a complete mess that yet again proves that Marvel should have stopped while they were ahead a long time ago.

In order to prevent his own timeline from being destroyed (seems familiar) Deadpool must team up with Wolverine to take on new villain Cassandra Nova so Deadpool can save the people that mean the most to him. Insert any other name into that sentence and you have most of the other recent Marvel movies, which is one of the many tiresome elements of the film. Timelines and multiverses seem to be the only two words Marvel is able to use in their plots nowadays, taking out any exploration of their famous characters in service of an ongoing cinematic universe that somehow keeps continuing when it is well known the storyboarding plans from Marvel executives has been in limbo since Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Deadpool’s shtick gets monotonous after the first five minutes, mimicking everything the first two films already did with slightly altered genitalia jokes while Wolverine is given a slight arc of being a depressed alcoholic but just as the film says, Deadpool’s annoying antics never give him a single moment to say anything meaningful. This movie is a constant reminder of Marvel’s inability to create anything remotely genuine or provoking since the success of their prior decade of films.

Deadpool & Wolverine opts for constant cameos and jokes to mask its soullessness and unoriginality. Some of its cameos will make one smile but a script that claims to care about the legacy of characters it explored years and years ago, while then tossing them to the wayside, proves all the filmmakers were going for were surprises that never honored what came before.

The film constantly alludes to studio rights and IP as it relates to Disney buying 20th Century Fox that has the studio executives saying to the audience “we are in on the joke too.” It comes off as the big wigs trying to get on the level of general audiences and Twitter to let us know that they know what people say and what is going on. However, it does not come off as funny because of the inauthenticity they possess when it comes to their stories and characters. Yes, Marvel is a business and a business’s main goal is to make money. However, to try to persuade us that they are laughing along with us is incredibly off putting because many filmmakers have shown us before that good cinema can make money too. It is not one or the other.

The film’s pacing is extremely messy, trying to go for a Deadpool and Wolverine matchup, multiverse antics, a new evil villain, and rehashing the past as a wink wink that all of this coexists. It comes off as the writers of the film (which is composed of FIVE by the way) wanting to make fans happy by throwing out as much as they could with no target to hit. With all of his talking and bantering, Deadpool falls back in the midst of the story and feels like a background character in his own film.

As Wolverine alludes to, he has so much to say without really saying anything at all. Deadpool & Wolverine is yet again another example of how far in the bowels of filmmaking Marvel is digging themselves into and no rehash of the past will ever take them out of it, in fact, it is digging them even deeper.

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Rating – 1.5/5

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