‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Review: Crowd Pleasing Pops, No Substance

Heaven help anyone who turns up at this R-rated comedy without having seen about 18 other MCU films or having a nerdy friend next to them to explain all of the in-jokes.

I went into Deadpool & Wolverine surprisingly optimistic. This is, after all, the only Marvel Studios feature due out this year, a respite from superhero fatigue. This film is also a novelty in the Marvel oeuvre, an R-rated comedy that bridges the gap between the 20th Century Fox X-Men franchise where Deadpool and Wolverine both started out and the ongoing MCU. But despite being right in the demographic crosshairs for its incessant geek culture references, I found myself as exhausted with this film as I have been with any other installment in the lackluster Multiverse Saga. Deadpool & Wolverine is every inch a post-peak Marvel movie, a parade of crowd pleasing pops with practically no substance, guaranteeing a billion dollar return and a shelf life of about five minutes.

Light spoilers ahead, but no mentions of surprise cameos or plot twists beyond the first act. 

Deadpool & Wolverine doubles down on the metatextual gags of its predecessors, functioning as a swan song for the Disney-absorbed 20th Century Fox and their Marvel film franchises. Mr. Paradox of the Time Variance Authority (Matthew Macfadyen) has determined that Deadpool/Wade Wilson’s home universe has become obsolete, but offers him the chance to jump ship to the “Sacred Timeline,” the primary setting of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, Wade attempts to save his own universe with the help of a time variant of Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman). Their quest puts them at odds with godlike Mutant Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), and a string of cast-offs from dead timelines.

Much of the film’s comedy presupposes the audience’s familiarity not only with the entire Marvel screen canon going back 20 years, but with unmade projects, casting rumors, and fan discourse. At my preview screening (where roughly 30% of the audience was wearing some sort of Marvel merchandise), these jokes killed. Most of the pauses for applause were honored, and the crowd went wild for the predictable repetition of popular online memes. This genre of gag was also plentiful in the first two Deadpool films, but this installment significantly cranks up their frequency and importance. Heaven help anyone who watches this without having seen or at least read up about 18 other films or a nerdy friend next to them to explain all of these jokes.

This may or may not help. I’m fairly certain I caught all of the in-jokes and I laughed maybe twice the entire film. It might have been more had most of the best lines not been given away in the trailers.

Don’t worry, because if you’re not a Marvel nerd, there are still two other joke premises in the movie, repeated over and over and over again. One is Deadpool’s famous potty mouth, combined with his extravagant gender performance and hyperactive pansexuality, which Reynolds and company clearly find to be the funniest thing in the world. He’s a man who undulates his hips when he walks and talks about receiving anal sex, the most hilarious kind of sex a person can enjoy! Isn’t it shocking that Disney is allowing this? Wade certainly thinks so, and he’ll bring it up as often as possible. Just in case this whole enterprise starts to feel too gay to any of the edgelord Redditors in the audience, here comes an annoying softboy variant of Deadpool who “identifies as a feminist,” and a joke about how another joke will upset the “woke mob.”

The film’s third and final comedy premise is that moments of drama or over-the-top violence are funny when set against kitschy and familiar pop songs. Let’s kill a bunch of guys to “Bye Bye Bye!” Let’s kill a bunch of guys to “Like a Virgin!” (See, the juxtaposition of the bloodbath and the bouncy beat is ironic.) One or two of these violent music videos can be funny (they certainly worked in the first Deadpool) but Deadpool & Wolverine employs this device for practically every action sequence, including consequential ones, sucking all the drama out of potentially impactful moments. The music is also forced to do most of the heavy lifting as the action itself is often dizzying and incoherent, particularly during crowded team versus team battles.

If there’s a saving grace to Deadpool & Wolverine, it’s Hugh Jackman, who is totally engrossing during his handful of acting moments. Here playing a drunk, self-hating version of Logan from a universe where he failed all of his friends, Jackman strikes a solid balance between comedic straight man and affecting dramatic foil. It’s not a reprise of his performance from Logan, nor should it be, but it’s totally dialed in, undercut only by the storytellers’ assumption that we will continue to find it funny or shocking when he uses the word “fuck.”

It is, of course, thrilling to see Jackman don the classic yellow-and-blue costume that the Fox movies never saw fit to provide. And, to the credit of the film’s five writers, Logan’s colorful, comics-accurate wardrobe is given some narrative weight, a symbolic meaning for the character that goes beyond fanservice. It is, in fact, possible to deliver nostalgic nuggets for the nerds and tell a compelling story, and Marvel has pulled it off on a few occasions. This time around, however, practically every little treat for the audience feels like just that—a Scooby Snack tossed into a waiting mouth as a reward for loyal adherence to the Marvel brand.

One last little spoiler warning about one of the film’s final non-plot-important bits.

There was one moment in Deadpool & Wolverine that made me genuinely emotional. Over the closing credits, there’s a montage of highlights and behind-the-scenes footage from various 20th Century Fox Marvel movies, not just the well-liked ones but total flops like Josh Trank’s Fantastic 4. This button underlines a theme that the film’s narrative fumbles — that whether or not a movie or character “counts,” it still matters to someone. These films, even the bad ones, were the product of years of hard work by thousands of people. It’s sweet to give that work a curtain call.

This montage, by the way, is set to “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day, because of course it is. Lazy, but in an ironic way, to the very last note.