Deadpool and Wolverine Review
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00:00Are you ready?
00:02F*** yeah, I'm ready.
00:04I'm the Wolverine.
00:07Deadpool and Wolverine saw you from across the bar, and they like your vibe.
00:12It doesn't matter if you haven't enjoyed the MCU since Avengers Endgame pushed the stakes of the franchise off a cliff,
00:18or if you're cautiously optimistic about the rest of the multiverse saga.
00:22Come for Deadpool and Wolverine's blockbuster chemistry,
00:25but stay for the frankness with which they comment on the past, present, and future of Marvel Studios.
00:31The Marvel Universe is about to change forever.
00:34It's a good thing that they do, too.
00:36The MCU has been bloated and unfocused for years now,
00:40and it's about time someone let the air out and had some fun with it.
00:43In that way, Deadpool and Wolverine is a perfectly timed and well-sustained cinematic fart,
00:49released with confidence and comfort in the space it creates for future nourishment.
00:54It's not going to single-handedly save the MCU from the larger bout of indigestion it's suffering through,
01:00but it's a refreshing mea culpa that demonstrates that Marvel can still let her rip loud and proud when it really counts.
01:07Whatcha thinkin' about?
01:08Get the f*** off of me.
01:09Shh, shh.
01:10Almost done.
01:11Almost done what?
01:12Getting my knife out of your buttocks.
01:15Get your mind out of my pants!
01:17The Sean Levy-directed superhero comedy gets off to a roaring start,
01:21with Deadpool riffing on the action before the Marvel Studios fanfare is even finished
01:25and running afoul of the Time Variance Authority from Loki almost immediately.
01:29Let's f***ing go!
01:31There's an electricity to the opening act.
01:33After all, this is Deadpool's first time in the MCU,
01:36and like a comfortably inebriated cousin giggling into your ear after Thanksgiving dinner,
01:41there's no sure way to know what weird, hilarious nonsense will spill out of his mouth.
01:46I am soaking wet right now.
01:48Or how hard it will make your aunt clutch her pearls.
01:51With a decade-plus of Marvel Studios storytelling and marketing to skewer,
01:55Ryan Reynolds is off to the races,
01:57with jokes aimed at every corner of the Sacred Timeline.
02:01All right, finally aged.
02:03Reynolds' command of Wade Wilson's whipping wit is razor-sharp as ever,
02:07and applying it to the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
02:10he's able to bring the self-important franchise back down to Earth.
02:14You could practically see Reynolds slamming a binder full of Feige-focused jokes onto a table
02:18and recording every single one.
02:20Cain is the one thing that Feige said is off-limits.
02:23What about Bolivian marching belt?
02:25They know all the slang terms. They have a list.
02:27The self-referential material is unpredictable and incisive,
02:31enough at first to make this the most dangerous the MCU has felt
02:34since there were six Infinity Stones on the board.
02:37One of the biggest questions going into Deadpool and Wolverine
02:40was whether the MCU's first R rating would be enough to sustain the filthy, subversive tone
02:46that set the Merc with a Mouth apart in the first place.
02:49Man, that f***ing does it!
02:51Put your hands behind your knees and get down on your head now!
02:55That disgusting, irradiated heart is still very much intact,
02:59and if the idea of Wade and Logan trading curses every ten seconds
03:02is all it will take to get you into theaters,
03:04rest assured you will leave well f***ing fed.
03:07Let's f***ing go.
03:09But I can't look Mr. Poole in his horrifying, melty face and lie to him
03:14and tell him that I didn't detect some pulled punches.
03:17Some jokes that walk right up to the line of being truly fearless and surprising,
03:22only for them to double back or change the subject quickly.
03:25With all the big laughs and self-deprecation in play,
03:28it's hard to begrudge the filmmakers for sanding off some of the characters' harder edges,
03:32but it's still a little disappointing that Deadpool and Wolverine
03:35doesn't try to top some of DP's more heinous on-screen acts.
03:39Holy mommy f***ing shit!
03:42Speaking of, we don't make it more than ten minutes into Deadpool and Wolverine
03:45before Wade gleefully desecrates our memories of Logan,
03:49Shut the f*** up!
03:50Oh my god!
03:51both the character and James Mangold's 2017 film.
03:54It's another tightrope Deadpool and Wolverine has to walk.
03:58Logan is still correctly regarded as a high point of superhero cinema,
04:02and even though audiences are more or less used to the idea of variants now,
04:06bringing Hugh Jackman back in all of his clawed costume glory
04:10still runs the risk of feeling tacky after his previous borderline perfect farewell to the X-Man.
04:16But Jackman, an actor known for his great showmanship and ability to Wolverine really good,
04:22threads the needle of a post-Logan return to the role,
04:25clearly relishing every F-bomb and flash of berserker rage.
04:29There's undoubtedly some cognitive dissonance at first,
04:32as the movie asks the audience to map decades of goodwill
04:35onto a variant we're meeting for the first time,
04:38sort of like Loki did in season one.
04:40But in the end, this movie's Wolverine has all of the reluctant heroism and self-loathing
04:45you'd expect from any depiction of Logan,
04:47and the redemption he's after is personal enough that these sticking points feel less distracting as the movie goes on.
04:53But Deadpool and Wolverine does remind us that nothing, timeline aside, is sacred,
04:59and playing fast and loose with the rules is the name of the game.
05:02I have no idea how to save it alone, but you, you know how to save it!
05:09In the years since the abysmal X-Men Origins Wolverine,
05:12Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have been road-testing their chemistry on social media,
05:17and Deadpool and Wolverine proves their catty one-upmanship can sustain a feature-length adventure with ease.
05:23Deadpool and Wolverine. A team.
05:25Shake on it.
05:27There's a trust and ease between the stars that puts their banter head and shoulders above most of their MCU contemporaries.
05:34Again, years and years of de facto rehearsal and an R rating give them a lot of leeway here.
05:40As a buddy comedy, Deadpool and Wolverine is rock solid,
05:44but it falls prey to the perfunctory plotting that has plagued other recent Marvel movies.
05:49It grinds to a halt any time there's exposition to attend to,
05:53and while Deadpool sure does like to joke about that fact in real time,
05:57clunky plot junk still hits the ear like clunky plot junk.
06:02Much of that exposition gets dumped in the lap of the TVA's Mr. Paradox,
06:06the timeline cop who eventually enlists Deadpool's help.
06:10But Paradox's influence on the events after his initial encounters with Deadpool is pretty limited,
06:16and the movie largely moves past him after the first act.
06:19The incomprehensible plot is not helped by Deadpool and Wolverine's bland primary setting.
06:26The Void, a trash heap at the end of time introduced in Disney Plus' Loki series.
06:31The nondescript, bleak terrain makes the already thin stakes even harder to hang onto as the movie goes.
06:38We're regularly reminded of the reality and the family that Deadpool is trying to save,
06:43and yet our only connection to them are the Polaroid that Wade flashes
06:47the few times the story calls for him to be earnest.
06:50It's also in the Void where the mysterious Cassandra Nova holds court,
06:54driven by off-the-shelf villain motivations that feel totally mismatched to her erratic, impish nature.
07:01Deadpool and Wolverine benefit from years of audience goodwill,
07:05with connections to worlds and characters that give them an emotional leg up.
07:09But as a creature of the Void with nearly no link to anything or anyone,
07:13Cassandra, and by extension actor Emma Corrin, ends up totally swept away by more familiar characters.
07:20Deadpool and Wolverine's boring but budget-friendly wasteland
07:24does at least open events up to promised cameos and variants in a way that,
07:28for all of Deadpool's undercutting,
07:30actually treats the fabric of the MCU's internal reality with some level of respect.
07:35A marauding group of veteran Fox mutants like Pyro and Sabretooth
07:39open the door to even more surprise appearances,
07:42which range in significance and utility from
07:44my brain recognizes that character and I like that my brain recognizes that character
07:49all the way down to
07:50holy crap we've now closed the loop on one of the superhero subgenre's greatest missed opportunities.
07:56Deadpool and Wolverine's self-awareness is most effective
08:00when it's honoring the pillars on which the MCU is built,
08:03namely Fox's work to build superhero franchises at the turn of the 21st century.
08:08Deadpool and Wolverine converses with that history thoughtfully
08:12and with more tenderness than you might expect.
08:18Stop it.
08:20Deadpool and Wolverine is an outrageous, consistently funny superhero comedy
08:24that succeeds largely thanks to the contagious enthusiasm of leads Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman,
08:30and a surprisingly classy perspective on superhero movie history.
08:34Wade and Logan's profanity-laced adventure forces the MCU farther out of its comfort zone than it's been in years,
08:41even though old and increasingly frustrating issues like forgettable villains
08:45and a barely-there plot show that breaking the fourth wall
08:48isn't always enough to solve a movie's foundational problems.
09:00Score.
09:01Oh, you guys would have been really mad if I forgot that.
09:05I keep it down here in the bucket.
09:07I haven't wanted anyone to see it until now,
09:09so it's why it's in the bucket.
09:11So, you know.
09:13Come on.
09:14Cough.
09:16There it is.
09:17Yep.
09:18Score.
09:19It's here.
09:21Thanks for watching.
09:22For more movie reviews, check out what we thought of Twisters and A Quiet Place Day One.
09:26And for everything else, you're already in the right place.
09:28IGN.