The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been on a hiatus – of sorts. In a climate where superhero movies don’t make the same bank they used to, it has now been 259 days between the release of the most recent film in the MCU, November’s The Marvels, and its newest, Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine. For context, that’s the longest non-pandemic gap between releases since the 294 days between the original Ant-Man (there have now been three) and Captain America: Civil War across 2015 and 2016. (The shortest, a mere 42 days between Eternals and Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021.)
What better way to break that hiatus than with the character who not only breaks all the rules, but breaks all the fourth walls, not to mention every prevailing standard of good taste? And is making his MCU debut to boot? The much ballyhooed purchase of 20th Century Fox by Disney has finally unleashed certain previously unavailable characters into the MCU, not only the aforementioned rule breaker, but the metal claw-fisted character with whom he shares the title of this newest movie. What’s more, this would be the culmination of the viral “feud” that has existed between stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman pretty much since the first Deadpool movie was made back in 2016. To say nothing of the debut of the sort of unrepentant vulgarity that would have made a Disney exec faint back in the day.
There are two main reasons it doesn’t work as well as it should. The first is that by joining the MCU, Deadpool must obey a certain set of rules, namely, the baroque narrative framework the MCU has chosen to loosely link all its films and characters, and all potential future films. It should really now be called the MCM – Marvel Cinematic Multiverse – because basically all of the recent Marvel product has been focused around, and often weighed down by, the notion codified in the Loki TV show, which is that there are a near infinite number of timelines, each with its own numerical code, that are overseen by something called the TVA (Time Variance Authority). As much as this seems to open up the gargantuan media franchise to doing anything it wants, the thing it wants to do is make every conflict involve the continued existence of a particular timeline. Deadpool should not want this, and neither should we.
The other problem is that the realisation of Reynolds and Jackman sharing a screen together is a probably inevitable anticlimax. Perhaps because the Wolverine character is clinically depressed, the two have essentially no chemistry, Reynolds throwing his usual variety of wicked one-liners, which hit a brick wall in Jackman and fall to the ground where they die, gasping for breath. Some of these go even further outside the normal fourth-wall breaking – the real-world romantic relationships of Reynolds, Jackman and a surprise cameo are all referenced – but they lack zing beyond the basic audaciousness of their very existence.
In one particular incarnation of Earth – not the “sacred timeline,” and the actual number is lost on anyone outside the most diehard Marvelheads – Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has retired from his days as Deadpool, happily working in anonymity selling preowned vehicles and basking in the love and affection of a dozen friends, who include his one-time paramour Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), now seeing someone else. This is also the same Earth instance that saw the death of Logan (Jackman), the man known as Wolverine, as depicted in the 2017 film Logan.
Thanks to a convenient injection of exposition – which Wade naturally calls out – from the TVA, we learn that Logan was a sort of core being for this timeline, without whom the timeline begins to die over the course of a couple millennia. The eternity that seems like to someone like Wade is not fast enough for one TVA bureaucrat, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who would rather snuff it out in the next 72 hours and extract this Wade Wilson to be Deadpool in the sacred timeline, where he is invited to join the Avengers. Since Wade’s application to the Avengers was rejected in his own timeline, it’s tempting.
But the sarcastic bastard with a secret heart of gold wouldn’t sell out the dozen people he loves most, so instead he punches Mr. Paradox in the nose and goes about trying to exhume the corpse of Logan to see what he can do to save his own timeline by restoring its core energy. Naturally this presents various obstacles and various banishments to punishment dimensions, including one ruled by the malevolent twin of Charles Xavier, played by The Crown’s Emma Corrin.
Deadpool & Wolverine starts on an incredibly promising note with an opening credits that does everything a Deadpool movie should do: It sticks its thumb in the eye of decency, it involves a great pop music number, and it gets us laughing and remembering everything that characterises a superhero we haven’t seen on screen in six years since Deadpool 2. It’s too good to spoil the details here. The fourth wall is not only broken but demolished, and that’s what endeared us to this character when we first met him.
The continued Deadpoolishness of Deadpool over the course of the narrative, though, does not have the lacerating impact one would expect. We can see the barbs are well written and have much the same energy as they once had, but perhaps we are different. Is it true that in a post-pandemic world torn apart by threats of fascism, we find ourselves in a period of post-irony? Or is it just that Deadpool’s core juvenile ethos has run its course?
This is not to say there aren’t moments of hearty laughter in Deadpool & Wolverine, some creative action set pieces – one shot entirely from the side even reminds a person of the defining sequence in Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy – and enough surprise cameos to make even non-geeks squirm with delight. It’s just to say there’s something about this that feels a little tired. “Tired” there is not a synonym for uninspired, but literally, physically exhausted. There is a recurring joke that the studio is going to continue making Jackman play Wolverine until he’s 90. That’s both funny, and you can see the reality of it on Jackman’s face.
At age 55, Jackman still looks like he could indeed play Wolverine for another 35 years. But neither he, nor his audience, may want that anymore. Seemingly undeniable cinematic trends are sometimes, within a flash, denied, and that may be happening with the superhero movie. And even a thousand great wiseass remarks from Deadpool may not be enough to save this particular timeline.
Deadpool & Wolverine is currently playing in cinemas.