‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Is Kick in the Nuts the MCU Needs

After a six-year absence, Deadpool returns to enlist in the official Marvel Cinematic Universe in Deadpool & Wolverine (July 26, in theaters), and as he tells his new clawed buddy, “You’re joining at a bit of a low point.”

That’s putting it mildly, given the studio’s post-Avengers: Endgame doldrums. Yet Shawn Levy’s threequel turns out to be just what the doctor ordered: a hyperactive, juvenile, shout-out-laden adventure that pairs Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth with Hugh Jackman’s berserker-raging X-Man in a saga that often plays as a love letter to the quarter-century history of Marvel blockbusters made by Twentieth Century Fox, which in 2019 was purchased by Disney.

As with its predecessors, those who can’t stand Deadpool or aren’t educated in Marvel movie lore won’t tolerate a second of it. The rest will be in bleeping heaven.

[Warning: Light Spoilers Follow]

Breaking the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience, and freely commenting on both his reality as well as our own, Deadpool has always existed in multiple worlds at once, so he fits right into the MCU’s convoluted multiverse. Deadpool & Wolverine’s story begins on Earth-616 (i.e. the “sacred timeline”) but mostly concerns a Deadpool, aka face-charred Wade Wilson, on Earth-10005, where he’s working at a preowned car dealership with buddy Peter (Rob Delaney) and stuck in the friend zone with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) due to his refusal to fight for something other than himself. Having been turned down by the Avengers, Deadpool wants to “matter,” and he gets his chance when his birthday party is interrupted by agents from the Time Variance Authority, the body that governs the multiverse, who take him to the organization’s headquarters.

Lovingly mocking the MCU with the same motor-mouthed self-referentiality that typified his prior outings, Deadpool learns from bureaucrat Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) that his timeline is dying due to the demise of its uber-important “anchor being,” who happens to be the version of Wolverine who died at the conclusion of 2017’s Logan. Mr. Paradox gives Deadpool a choice: either perish with his world or assume a “higher purpose” on the sacred timeline. Amidst copious quips about the Fox superhero era, Deadpool instead opts to save his universe by finding a new Wolverine. This instigates a montage that pays tribute to the many iterations (and costumes) of the Ol’ Canucklehead, and serves as the first of myriad times that the film nods to minutia from the comic book publisher’s long, illustrious, and intricate past—most notably with Wolverine’s trademark yellow outfit (and, ultimately, iconic mask).

After many failures, Deadpool settles on Deadpool & Wolverine’s chosen Wolverine, whom Mr. Paradox dubs the worst Wolverine of all, due to a notorious tragedy that the film teases while simultaneously making jokes about said teasing. This is par for the series’ course, as is R-rated violence and profanity of an outrageous and adolescent sort. One second Levy is staging a massacre accomplished via the use of skeleton bones and embellished by an *NSYNC dance routine, and the next he’s having Reynolds’ anti-hero crack wise about the fact that “pegging isn’t new to me, but it is for Disney.” Though he’s desperate to demonstrate that he’s more than simply an “annoying one-trick pony,” this is the Deadpool that fans love and haters hate, with Reynolds staying true to the characters’ gleefully obnoxious, dirty spirit.

Deadpool’s proclamation that he’s “Marvel Jesus” is an expression of his titanic ego as well as a wink to Deadpool & Wolverine’s status as a would-be savior for the struggling MCU. To that end, he brings along not only Jackman’s angry and drunk Wolverine but a gaggle of famous faces in their original Fox-produced Marvel roles. The cameos are as surprising as they are seamlessly interwoven into this busy tapestry, whose story is so inconsequential that the climax figuratively smiles and shrugs while having it both ways. This follow-up is scattershot to the extreme, and it would grate on the nerves if not for Reynolds’ infectious enthusiasm and contentious rapport with Jackman, who embodies this Wolverine with an anger rooted in profound grief and an intolerant exasperation with his red-clad companion.

Nestled deep inside the bowels of this filthy, bloody, cameo-saturated endeavor is a narrative about Deadpool and Wolverine struggling to thwart the plans of Mr. Paradox, who consigns them to a purgatorial void populated by unwanted Marvel characters. There, they encounter Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), a bald villain who turns out to be the twin sister of X-Men founder Charles Xavier, and who rules this land with a telepathic iron fist. Even this, however, is merely one of the proceedings’ many interests, and certainly less important than sequences in which the title characters square off in lethal mano-y-mano showdowns energized by their comparable inability to die.

Levy is no action maestro, but Deadpool & Wolverine’s set pieces (frequently scored to incongruous pop hits like Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”) are on par with other MCU efforts, and there are enough of them to maintain constant forward momentum, even when the destination is just another allusion to a beloved or reviled movie, a jibe about cocaine or the “woke mob,” or a cheeky remark about gay sex.

Deadpool & Wolverine eventually proves less than the sum of its parts—a collection of unexpected and comical gags strung together by a haphazard plot. Still, it’s more amusing and electric—more alive—than any MCU installment in years, and it impressively integrates Deadpool’s distinctive R-rated personality into the decidedly PG-13 franchise. Late attempts to generate genuine pathos with regards to both Deadpool and Wolverine come across as forced and awkward. Yet for the most part, Levy balances tones, characters, and multiverses with reasonable aplomb. Far superior to his preceding Reynolds collaborations Free Guy and The Adam Project, it suggests that maybe he's found his niche in the assembly-line Marvel fold.

Throughout, Jackman swears and sneers with believable ferocity and Reynolds, finally alongside his (real-life and Marvel) buddy, delivers rat-a-tat-tat jibes and ripostes with delirious giddiness, laying sarcastic waste to everything and anything in sight—including, on numerous occasions, himself. With Deadpool & Wolverine, he doesn’t reinvent the genre, but he does give the MCU the shot in the arm—and kick to the nuts—that’s urgently needed.