Marvel’s only cinematic effort this year chooses empty fan service over a meaningful story. Here’s our Deadpool & Wolverine review.
Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine comes with a lot of expectations on its cinematic shoulders. Not only is it the only Marvel offering in 2024, it comes after a slew of less than stellar films, something continuously acknowledged in the movie itself. Whether it’s superhero fatigue or something else, Marvel needs something to boost the studio back into the top ranking studios in Hollywood.
By the looks of things, Deadpool & Wolverine will be just that. It’s already projected to make lots of money for Marvel and Disney, but is it a good film? Eh, not really.
Without spoiling too much, the film finds Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) looking for Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to save his universe. Matthew MacFadyen’s villainous Paradox is doing his best to try and wipe Wade’s universe from existence and has created something called a Time Ripper (yes, really) which will be completed in 72 hours (how convenient). There’s also Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova, who complicates things both for Deadpool and the only variant of Wolverine he finds that doesn’t try to turn him into minced meat.
To say anything more would be to spoil some of the fun that is to be had with Deadpool & Wolverine. As you’d expect the film is stacked full of cameos, references and plenty of jokes about anything and everything. Yet, Deadpool & Wolverine is a bizarrely toothless film. It proves that you can throw in all the swearing and violence you want – it doesn’t give you any more edge.
The first sign that the film wouldn’t live up to either of the previous Deadpool films are the opening titles. The previous two films included slow-mo violence with hilariously self-aware credits which stated that the films starred “God’s perfect idiot” and were written by “the real heroes here”. Deadpool & Wolverine’s opening credits simply say “directed by Shawn Levy” and “starring Ryan Reynolds”. It’s not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the first sign of the film dialing down the character. Even Wade dancing to N’Sync’s Bye Bye Bye while killing a bunch of TVA agents doesn’t cover up the fact that the film starts off on the wrong foot.
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Deadpool & Wolverine has little of the self-aware edge that its previous two instalments had. Everything in the film is frustratingly surface-level and focused more on the fan service than the real story. The bones of the story, the themes, are actually pretty good – but they’re buried under mountains of “Look who we managed to get!”
But I do have to admit, some of those cameos are pretty spectacular. I won’t spoil them here, but despite the fact that Fox is constantly made fun of, Levy and his cast clearly have a fondness for those films. After all, would the current MCU exist as it does without them? Probably not. In many ways, the film acts as a love letter and a goodbye to the Fox era of X-Men.
There’s very little to be said about the acting or directing. Levy seems to be directing the film on an autopilot; nothing about it stands out, no risks are taken and the film often looks flat and colourless. This is partly due to the setting, but you’d think there would be a way to inject a little life into it. Reynolds plays his usual schtick, which is starting to feel a little stale by now, and Jackman can’t find a lot of nuance in Logan this time around.
There is still a lot to like about Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s consistently funny, the action is great and some of the fan service is very satisfying, even if it is just fan service. I laughed a lot during the film, but ultimately, I wasn’t moved. I didn’t walk away from the film with any new insights into the characters or with a sense that I had watched something meaningful. There’s a fair amount of fun to be had with Deadpool & Wolverine, but entertainment and spectacle don’t always equal a good film.
Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas now.
