Deadpool & Wolverine is the third Deadpool movie, the fourth Wolverine movie, and the...millionth?...MCU movie. It stars Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew MacFadyen, and a whole bunch of folks in cameo roles.
Following the events of Deadpool 2 (which I have seen but do not own, because I didn't care for it), the titular Merc with the Mouth (Reynolds) somehow manages to pop over to the mainstream MCU for a visit, gets turned down by Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau, cue the applause), and then pops back home to be a used car salesman. Somewhere along the way he broke up with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), but he's got a collection of minor characters from the previous two movies to be his buds, so he's doing OK, except not really, because he wants to matter. And then the TVA yanks him to the end of time, and a slimy TVA dude called Paradox (Macfadyen) recruits him to...? But then it's revealed that his universe is ending because it will, in the future, lose its Wolverine (Jackman), which will cause it to unravel, except Paradox wants it unraveled now, so Deadpool kills a bunch of TVA dudes with the skeleton of Logan-Wolverine, grabs "the worst Wolverine" from another timeline, and tries to swap him in as the new anchor being.
This does not work, they're both sent to the void, they meet up with the nominal villain of this movie Cassandra Nova (Corrin), a bunch of refugees from Fox movies who have been sent here to die, and also Gambit (Channing Tatum, cue the applause) finally playing Gambit. He and Logan make it back to Earth and save the world through the power of holding hands.
I have...mixed feelings about this movie. On the one hand, I like it. It's entertaining, and like, I've seen all the Blade movies, most of the Fox superhero movies (Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and so on), almost all of the X-Men movies, and so it's pleasing to me to see these characters (and the actors playing them) again. I was applauding along with the rest of the theater when Chris Evans shows up, and laughed delightedly when he yells "FLAME ON" instead of "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!" Reynolds and Jackman are both amazing comic actors so their chemistry is top-notch, and the action scenes are really well done because they're all practical.
But...man. I remember the lead-up to this movie and the thinking was "oh, this is going to bring the X-Men into the MCU! This is going to change something!" And it just...didn't. It's not "Deadpool joins the MCU." It's "Deadpool takes a brief vacation in the MCU and gives a sendoff to all of the non-MCU but still Marvel supers characters." And that's nice and everything, but like, couldn't we have had both?
Also, there are some...if not plot holes, then at least places where the plot is really threadbare. To wit: In Multiverse of Madness it was a big screaming deal that America Chavez could physically travel between universes, and now you're telling me that all you need is a temp-pad from the TVA? Or whatever the gizmo was that Deadpool jacked from Cable? We're just going to casually introduce the concept of an "anchor being," a person so important to a universe that their death causes it to slowly wink out of existence, but not so unique to that universe that a similar person from another universe couldn't fix it?
And what he hell was Paradox' plan, anyway? I get his motives, kinda, but why did he recruit Deadpool at all? What did he want him to do? It seemed like he was trying to put him in the Sacred Timeline (which, like, that's not a thing anymore, is it? Isn't that the whole result of Loki, and this is clearly post-Loki, because B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) is running the TVA?
Also, Wolverine's big crime is...he killed people? Like, no one in particular killed the X-Men, just "the humans" went "mutant hunting." Um. In X2 Storm is depicted as powerful enough to summon multiple tornadoes in seconds. So just "some humans" killed the whole team? And then Logan...killed them plus a lot of other people, and that was enough to make not only hated within his timeline (but not imprisoned, since he's drinking freely in a bar when Deadpool shows up), but turn public opinion against the X-Men (those that survived, maybe?).
It seems like I'm nitpicking because I am, because I just saw Superman the other day and goddammit, it is possible to have a movie with a lot of moving parts, that is funny, that is actiony, and that makes internal sense and has actual motivation for the characters. I found this movie more watchable and more entertaining than Deadpool 2, but I have a lot of the same criticisms: it's about a character who's pretty insufferable and it doesn't balance that with good storytelling. The writing is snappy and fun on a moment-to-moment level, but it's lazy and hackneyed on a larger, macro level.
Also, hell, as long as we're here, it's really hard to get invested in a fight between Deadpool and Wolverine since both them of them are effectively immortal, they both know it, so it really feels like the fight in the car in the woods is just wasting the audience's time.
Anyway. I like this movie, but I like it in the same way I like any crappy horror or action movie, in spite of itself. It's just that this dumb movie managed to make a billion dollars because people like the characters and the folks who were kids when X-Men came out have disposable income now.
My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: High, dammit
Next up: Final Destination
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