Deadpool and Wolverine (Shawn Levy, 2024)
Deadpool & Wolverine is arguably the biggest movie of the summer, or even the whole year. But can the Marvel mega movie live up to the hype?
In a commercial sense, most probably yes. It is expected to open with about 360 million dollar worldwide, and will return Marvel at least temporarily to the top of the box office mountain.
Hardcore comic book fans will probably love it too. The superhero movie has got plenty of cameo’s, meta references and easter-eggs. It has got Wade Wilson aka the Merc with the Mouth, shooting from the hip at every possible occasion. It’s also got Wolverine in yellow spandex!
(I added the exclamation mark because the yellow spandex has some meaning to the true fans, while the casual movie watcher may not be aware the character wore yellow in the comics).
The movie has got a lot of stuff going for it. It’s got some crazy-ass action sequences. It’s got some wild dialogue. It’s got Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) beating the hell out of each other at every possible opportunity.
(In real life they are best friends, but in this movie they pretend to hate each other in an Odd Couple kind of way.)
Deadpool and Wolverine can’t really die, so it doesn’t really matter. And even if they do, they can be resurrected again. So, you may ask, is there a point to all this?
Well, there is a semblance of a story here. About Deadpool wanting to join The Avengers, but being rejected. About Fox being bought by Disney, thus allowing Deadpool and Wolverine into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And about our world on the verge of being destroyed once again (what’s new, eh?) unless it is saved at the very last moment.
It’s also about the return of Wolverine after his apparent swan song in Logan (2017), and how Hugh Jackman ‘now has to play the character til he is ninety.’ That’s a joke, of course, or maybe not. Maybe he will go on to play Wolverine til he is ninety.
I enjoyed Deadpool and Wolverine on some superficial level, but it tries so hard to be subversive, that it is almost comical.
The best thing about the movie is actually British actress Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Cassandra Nova, who makes for a truly frightening villain as Charles Xavier’s twin sister.
I think that in the movie’s drawn-out finale she was trying not just to destroy our own earthly timeline but the whole bleeding multiverse and I was quite desperately rooting for her to succeed.
Note: Deadpool and Wolverine is released worldwide this week.