Producers: Kevin Feige, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy and Lauren Shuler Donner Director: Shawn Levy Screenplay: Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Jennifer Garner and Aaron Stanford Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Grade: C
With its cornucopia of cameos, Easter eggs and inside jokes that often break the fourth wall, “Deadpool & Wolverine” will undoubtedly delight Marvel fanboys of all ages. But to casual viewers it will come across as a rather unpleasant mess of snarky humor, ultra-violence and spurious sentiment.
Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is introduced excavating the grave of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who died in 2017’s “Logan.” He assumes that the hero, armed with razor-sharp claws, is as revivable as he is. But when that proves not to be true, he uses the skeletal remains as weapons against a group of heavily armed soldiers sent by the Time Variance Authority (TVA) to capture him. Reynolds’s goofy patter accompanies the action.
What’s going on here? It seems that Deadpool’s alter-ego Wade Wilson, despondent after being rejected for admission to The Avengers (by Jon Favreau, in the first of numerous “guest appearances”) and given the “friends only” treatment by the love of his life, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), has been toiling away in a dull job as a used-car salesman alongside his pal Peter Wisdom (Rob Delaney). But he’s invited back into Deadpool action by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), a smarmy executive at the TVA, who enlists him in rectifying a problem in the “sacred timeline” in the multiverse. Unfortunately, his solution involves obliterating Wilson’s own universe via a device called the “time ripper”—something Deadpool refuses to do. But to prevent Paradox from going ahead with his plan, he needs to recruit Wolverine as his partner. Thus, the opening scene.
Given that Wolverine is very dead, Deadpool must find another from a different universe—which allows for a montage of unacceptable possibilities, giving Jackman an opportunity to shine, as in a small-sized comic-authentic variant. Finally he comes on the full-sized Wolverine who looks right. The problem is that he’s a broken guy who was responsible for the deaths of his fellow X-Men, not thought of as a hero by anybody, including himself, in his world. Yet he’s the only Wolverine available.
Thus begins what becomes a bromance between the two imperfect heroes, marked by constant Odd Couple-style bickering and mutual distaste—which, of course turns into something else as they go through adventures together and overcome the villains. One of those is, of course, Paradox. But he’s a minor irritant beside the real thing—Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the twin sister of Professor Xavier, who’s his opposite in virtually every respect. She’s the ruler of The Void, a wasteland redolent of the Mad Max franchise (the resemblance is noted by Deadpool himself) where she and minions like Pyro (Aaron Stanford) capture rebellious types and wipe them out. (The most famous victim shown here involves yet another surprise cameo, though a pretty prolonged one.)
But our intrepid protagonists also find outcasts who become allies against Cassandra—a “nice” Deadpool (played by Reynolds too), a doggy Deadpool, and more characters from former movies and comics, like Jennifer Garner’s Elektra (the others will remain unnamed here, so as not to spoil the surprise). And they eventually find their way back to TVA headquarters along with Cassandra and must work together to prevent her from destroying the multiverse entirely. (Also showing up is an army of Deadpools from the various universes whom Earth’s Deadpool and his buddy Wolverine have to mow down.)
If all this sounds chaotic, that’s because it is, especially because it’s accompanied by a parade of popular songs chosen to serve as “ironic” counterpoint to the action (against which Rob Simonsen’s score barely has a chance to register) and an incessant stream of chatter by Deadpool, including swipes against Fox, Disney and Marvel and off-the-wall bits that take us out of the wacky narrative altogether (at one point Deadpool issues a threat to have Wolverine sing the second act of “The Music Man,” which Jackman recently starred in on Broadway). There’s also room for sticky schmaltz as Wilson learns that teamwork and friendship are what really matter, and Logan achieves the heroic status he’d previously lost.
Amidst all the hubbub of the overlong, blood-splattered fight sequences and the barrage of elbow-in-the-side jokes, Reynolds and Jackman do their shtick, the former as the smartass who’s really sad inside, and the latter as the perpetually grumpy old dude who reluctantly takes on a redemptive mission. Of the others Corrin doesn’t do much with Cassandra, who’s rather boringly super-confident, but Macfadyen turns Paradox into something like a Monty Python figure of preening ambition and cowardly stupidity. Of the rest Leslie Uggams has her moments as Wilson’s hard-bitten landlady and the most famous of the surprise guest stars gets to riff in the foul-mouthed style for which this series is famous in the post-credits added sequence, which follows a jumbled tribute, during the actual crawl, to the Marvel movies that were made under the old Fox banner (remember, they included not just the X-Men and Deadpool series, but the first version of “The Fantastic Four” as well).
Oddly, for all the money and work that must have gone into it, the movie doesn’t look all that great. George Richmond’s cinematography is good enough, though as edited by Dean Zimmerman and Shane Reid the action sequences aren’t just excessive (in length, gore, and tastelessness) but visually unremarkable. And while Ray Chan’s production design boasts nice touches (the ruins of the 20th Century Fox logo in The Void, for example), overall it feels second-rate: the interior of the TVA offices and the street sets outside are pretty unimpressive. The special effects supervised by Swen Gilberg are mediocre, too, though the sight of Cassandra’s fingers crawling through someone’s face has a certain grotesquely imaginative quality.
But perhaps that’s meant to be part of the joke—a once second-tier (third-tier?) Marvel superhero who’s vaunted into superstardom is still stuck in rather tacky surroundings. In any event, Deadpool and Wolverine fans, who are legion, will swoon over their pairing here, and maybe Deadpool’s typically cheeky remark about Disney keeping Jackman doing Wolverine until he’s ninety won’t be far off the mark. But if so, one hopes that his next appearance will possess the quality of “Logan” rather than that of this joint effort. As for Deadpool, one expects to see him again before long if this movie does as well at the box office as projections suggest it will.