The last time we saw Deadpool, the motormouthed anti-superhero, it was an entire pandemic and presidency ago. It’s been six years since the “merc with a mouth” was on the big screen in “Deadpool 2” in 2018, and since then, there have been corporate mergers and acquisitions that left star Ryan Reynolds’ signature character adrift with questions about his future. What was Disney, of all studios, going to do with this hyperviolent rascal who only works blue?
Short of washing his mouth out with soap, Marvel head boss Kevin Feige has instead crowned the crimson crank the official clown prince of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — but only under strict supervision. That’s right, Deadpool has gotten himself a babysitter, another refugee from Disney’s absorption of 20th Century Fox: the clawed one himself, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). The two have been paired up for “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a crossover event that’s also a sort of Viking funeral and salute to the 20th Century Fox Marvel era.
Reynolds has brought along his “Free Guy” and “The Adam Project” director Shawn Levy for this one, with “Deadpool 2” director David Leitch moving on to other projects. Reynolds and Levy have teamed up with franchise writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, as well as “Robot Chicken” veteran Zeb Wells, to pen the screenplay.
It’s a unique script, composed almost exclusively of quips, references, fourth-wall breaking, celebrity gossip, Hollywood inside baseball, jabs at other film studios, ironically retro needle drops and detritus scraped from mid-aughts movie message boards. Plot? Nonsensical. Characters? Thin. Motivation? Eh. But get a load of these cameos. It feels like “Internet: The Movie,” but an internet occupied only by Gen X and elder millennial power posters.
At the risk of saying anything at all about what the film is about, the story follows Deadpool as he recruits Wolverine to help him save his own little corner of the multiverse, because Deadpool likes his friends. This rough-hewn iteration of Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan, could use a little personal redemption anyway, though the majority of the running time finds the two squabbling incessantly in what’s essentially an enemies-to-lovers storyline.
Emma Corrin in the movie “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
(Jay Maidment)
The movie’s tremendously powered big bad, Cassandra Nova, is played by a bald-headed Emma Corrin, though the real big bad is a corporate sleaze (Matthew Macfadyen) obsessed with ruthless efficiency and streamlining. His character, coupled with several other notable digs at “the guys down the street” (i.e., Warner Bros.), essentially makes “Deadpool & Wolverine” a lightly sassy Disney diss track aimed at another Burbank-based movie studio that makes superhero movies from a different comic book publishing house. How’s that for regional humor?
By this film, you’re either already in the tank for Reynolds’ snarky, self-referential material, or watching this sounds like absolute hell. I happen to be in the latter camp, but with this many jokes fired with the cadence of a semiautomatic weapon, at least a few are going to hit their target, and there are some chuckles to be had (I’m not made of stone). A focus on superheroes past — and even future — makes for a fascinating corporate media analysis, and someone seriously needs to dig into Deadpool’s queer sexual politics.
However, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is not a film that’s transporting or emotional, or even engaging, beyond seeing which stars were willing to show up for a few days of work. The characters deliver meaningless speeches and engage in zero-stakes fights. Who wants to watch two superheroes with famously robust regenerating powers stab each other a lot?
Levy doesn’t manage to stage the action in any interesting way. His visual style isn’t particularly innovative and when he’s not aping the style of other projects in order to make a reference, almost everything is staged in the Marvel house style: flat, shallow wide and medium shots, with plenty of overhead angles on the bigger brawls to see everyone scurrying around like ants. It all blurs into a din that’s more dull than anything.
Deadpool’s provocations seem so silly and provincial this time, with all his protestations about whether Disney will “let them” discuss cocaine onscreen. But Deadpool is and always has been a faux-naughty edgelord and tryhard. While it will likely amuse its target audience of geeks and the terminally online, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a whole lot of hot air and not much else.
Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
Rating: R, for strong bloody violence and language throughout, gore and sexual references
Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes
Playing: In wide release Friday, July 26
