I’ll start this review off with a warning. If you have not seen Deadpool & Wolverine yet, please do so before reading any further. I implore you to go out and see this movie regardless. Then maybe come back and give this a read. And if you’re stopping now, just know my score, which I usually save for the end, I’ll do now. It’s of course a SEE IT, no real shocker there.
Telling you to wait is of course all a suggestion and you can do whatever the hell you want. Just know that this will be a spoiler filled review going forward as there are a few things I need to discuss and I’m not entirely sure I can do that without spoilers.
So that’s your warning, let’s get into this meta on top of meta superhero movie.
To catch up on Deadpool, I rewatched the second film again, as I really remembered nothing about it, only it came out after Logan and had way more Wolverine references in it than the first movie.
And since this is a team up… In retrospect, I probably also should have rewatched Logan as well. I bought the special edition version years ago that came in black and white, but never watched it.
And since we are on the topic of seeing things to catch you up, I honestly don’t know how anyone going into this and not have watched the Loki series, will know just what the hell is going on.
All stuff involving the TVA, sacred timeline, variants, the place you get sent when you die, all that is in Loki. Though I believe they did touch on it a bit with the last Doctor Strange film or was it that last Ant-Man movie? Honestly, these movies all start to blend together after awhile.
If you found yourself annoyed at the cameos in that last Doctor Strange film, oh boy prepare yourself because that is this whole movie.
The whole film is a middle finger to the MCU, for their recasting of actors for roles, the burnt-out state of Disney and just the decline of superhero movies as a whole.
That new Captain American trailer came out and I think about zero people are excited for it. Another example of you possibly being confused if you haven’t seen The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Another less than stellar Disney series.
The thing that I loved about the Netflix Marvel shows was it connected to the movies, as it was sharing the same universe, but it didn’t connect in a way that it required homework to enjoy the next MCU movie.
After the shift into making everything connected, folks are just checking out. The shows aren’t great, there’s no Andor for example. The only thing that really stands out for me was Loki, but I’ve seen others who disagree and hate that show, especially season 2, which I loved.
People aren’t watching the shows, yet they bleed into the movies now, leaving average folks outright confused and turned off.
So that’s basically the state of the Marvel cinematic universe, fans are burnt out, checked out and just bored by the whole thing.
That’s where Deadpool steps in to point his finger in the chest of Marvel, calling out their bullshit, while also using their bullshit to advance a story that fits into it.
If you don’t know, Deadpool isn’t a part of the MCU, he’s a straggler from the Bryan Singer X-Men universe. A group of films that died a pathetic death with The New Mutants, the last in those movies, before being acquired by the Disney conglomerate.
That movie I believe also connects with Logan and Deadpool & Wolverine keeps trying to tell me the Deadpool movies are also in this universe. How? That doesn’t really make sense, it doesn’t add up at all.
I really wish I could see this again, as I feel I missed so much, as gags go by so quickly.
The Wolverine from Logan took place in the future, where all the X-Men were dead. And in Deadpool, the X-Men are very clearly still alive, even if we only ever see two, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Colossus, whose roles are greatly downgraded this time around to focus on the thing people bought a ticket for. Wolverine.
After rewatching Deadpool 2 again, my main complaint really was the after credits ending where Deadpool keeps going back in time, correcting everything retconning it, making what we saw in the movie feel pointless.
I thought maybe that set up the plot to this third film, why the TVA would be after him, but no, it really doesn’t play into it at all.
We do start with Deadpool, out of costume as just Wade, in front of Happy, someone Deadpool accurately brings up was Tony Stark’s driver and now is interviewing potential members to join The Avengers.
Deadpool wants to join the team, to prove to his long-term girlfriend Vanessa he isn’t a loser. Again, like films 1 and 2, it’s all about his relationship with Vanessa and honestly, I’m kind of over it. After taking a quick google search to see how many love interests Deadpool has had over the years in the comics, it’s a hefty amount. Nothing ever works out for the guy, but he isn’t hung up on one person his whole life.
The character itself, doesn’t seem like someone who would get hung up on someone either. It’s hard to get a read on Deadpool’s psychology, but I’d say he learns more towards psychopath. Like he’s less a hero and kind of just a sociopathic murderer.
Technically we don’t start with Wade in Happy’s office, but with Deadpool digging up Logan’s corpse. What follows is one the funniest and best opening credits sequence in either film. He uses Wolverine’s skeletal corpse to massacre endless TVA agents with piece of his bones, even strapping his claws on.
Which he gets stuck in a guy’s ass and other’s crotch. Wolverining is hard!
He’s murdering these guys left and right without a care in the world. In fact, I don’t think he ever feels bad about anything he does.
After seeing this movie in theaters, it got me thinking a lot of that FX series Legion. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s about David, who is Professor X’s son, who just happens to be not only an Omega level mutant, but also batshit insane.
In the series, he also has a love interest, who he claims to be madly in love with, but by the end of the second season he starts to realize it mostly comes down to he wants to be a good person, and good people deserve love. And if you have that, then that means he is good. But if you know anything about Legion, you know he isn’t a superhero, but a super villain.
In a way, I kind of saw that with Deadpool. He’s a good person because he has this one thing. But after everything he did for her, like go back in time to save her life, she still breaks up with him.
After getting rejected by Happy and Vanessa, Deadpool hangs up the suit and becomes a car salesman with his pal Peter, a character that died in the second film as part of Deadpool’s ill-fated X-Force.
Speaking of X-Force, someone missing was Domino, who I really wanted more of after watching the second film over again. It was kind of strange to see her missing but see Shatterstar at Wade’s birthday party seeing as he also died during the X-Force scene. I guess Deadpool went back and saved him.
Someone time travel couldn’t save however was TJ Miller. I forget, what was the scandal around him again? Did Reynolds just hate him or was there something else… Nowadays there’s always something else.
Either way, he isn’t in this. During Wade’s birthday party, the TVA show up to grab him and take him to their headquarters, to a division run by Mr. Paradox. A TVA agent in charge of Wade’s timeline, which has started to spaghetti itself because the anchor being, being Logan has died.
Mr. Paradox therefore wishes to save Deadpool and bring him to the “Sacred Timeline”, which if you don’t know, just means the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But seeing as there are people back in his timeline that he cares about, he decides to replace his timeline’s dead Wolverine with an alive one.
Deadpool steals a TVA TemPad, which is just a device that allows him to travel to different timelines. It’s different from time travel as he isn’t going through time, but to different universes.
There he meets a multitude of Wolverines, ones we have seen in comic book form, but never on the big screen.
We get comic accurate height Wolverine who is say maybe about 4 feet tall. We get eye-patch Wolverine, Old Man Wolverine, Yellow suit with Brown stripes Wolverine who was fighting the Hulk. We even get Henry Cavill as The Cavillrine, as a quickly slight to the DOA DCCU.
We see sooo many Wolverines until Deadpool lands on one that for once doesn’t instantly try to kill him.
This Wolverine unfortunately is considered the worst Wolverine in all the timelines, as everyone hates him for something he did in his past. Something I’m still not fully aware of. Because of budgetary restraints, we never get a flashback and rely mostly on what he chooses to talk about, which is very little.
Since this is a spoiler only review, I’ll just skip to it, Logan mentions the X-Men died because he was too much of a drunk and mutant hunters showed up to kill them. I’m not sure what he means by “mutant hunters”. I thought maybe he was referring to Sentinels, but he made it seem like it was an angry mob of humans.
Not sure how a group of humans killed everyone on the X-Men, but either way when Logan came back everyone was dead and he went into a killing rampage, slaughtering everything in his path.
Not the best backstory, I really enjoyed the Wolverine from Logan’s backstory more as it was Professor X, with a declining mental state, killed everyone with his unchecked mutant psychic powers, so now Logan kind of just takes care of him like a nurse.
Deadpool brings this drunken Wolverine to the TVA to replace his timeline’s dead one, but that isn’t how this works and Mr. Paradox “prunes” them both, sending them to the Void. A place where all the forgotten Marvel characters go to die.
I really don’t want to ruin this, but I think it’s the funniest gag in the whole film and I’m dying to mention it.
The Void is like a Mad Max wasteland, where Marvel characters roam the lands. Funny enough they even reference Furiosa a few times.
Before getting ambushed by a bunch of X-Men movie rejects, Deadpool and Wolverine run into who we think is Captain America. But in an amazing reveal, instead of saying his famous Avengers assemble line, he says FLAME ON!
That’s right, this isn’t Captain America but The Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm. Who Chris Evans also played before the MCU was even a twinkle in Kevin Feige’s eye.
The mutant in charge of this place is Cassandra Nova, Professor X’s twin sister. She, much like Legion, is an Omega level threat mutant so powerful, they just dumped her in The Void.
Her powers are very unusual, as she can seemingly do anything to you and stop anything done to her. The way she gets into your head is also extraordinarily wicked, as she can shift her hands into you.
She can also rip the flesh from your body with the snap on a finger like she demonstrated with Johnny Storm. She sucked his skin off, leaving only a pile of guts.
Deadpool and Wolverine manage to escape thanks to a Sentinel leg, flying them away so they can run into a variant Deadpool called Nicepool who shows them the way to the remaining resistance fighters against Nova.
But before we get to them, of course Deadpool and Wolverine have to have another drag out fight, this time in a minivan.
X-23, the little girl from Logan shows up and drags them back to her hideout. After Logan her character was pretty much abandoned, so of course she’d be here. Like the others that show up in her group like, Blade. Maybe you forgot but Ryan Reynolds was in Blade 3.
Also with him is Elektra, played once again by Jennifer Garner. There’s a funny line she gives about Daredevil, since he was also recast in the MCU, how he died but it’s okay because she’s over it. Since that Daredevil was played by Ben Affleck, her ex-husband.
Also on the team is Gambit, played by Channing Tatum. This is a bit of a deep cut, as a Gambit solo film starring Channing Tatum was planned, but never came about.
It reminded me of that cameo from the Flash movie where Nic Cage showed up for a second as Superman.
After seeing Channing Tatum as Gambit, I think we now know why it never happened, as the Cajun accent is unintelligible, making for comedic fodder for Deadpool to riff on.
I got to say, it’s so good to see Wesley Snipes return as Blade. He’s just as badass now as he was back then, maybe even more so now that he isn’t stuck in a PG-13 piece of shit film like Blade 3.
He’s the OG R rated Marvel movie hero. This new one Marvel keeps trying and failing to get off the ground is no way going to actually be good. And clearly Snipes still has it, even if was maybe kind of an asshole to work with.
The group make a plan to render Nova’s powers useless, by grabbing Juggernaut’s helmet. He’s also there, but not the same one from Deadpool 2, but the old X-Men one from the Singer movies.
They make a suicidal run into Nova’s base while trying to get the helmet on her, but the fight is interrupted by Pyro, another X-Men reject. He made a deal with Paradox to stop her from interfering with his plans to basically nuke Deadpool’s timeline with what he calls a Time Ripper.
Seeing as Deadpool and Wolverine need her alive to help them get out of The Void, they save her. Instead of killing them, she agrees to send them back home.
Upset about being betrayed by Paradox, she tags along with plans to use the Time Ripper to not just destroy Deadpool’s timeline, but all timelines.
For backup, she calls on the Deadpool variants.
We got all the Deadpool converging in one area, led by Lady Deadpool. I’m not at all familiar with Deadpool in the comics. I played the Deadpool game once, but that’s about it. But if you love the comics, you’ll get a kick out of seeing all the different Deadpools showing up.
Thankfully the real hero of this story comes to save the day with Peter, who convinces all the Deadpools to stop fighting. I guess every Deadpool has their own Peter, who they adore.
Meanwhile…
Nova has taken over the Time Ripper and is about to spaghetti the universe and the only way to stop her is if you change the flow of power that will atomize anyone who attempts it.
Wolverine volunteers since he has nothing and no one worth living for, but Deadpool plays the selfless hero for once and takes on the mission instead.
The two eventually work together to use themselves as conductors, stopping Nova and managing to survive. Because of these selfless actions, Deadpool’s timeline is now safe.
And that was Deadpool & Wolverine. I thought it was great, I didn’t think it was a perfect film, the plot was a bit weak and had some plot holes, but the humor was there, the gags were perfect, the fact this was made for fans is also something worth mentioning.
I can see why this has been getting mixed reviews from critics, as this was not made for them, but for the comic book nerds that have been asking for this team up since they announced a Deadpool movie.
It wasn’t all just funny gags either, as they gave Wolverine some scenes where he could flex his acting muscles. Like in the minivan where he chastises Deadpool for being a joke that no one likes.
Or when he has a heart to heart with X-23.
Is this the best Deadpool movie? I’m not sure, I might have to see this one more time until I make that decision, I do know I found myself laughing more while watching Deadpool 2. Not that this wasn’t funny, but it had its fair share of misses.
What can’t be beat is the team up aspect which we haven’t had before. I don’t think Deadpool will be entering the MCU any time soon, but it was nice to see some conversion other than a shitty 2 second clip of Beast like at the end of that terrible Marvels movie.
I give Deadpool & Wolverine a SEE IT!
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