"Deadpool & Wolverine": review

the bus fight scene that parodies the "Old Boy" hallway scene

[WARNING: spoilers.]

"In the midnight hour..."

a. she cried, "More! More! More!"

b. I can feel your power.

I saw Shawn Levy's 2024 "Deadpool & Wolverine" twice on streaming video before I left for my walk, then once more when I got back from the walk early after injuring myself, so I guess I like the movie. Star Ryan Reynolds fought hard to get megastar Hugh Jackman to come back one more time to play an alternate-universe Wolverine, one who'd let his own world down by allowing his fellow mutants to get killed by mutant-hating humans. While the story had its flaws, it was overall a feel-good tale of two heroes who start off mostly as enemies, become frenemies, then end up as friends, giving Deadpool almost everything he's wished for since we first saw him pining for Wolverine in 2016. The movie stars Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Matthew Macfadyen, Aaron Stanford, Dafne Keen, Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes, Channing Tatum, and Chris Evans.

In a nutshell: Deadpool (Reynolds) learns from Mr. Paradox (Macfadyen), an ambitious functionary at the trans-cosmic TVA (Time Variance Authority), that his universe's existence is unraveling because of the loss of its "anchor being," Logan the Wolverine (Jackman), who died at the end of "Logan." Deadpool, a.k.a. Wade Wilson, goes on a universe-hopping search for a live Wolverine who can help save his cosmos from Paradox's "time-ripper," a device that speeds up a universe/timeline's end. Wade finds the worst Wolverine variant, a man who, while out drunk one day, allowed all of his mutant friends to get killed by mutant-hating humans.  This is a Logan variant who is full of guilt and self-hatred.

Wade and Logan end up in the Void (a sort of cosmic purgatory/dumping ground for beings who don't fit in); there, they first encounter Johnny Storm (Evans), followed by the now-menacing Pyro (Stanford), who ostensibly works for Cassandra Nova (Corrin), Charles Xavier's bald, homicidal fraternal twin—a telekinetic and a touch-telepath. Cassandra kills Storm and tells Wade and Logan about Alioth, the huge smoke monster that eats wayward souls in the Void. The two frenemies escape Cassandra and Alioth, meeting up with a small band of rebels: Laura/X-23 (Keen), Elektra (Garner), Blade (Snipes), and The Gambit (Tatum with a hilarious Cajun accent). They decide to launch a frontal attack on Cassandra's compound since she's the key to escaping the Void. Meanwhile, Paradox is impatient to use his time-ripper, but Cassandra leaves the Void—where she'd comfortably been since childhood—just behind Wade and Logan, with the intention of using Paradox's time-ripper to destroy the entire multiverse and make everything into the Void. Paradox, in desperation, tells Wade and Logan how to destroy the time-ripper, but whichever hero does the deed will not survive the matter-antimatter interaction, despite the fact that both Wade and Logan possess regenerative healing factors. Wade and Logan end up finding an innovative solution to this problem that blows off Wolverine's shirt and allows Deadpool, who is faithful to his girlfriend Vanessa (Baccarin) but in truth a pansexual, to lasciviously admire Logan's ripped abs.

There was a huge question as to how much Ryan Reynolds, a lover of the Deadpool character and a producer on the film, would be allowed to get away with since both Deadpool and the X-Men had been acquired by Disney. The Deadpool franchise is distinguished by its crass vulgarity and the fun it pokes at the studios who created the Deadpool films (first Fox Marvel, now Disney Marvel). Deadpool himself routinely breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience, frequently referencing the actors who play roles alongside him (even Henry Cavill cameos as a Wolverine variant, "the Cavillrine"). When Deadpool does a Wolverine impression, he apes a tart, exaggerated Aussie accent in honor of Hugh Jackman's native Down Under way of talking (the Wolverine character is actually Canadian, like Deadpool, so Jackman speaks his lines in a North American accent). Disney, as it turns out, proved quite permissive, and the Mouse gets skewered with jokes about pegging (I had to look that bit of sexual slang up, then I realized they'd shown pegging in the first movie), asshole-eating, cum-guzzling, being cornholed by Pinocchio's nose, and so much more. The movie doesn't stint on the violence, much of it pointless, as when Deadpool and Wolverine fight each other despite being unable to kill each other thanks to their respective healing factors.

Another question, asked and answered right at the beginning of the movie, is how "Deadpool & Wolverine" can proceed while honoring the noble memory of director James Mangold's Wolverine in his 2017 "Logan." Deadpool's answer: we're not even going to try. Logan's adamantium corpse is desecrated from the get-go as Deadpool fights Paradox's Time Variance Authority agents; one can only hope that Mangold's Logan is safe in some alternate universe, but it's a vain hope. When Deadpool finds the version of Logan we follow for the rest of the film, the "worst" Logan, subtle jokes and references are slipped in, such as when Logan falls drunk and splay-legged in front of Mr. Paradox in exactly the posture of Chris Evans in "Avengers: Endgame" (the "America's ass" scene). The movie goes all-in with the Wolverine-trashing. Hugh Jackman was a good sport to play along, and he invests this version of Wolverine with an astounding level of cynicism, sadness, guilt, and anger. Mangold, meanwhile, was reportedly unhappy with Jackman's decision to bring the character back after the two had done such a good job with "Logan," Wolverine's swan song.

I heard some complaints that the jokes in "Deadpool & Wolverine" will date themselves pretty quickly, just as the dubstep jokes in "Deadpool 2" did. But this is the nature of most verbal comedy: it relies on references to the Zeitgeist, finding punchiness and relevance in current events and current pop culture. Most comedies don't age that well unless they're mostly of the Punch-and-Judy sort, relying on actions, not words, in the style of the Commedia dell'arte. That said, it's true that quite a few jokes in this movie don't land, but I think the movie's unwonted emotional depth is its saving grace.

As cleverer minds have noted, "Deadpool & Wolverine" constantly smashes opposites together in a series of matter-antimatter collisions. Deadpool is talky and jokey; Wolverine is taciturn and bitter. When Deadpool is with his friend and opposite number Peter (Delaney), the contrast between the two is stark. When Wade and Logan meet Nicepool (also Reynolds) and his dog Mary Puppins, a.k.a. Dogpool (played by Peggy) in the Void, Deadpool takes an immediate dislike to Nicepool but loves the butt-ugly Dogpool. And as one particularly astute commentator noted, the very theme of matter and antimatter is embodied by the two leads: Deadpool is motivated by wanting to matter; Wolverine, meanwhile, just wants to be left alone and to disappear, i.e., he wants not to matter (making him antimatter). Ultimately, when both are faced with the choice of who should sacrifice himself to stop the time-ripper, Wade expresses guilt for having dragged Logan into this mess by promising something he knew he couldn't deliver: the prospect of undoing Logan's misdeeds. For a silly comedy with rimjob jokes, "Deadpool & Wolverine" carries some profound themes and subtext.

A central concept that made little sense to me, though, was that of an anchor being, a being so important in a universe that the universe's very existence depends on him or her. Assuming humans and mutants appeared on Earth only recently, cosmically speaking, who or what served as an anchor being before sapient life came along? What are the philosophical, ontological, and axiological implications of this concept? Who is judging the importance of this or that being to determine who deserves the label of anchor being? Can more than one anchor being exist at the same time? Was Logan's death all that it took to begin the unraveling of a universe, or was it more like the final straw after several anchor beings throughout history had died? These are annoying questions for people of a philosophical bent, and yet another reason to dislike multiverse narratives, whose lameness Deadpool makes sure to comment on.

Another complaint: as with the other live-action multiverse movies (e.g., "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), there's the idea that this alternate version of Logan might find a home, and some friends, in Wade's universe (Earth-10005, for those keeping track). But as was established in the animated Spider-Verse movies with Miles Morales, characters from outside of a universe cannot exist within a foreign universe without the danger of quantum decoherence eventually pulling them apart and turning them into ionic dust. But the live-action films completely gloss over this problem, leaving Miles and his animated crew to use their anti-decoherence wrist devices to protect them from turning into nothing. Only the animated people and no one else. Strange, no? Maybe there's no crossover between the Disney Marvel and Sony Marvel (Morales's) multiverses, which have different rules.

The movie also doesn't do much with its peripheral characters. Vanessa has broken up with Wade because she sees him as having become listless while also losing his self-respect; Wade responds to this early in the movie by using Cable's universe/time-jumping device (from the second movie) to visit Earth-616, in the so-called "sacred timeline," to meet with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) and try to join the Avengers. Hogan rebuffs Wade, telling him that while Wade thinks he needs the superheroing job, the fact is the Avengers do what they do because normal people need them. Bitter Logan hears of this and grates, "Fuck the Avengers." Other characters like Dopinder (Karan Soni), Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), Colossus (voice of Stefan Kapičić) and Blind Al (Uggams) are given little to do and figure only as motivation for Wade. Well, that's not entirely true: Blind Al gets some funny cocaine and vibrator jokes, and since she's blind, she gets to be horrified and grossed out when she touches Dogpool's nasty, lolling tongue.

But the movie's focus is, rightly, on its two central characters, so maybe we shouldn't ask for too much. The relationship between Deadpool and Wolverine is an arc unto itself, and the movie seems to have something to say about misfits, redemption, new friends, and second chances. It does all this while being mostly funny, and while "Deadpool & Wolverine" is far from perfect (those illogical battle tactics!), I found it thoroughly entertaining and highly recommend it if you've got a stomach for wanton violence and colorful obscenity. Watch the movie with my blessing, and keep your ears open for a bombastically choral rendition of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" at two crucial moments during the film's climax.

And don't forget to eat a butthole.