REVIEW: Deadpool & Wolverine delivers as delight

By Sumedh Natu
Opinion
REVIEW: Deadpool & Wolverine delivers as delight

Deadpool and Wolverine stand beside each other in the Void. MARVEL/Handout

April of 2019. It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, and on days like these kids like us would be playing a game of cricket. But not today. We were huddled in a circle, discussing theories for the upcoming Avengers movie. I was the main speaker, cooking up some mind blowing theories (I copied them from MatPat[1]). There was some sort of magic in those movies you couldn’t find anywhere else. That magic which I think no other film franchise could ever replicate, not even Marvel itself in recent years. It is not an unpopular opinion that Marvel fell off after Endgame. Sequel after sequel made the franchise impossible to keep up with. Other than that, most younger fans like me who obsessed over these movies just grew up. We found better media to consume to quench our thirst for escaping mundane reality.

Deadpool & Wolverine felt like a movie specifically made for people who spent their younger years obsessing over superhero movies and just stopped caring. It is a perfect film for fans like me who haven’t watched a Marvel film in years, to get back into the franchise. A violent, self-aware, edgy Deadpool movie does not seem like something that would come out of Disney, but here we are. It actually feels like a Deadpool movie, though with a hefty garnish of Marvel multiverse shenanigans. Was it a cinematic masterpiece? Far from it. Was it an absolutely fun time? Hell yes.

WHAT THE MOVIE GETS RIGHT

  1. Self-aware humor → As to be expected from a Deadpool movie, there were jokes that broke the fourth wall. This humor was the best part of the movie in my opinion. They made a ton of jokes about Disney, the current state of Marvel, nerd culture, censorship laws, shelved franchises and characters, Marvel tropes, etc. The movie knows it’s using cliches. These jokes make the audience laugh with the movie rather than at it.
  2. Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds nail their roles → Ryan Reynolds (as Deadpool) and Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) brought their A-game to the movie. A jaded, tortured, and serious hero like Wolverine in contrast with a loud, annoying, and whimsical antihero like Deadpool brings about a lot of fun interactions. The one-on-one shenanigans these guys go through are honestly the best part of the movie.
  3. Hand-to-hand fight scenes → Being an R-rated film meant that the directors could use any amount of blood and violence they wanted. They used this freedom to make the fights involving the two protagonists as crisp as possible.
  4. The side characters → The acting of the side characters is pretty good in general. They contrasted the protagonists pretty well and their interactions made for some pretty good laughs. Especially Matthew Macfadyen’s character, a rogue TVA[2] agent and Rob Delaney as Peter.
  5. The fanservice → The cameos in the movie were pretty cool as a tribute to that bygone era of superhero movies. You know the actors doing the cameos are stoked to get back into roles they haven’t done in years. Was it cheeky? Yes. Did I love their presence? Absolutely. Hugh Jackman saying iconic Wolverine lines and that one moment in the final fight of the movie, got me smiling like a schoolgirl.

WHAT THE MOVIE GOT WRONG

  1. Edgy humor → Now I have a low standard of humor. If someone says something inappropriate as a joke, 7 times out of 10, I’d laugh. But even for me man, when the funny red guy says “dick and balls” for the hundredth time, it gets on your nerves. It just felt like these jokes boiled down to “Look at us, we have an R rating. We can swear. Crazy how Disney allowed this amirite.” A few of these jokes were funny, but most were misses.
  2. One-note villain → The main villain was forgettable. I unironically cannot remember her name and for the sake of comedy, I’ll refer to her as “Bald Lady” from now on. She felt out of place. On paper, a cunning, sadistic mastermind like Bald Lady interacting with a bumbling idiot like Deadpool and pool-of-rage like Wolverine feels perfect. Yet they never used this dynamic in any way. You couldn’t laugh at her or with her in the movie. In my opinion, the filmmakers committed the worst sin possible for a Deadpool movie: to make a character boring and forgettable. However, they did succeed in making a villain who had funny interactions with the protagonists (Matthew Macfadyen’s character), which makes it even more confusing why they couldn’t replicate the same effect with her.
  3. Show, don’t tell → I’ll list the many instances of this phenomenon:
    1. The movie has a generic “we gotta stop an evil guy using an evil machine from desecrating the entire multiverse” plotline which it takes pretty seriously. Now, that is not a problem on its own. The problem is the method the movie uses to relay such high stakes. Deadpool continuously says that his family and friends are the most important thing in the world and that’s why he wants to save the world. Yet other than one scene, we never really see him interact with them in a way that makes it seem like they matter to him. And that's a shame, as the side characters from the past Deadpool movies were one of the reasons those movies were so fun. The time bomb is said to have the ability to destroy multiverses, yet we never feel that tension in the movie. A scene showing the destructive capability of the time bomb would have been a simple way to show the scariness of the looming threat rather than Deadpool saying how the time bomb’s going to destroy his world every five minutes.
    2. Wolverine’s trauma. I wish there was a scene displaying Wolverine’s past mistakes in the movie. The buildup to the reveal of his trauma is well done. But the reveal itself is mediocre. The entire exposition he gives doesn’t make us feel the weight of his past. Hugh Jackman carried that scene, but good acting alone can’t make the audience feel empathy for a character. A flashback showing the events that led him there would have worked well to sell us this tragic character.
    3. Bald Lady’s villainy is not given time to shine. The change in her motive at the end could have worked if they had given it time to marinate and had given us some interactions between TVA administrators and Bald Lady. One of her henchmen betrays her. He justifies this by saying he was tired of being treated like dirt by Bald Lady. Yet we never see her being an abusive boss. The characters talk about her villainous feats, yet aside from one scene, we never really see it in full swing.
    4. There is a resistance group in the movie that fights against Bald Lady. They are shown to be on their last limbs and nihilistic about the prospect of beating her. We are told about their beef and how Bald Lady murdered their teammates. Same pitfall as before. Some sort of showcase of the characters' failed attempts against her could have added some juice and made us feel for the characters. Such a showcase would have made their final attempt while aiding Deadpool much more effective and “cinematic” and could have added to Bald Lady’s villainous aura.
  4. Really fast resolution between characters → The movie doesn’t take time to bring about a satisfying arc of the relationships between the characters. It feels rushed, which is a shame, as the character interactions are the highlights of the movie. Two primary examples are Deadpool’s with Wolverine and his ex-girlfriend. Wolverine starts off hating Deadpool and then at the end becomes cool with him as the plot needs it. It's a wholesome moment, but a bit more time spent marinating the relationship would have certainly made it better. The relationship between Deadpool and his ex-girlfriend is intriguing. Yet, in the same vein as Wolverine and Deadpool’s relationship, more time in the kitchen would have made the final product much more meaningful.
  5. The movie just felt bland to look at → The movie’s setting doesn’t stay in your head. They had a generic dystopian wasteland aesthetic copied from Mad Max. The movie itself jokes about this. Yet they go too far with it. They could have certainly made the world a bit more interactive and unique. Mutants in a desert wasteland using a variety of old and futuristic tech to survive is such a cool setting. Other than that, the only settings are generic woods and generic cities.

Most of these problems stemmed from the extremely short run time. If the movie was more than two hours, these problems would have been fixed and we would have gotten an overall more robust product.

Yet, despite all these complaints, I give this movie a: 7.9/10. Why? Because you don’t go to Deadpool & Wolverine to see a cinematic masterpiece. You go to the movie to have a fun time with your mates. And in that aspect, it delivered. The movie was the equivalent of eating an Aloha Chicken Sandwich at Jollibee. It’s messy, all over the place, and not as filling as you think it is. But by God is it one good chicken sandwich.

[1] Matthew Patrick, or MatPat, is the ex-host of the famous YouTube show Film Theory. As the name suggests, he theorizes about popular film-based media.

[2] TVA is an acronym for the “Time Variance Authority.” They make sure to police and maintain the timelines in the Marvel universe.

Any opinions expressed are of their respective writers and not The Zombie Fridge Journal.