Deadpool & Wolverine review: Marvel’s inside joke grows old

Even for a movie starring an antihero with an enthusiasm for pegging, Deadpool & Wolverine is very far up its own ass. It doesn’t need a script doctor so much as a proctologist. The previous two entries in this franchise — an R-rated offshoot of the X-Men films — were aggressively meta comedies, breaking the fourth wall to wink at the very superhero-cinema tropes they indulged in. But the latest adventure for scarred, wisecracking assassin Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is closer to a $200 million inside joke. The target audience isn’t just people who can spot an Age of Apocalypse reference but also those capable of explaining, in great detail, why Spider-Man hasn’t shown up in a Venom movie yet.

Perhaps you’ve heard that Deadpool now operates under the corporate umbrella of Disney. That’s not merely behind-the-scenes context. It’s basically the plot of Deadpool & Wolverine, a summer blockbuster explicitly about the consolidation of intellectual property. Two of the first words Reynolds speaks in the film are “Fox merger,” a reference to how the Mouse House swallowed one of its studio competitors, making the X-Men and the Fantastic Four fair use/game for that ongoing crossover event, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Did The Hollywood Reporter get a writing credit on this script?

The villain of the movie, or one of them anyway, is Kevin Feige. OK, he actually goes by the name Mr. Paradox. This pencil-pushing bureaucrat, played by a typically wormy Matthew Macfadyen, works for the Time Variance Authority, the interdimensional canon cops introduced on the Disney+ series Loki. (If your eyes aren’t already glazing over, you’re probably currently seated for Deadpool & Wolverine.) Mr. Paradox wants to erase Deadpool’s whole reality — which is to say, the entire continuity of the extended X-Men movieverse. Marvel, of course, is doing just that as we speak. It arguably starts with this very movie, which pulls the Quantumania move of elbowing aside all the supporting sidekicks of the Deadpool series in favor of more multiverse management and a parade of cameos.

To save his friends, Deadpool has to find the “anchor being” of his universe, aka its most iconic character. That, naturally, is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the metal-clawed Canadian mutant last seen earning a big death scene in the elegiac Logan. It’s breathtakingly cynical to walk that poignant ending back, but of course Deadpool & Wolverine knows that, and makes sure to acknowledge it aloud, turning the money-grubbing motives of Marvel, the filmmakers, and a returning Jackman into one big joke. You kind of have to admire its gall: The movie peaks, comedically speaking, with the literal desecration of the X-Man’s grave — a scene that strikes the properly obscene note of gory sacrilege and irreverent disregard for closure.

“That’s a lot of exposition for a threequel,” Wade quips early on. No kidding! It takes a while to get Deadpool paired off with his uneasy new companion, a disgraced, still-living version of Wolverine who’s lost everything, including any will to play hero. The two end up exiled to the Void, the cosmic desert landfill also introduced on Loki (because yes, Marvel wants your monthly subscription money bad). This green-screen wasteland is a sandbox of discarded action figures, of heroes and villains cosplaying Mad Max. Chief among the latter is a spooky new foe played by The Crown’s Emma Corrin. X-Men readers might conclude that it’s a bit of a waste to deposit this particular, iconic character into a Deadpool movie, but Corrin doesn’t phone in her malevolence. It’s a deliciously baleful performance, all grinning psychotic glee and twiddling fingers of cerebral terrorism.

Beneath the relentless barrage of comic-con bait lies the bones of an appealing buddy comedy. Deadpool and Wolverine make for a good opposites-attract pairing — the gruff, taciturn loner forced to endure a prancing prankster who obnoxiously earns his nickname, the Merc with a Mouth. The screenplay, cobbled together by Reynolds and an X-Mansion’s worth of collaborators, never totally evolves their contentious dynamic beyond schoolyard antagonism. But Jackman spits expletives with salty, ferocious conviction. There’s also a very funny, very pointless brawl in a demolished Honda Odyssey (naturally the product placement is tongue in cheek) that’s staged with more outrageous slapstick aplomb than you might expect from director Shawn “Night at the Museum” Levy.

When the two aren’t fighting each other, they’re locked in mortal combat with the conventions of the Marvel machine. Like the recent Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, this movie is essentially hijacked by the imperative to serve up a line of special guests for an audience trained to applaud the sight of a familiar face. Deadpool & Wolverine has a little fun with this obligation, nodding to aborted passion projects and the deeper, less revered cuts of Marvel movie history. (The deceptive use of one particular MCU headliner is inspired.) But even draped in copious amounts of irony, the nonstop fan service grows wearisome by the multiversal shenanigans of the climax. No amount of CGI splatter and pop needle drops can disguise the ways Deadpool is still chasing an easy dopamine hit.

And like its predecessors, part three wants to have its chimichanga and eat it, too — to play the part of superhero cinema’s cheeky, subversive Greek chorus while also getting us emotionally invested in whether Deadpool gets to be an Avenger. Reynolds was born to play the Bugs Bunny of the Marvel universe; the character feels like an extension of his hyper-online star persona, the ultimate expression of his industrial-strength sarcasm. But he’s less convincing when trying to show us the puppy-dog soul of a sociopathic hitman with his elbow constantly in our ribs. Deadpool & Wolverine has its funny stretches, its moments when the insult-comic approach to comic-book lore really lands. But no movie with one foot planted so far outside of its material should be as egregiously sentimental as this one gets.

At least Jackman’s wired in. He has the advantage of being cast as the foil to his fellow marquee attraction, which means he gets to play the narrative straight, to play Wolverine without quotation marks around him (even when donning various silly, alternate uniforms during a timeline-jumping montage). Of course, Jackman already did the regretful, embittered superhero thing in, well, Logan. His performance in Deadpool & Wolverine is sharp, funny, even affecting, without dispelling the sense that it might have been better to let sleeping Canucks lie. Joking that it’s shameless to do something doesn’t make it less so.

Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters everywhere. For more of A.A. Dowd’s writing, please visit his Authory page.