It’s no secret that Marvel has been struggling recently. Ant-Man. Kang. Endless TV shows. Just as well Ryan Reynolds has stepped in to save the day. For nerds (of which I am one) Deadpool & Wolverine feels like the comic book equivalent of the Superbowl: massive, glitzy, crammed to bursting with stars, blood-pumping action and featuring an excellent soundtrack.
And talking of stars: Hugh Jackman is back as Wolverine! Wearing his iconic yellow suit! This is Wolverine’s first time in the MCU proper (Marvel having bought the rights to the X-Men off Fox, finally), and oh boy, we’ve been waiting a long time for it.
Not that it’s going to be pretty. “How we gonna do this without dishonouring Logan’s memory?” Reynolds quips at the start. “I’ll tell you: we’re not.”
Cue two hours of absolutely crass, glorious chaos. It begins with Deadpool using Wolverine’s Adamantium skeleton to kill a hit squad of time-travelling agents to the sound of ‘Nsync’s Bye Bye Bye. It gets better from there… though how much better I won’t say, for fear of spoilers.
Deadpool now being a part of the MCU, obscure lore-dumps litter this film. That includes the big bads, who hail from the TVA (or Time Variance Authority). Introduced in Loki, they have the job of keeping the Sacred Timeline pure and free of parallel universe-hopping pests, aka Deadpool.
No Tom Hiddleston this time around, though. Instead, we’re introduced to Matthew MacFadyen, doing a very Tom Wambsgans-ey creepy line as Paradox, a time agent.
Stay with me here, but he wants to destroy Deadpool’s own universe after it lost ‘anchor being’ (aka Wolverine) who died during the events of Logan. Listen, it makes sense when you’re watching it.
Deadpool is officially in retirement but now he’s the only one who can save the day. To do so, he reasons, he needs to go get another Wolverine from another dimension… but really, of course, it’s an excuse to get Hugh Jackman back in the suit again, and so he enters stage left once more.
I can’t stress how good it is to see him on screen again, or how well his particular brand of “fuck you” gravitas gels with Reynold’s motormouth mercenary. The two don’t get on, obviously, and some of the film’s most entertaining moments involve their knocking seven bells out of each other, using knives, bullets, claws and even seatbelts to do it.
Surprisingly for a Marvel film, it also takes the opportunity to celebrate all the superheroes who graced the big screen during the X-Men’s Fox days.
The callbacks are many and the cuts are deep. We even get to see a DC superhero actor in cosplay as Wolverine during one parallel universe jaunt. And there are too many celebrity cameos to count, including some that elicited gasps and cheers from the cinema when they appeared on-screen.
There is a plot, but mostly, it’s just an excuse to heap fan service upon fan service. The baddies don’t really matter – which sadly includes Emma Corrin’s villainous Cassandra Nova.
Corrin does the best with what they have, but to be honest, the script is flimsy and their role is to plumb the psyches of both heroes and help them get over their traumatic pasts. This has the side effect of giving the film some unexpected (and very welcome) emotional beats.
It’s not all fighting. But there is a lot of it. Hats off to Reynolds for pulling it off, and to Jackman for coming back on board. “Fox killed him, Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this ‘til he’s 90,” Deadpool quips at one point. Yes please: we’ll take as many Wolverine crossovers as Marvel is willing to dish out, as long as they taste as good as this one.
