There are absolutely no spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine in this article.
To quote Deadpool himself in his upcoming team-up with Wolverine: “That’s a lot of exposition for a threequel.”
Earlier this week, I got a chance to see the first 40 minutes of Deadpool & Wolverine (plus a short supercut teasing the rest of the film). If you’ve been following along on social media as the movie’s press tour rages on and various critics and influencers chime in on this footage preview, you may have noticed a pattern. The consensus seems to be that Deadpool & Wolverine is a masterpiece, a slam-dunk, and the thing that will finally end Marvel Studios’ painful slump. In other words, the MCU is so back.
Except, after watching the same 40 minutes myself, I’m not convinced this is the movie that can save the MCU or even curb some of its more annoying habits. Instead, Deadpool & Wolverine seems to be falling victim to some of the same issues. Almost half of the 40 minutes I was shown was exposition, setting up the rest of the film but also, I’m pretty sure, setting up the next phase of Marvel movies and epic crossovers to come.
The scenes I saw that work best show a deep love and appreciation for the original source material and the kind of freedom and creativity that’s found in the comics — and often in the movies too. Ryan Reynolds cracking jokes about “Bolivian marching powder” and pegging is still funny, but unleashing him on the entire 85-year history of Marvel Entertainment really does ratchet things up in some very cool ways.
But where this movie potentially goes off the rails (and again, I’ve only seen 40 minutes so hopefully I’m wrong) is by falling into the same trap we’ve seen so many times before: spending too much time focused on setting up the next movie before bothering to make sure this one is actually good. (Think of the Illuminati scene in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness where Reed Richards goes on a long, somewhat unintelligible tangent about the multiverse and incursions and you’ll get the idea.)
To sum things up before Marvel sends me a cease and desist letter, I’ll just say that the first 40 minutes of Deadpool & Wolverine are way more convoluted than the trailers or general hype around this film had led me to believe. Of course, there are still 87 minutes of runtime (including the credits) for this movie to turn things around. But I’m starting to worry that this may not be the franchise-saving movie fans have been waiting for. Hopefully, I’m wrong.
